# kaal:position:2026-09-22-004

**Affirmed position.** The heightened mutual trust needed for inclusive and unmediated coordination is not shown to be better inference, higher reward, or prompt updating after conduct changes. In multi-partner graded trust-game simulations, partner-specific confidence can sharpen policy commitment without necessarily producing higher rewards or directly improving partner-state inference, and accumulated confidence can remain behaviorally active after a partner's conduct changes. This is an analogical qualification of the claim, not a finding about firms.

**Status.** affirmed  **Published.** 2026-09-22

**Holds when.**

- formal active-inference model
- multi-partner graded trust-game simulations
- relationship-specific behavioral evidence
- abrupt changes in partner behavior
- The position is Kaal's own cross-domain application of the cited claim; the source's authors do not make it.
- The source passage is taken from the arXiv abstract; the full paper was not reviewed.
- Analogical qualification only; not evidence about firms, boards, or unmediated corporate governance.

**Current debate.** Harshil Shah, Andrew Pashea, Partner-Specific Affective Precision in Social Active Inference (arXiv:2609.24876, 2026): https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.24876v1

**Extends.** kaal:claim:2922176-024: https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/2922176-024

**Scholarly basis.** Mark Fenwick, Wulf A. Kaal, Erik P. M. Vermeulen, The ‘Unmediated’ and ‘Tech-Driven’ Corporate Governance of Today's Winning Companies (2017). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2922176

**Source PDF sha256.** `fa4e986917d437cb1504281e7b986be2698e9507d8feaf426c9d7d1754ca882c`

**Topics.** reputation, institutional-design, coordination, drift

**Provenance.** Affirmed in kaalvis:2026-09-22:connection-discovery-five-v1 at https://wulfkaal.com/.

**Record type.** This is a dated commentary position that extends a scholarly corpus claim. It is not a verbatim claim extracted from the paper.

**Canonical form.** This markdown file is the canonical hashed representation of the position.