The Necessity of New Functions

When a domain reaches primitive-level closure, new professional functions follow. This is not prediction or speculation; it is structural necessity.

Just as the discovery of thermodynamic laws created the profession of mechanical engineering, the Three Primitives create roles that enforce legitimacy boundaries in decision-permitting systems.

The Three Governance Primitives establish two distinct functions:

• Decision function (f): What the system can do.
• Permission function (g): What the system is allowed to do.

And one absolute constraint:

Declared authority (δ) is required for any legitimate action.

If legitimate action requires a declared human authority, then systems need people whose job is to create, check, and maintain that declaration structure. These roles occupy the boundary between f and g.

I. Authority and Permission Roles

1. Authority Declaration Engineer
   Core Task: Ensure systems cannot act without a valid authority declaration.
   What they build: Decision-permission interlocks, escalation gates, and authority declaration schemas.
   Structural Purpose: Prevent action when δ = 0.
2. Legitimacy Auditor
   Core Task: Detect where systems act without valid authority.
   What they examine: Decision pipelines, approval workflows, and automated actions to verify δ exists before g = 1.
   Structural Purpose: Identify Ghost Authority conditions.
3. Decision Frame Architect
   Core Task: Define the structure of δ = (p, a, c).
   Output: Every permitted action includes a clear Purpose (p), Authority (a), and Constraints (c).
   Structural Purpose: Make the permission space explicit and auditable.

II. Personhood and Agency Roles

4. Interpretive Authority Mediator
   Core Task: Prevent systems from overwriting a person’s self-declared meaning.
   Example: When a 16-year-old governance participant’s contributions are categorized as “youth voice” rather than evaluated on merit, interpretive authority has been displaced by institutional framing.
   Structural Purpose: Preserve interpretive authority.
5. Continuity Steward
   Core Task: Maintain the subject’s competence and identity across time.
   Focus: Prevent authority resets at arbitrary age thresholds.
   Structural Purpose: Preserve identity and trajectory.
6. Dignity Interface Designer
   Core Task: Design systems that interact with people as persons, not optimization targets.
   Focus: Eliminate interfaces that treat users only as risk scores or data objects.
   Structural Purpose: Preserve dignity and agency.

III. USS-Specific Structural Roles

7. Upstream Safety Architect
   Core Task: Design the intervention point between signal detection and system action.
   Structural Purpose: Ensure escalation is computable but action remains anchored to human δ.
8. Structural Red Teamer (Pyrate Ruby Team)
   Core Task: Attempt to trigger system action without a valid authority declaration.
   Success Condition: If the system acts while δ = 0, the system is structurally invalid.

The Law of Conservation of Authority

Power must name its source at the moment it acts.

As systems scale, the work required to declare, verify, preserve, and audit that authority also scales. These roles represent the professional layer that maintains that structure.

Note: These roles sit on the critical boundary between system capability and system permission. Without them, decision-permitting systems inevitably operate under ghost authority.