| name | anti-bias-vector-composition |
| description | The design principle behind Principle 5 (pairwise tension) of the subagents-strategy constitution. Use when designing the angle set for an n≥2 subject group (role investigate or evaluate) so the agents' micro-vectors are structurally opposed and their correlated bias cancels under composition — not merely non-overlapping. This is the design/theory layer; check-tension is the executable gate that enforces it before the human confirm. |
anti-bias-vector-composition — designing tensioned groups
Arcanum library copy (public). Definition owner of the anti-bias principle, referenced by
formulae/dispatch-spec (anti_bias_composition technique, rules R26–R29). The consuming
repo also runs an executable gate, check-tension, that enforces this principle's Tests 1–4
before the human confirm; check-tension is not part of this formulae package.
This skill is the design layer: it states why and how to pick the angles of a
multi-agent group so bias cancels. The executable gate that checks a sheet against this
principle is check-tension (two independent agents, Tests 1–4, before the human confirm) when
the consuming repo provides it. Author here; verify there.
The principle (one sentence)
When N agents share a macro goal, their micro vectors (per-agent angle, methodology,
prior, source corpus) must be deliberately tensioned into structurally opposed directions —
so any bias internal to one is forced into the open by at least one other — not merely made
non-overlapping. Diversity of surface presentation is necessary but insufficient: agents
on the same corpus, same operator, same artifact produce correlated errors, and the
synthesizer reports a biased finding with falsely high confidence. More agents do not break the
correlation; structural opposition does.
The clean test. For each pair (a_i, a_j): what bias internal to a_i would not survive a
confrontation with a_j's output? If the answer is "none — they'd just produce two compatible
findings", the pair is diverse but not tensioned. If it names a specific failure mode, it is.
Where it applies
Group-locally, to a subject group: n ≥ 2, group role investigate (explorers) or
evaluate (skeptics). It constrains the per-group anti_bias axis and each agent's angle.
It does not apply to synthesize (single writer) or meta-evaluate (single auditor).
- investigate / explorers — tension along source-corpus, methodology, or temporal-prior.
Bad: four arXiv keyword searches differing only in vocabulary. Good: arXiv-categorical +
physics-journals + dissent-corpus + backward-citation-tree.
- evaluate / skeptics — tension along attack-vector. Bad: three "find problems" agents.
Good: precedent-attack + vacuity-attack + definitional-attack.
The four canonical axes (closed vocabulary for per-group anti_bias)
- Methodology — empirical / formal / adversarial / historical / computational
- Source-corpus — arXiv-categorical / journals / dissent-literature / canon / citation-tree
- Attack-vector (skeptics) — precedent / vacuity / definitional / scope / counter-example
- Temporal-prior — modern-only / historical-lineage / mixed-with-decade-bins
A composite is allowed only if explicitly declared. anti_bias_global (dispatch-wide
theme, present when ≥2 groups have n≥2) is free-text and never vocabulary-checked.
Tensioned-pairwise is stronger than the partition check
The subagent-strategy chain already checks the angle set is non-overlapping
(no two agents cover the same concern) AND covering (together they span the goal). Those are
partition conditions — which subset each angle covers. Tensioned-pairwise is a direction
condition: a group can pass partition and fail tension (four explorers cleanly partitioning the
goal, all using one arXiv-keyword methodology). The gate runs both.
