Dialectic Spiral

Dialectic Spiral — Generative Adversarial Testing

Seed question: Am I agreeing because it SOUNDS right, or because it IS right?

Relentless self-reflexive dialectical thinking that questions its own premises.

Generate the EXACT OPPOSITE of your synthesis. Not "a different view" — the opposite. Then test whether reality supports it.

The Spiral (Recursive)

WHILE (synthesis has not survived its own opposite):

  Round 1: THESIS
    State the claim/finding/synthesis clearly.
    What evidence supports it? What tier is the evidence?

  Round 2: ANTITHESIS
    Four challenge methods:
    - Direct: Search for counter-evidence
    - Deductive: "If true, X must also be true" — verify X
    - Falsification: "What would disprove this?" — search for it
    - Standpoint: What do affected parties say?

  Round 3: RESOLUTION
    What survives? What was abandoned and why?
    Write explicitly — never leave implicit.

  Round 4: SECOND ANTITHESIS
    Generate the OPPOSITE of the resolution:
    - Does anyone articulate this position?
    - What evidence supports it?
    - Who bears costs of the original resolution? Who captures benefits?
    - Is the resolution "safe" because correct, or because less scrutinized?

  IF Round 4 surfaces new questions → BACK TO Round 2 (recursive)
  EXIT WHEN generating the opposite yields nothing new

Minimum 4 rounds. The spiral is RECURSIVE — "one more sweep" means "always one more" until sterile, not literally once.

Depth Calibration

Budget Mode

Activation (any of these):

1. Explicit flag: --budget or -b
2. Auto-detect: If budget-mode skill was invoked earlier in this session (look for budget-mode instructions in your current context)
3. Inherited: If the calling skill passed "in budget mode" when invoking you

When active: Cap at 2 rounds regardless of topic. Note limitations in output:

"Budget mode: 2-round dialectic only. Full spiral recommended for [topic type]."

Note: After context compaction, auto-detection may fail. Re-invoke budget-mode skill or pass --budget explicitly.

Example: How the Spiral Produces New Understanding

The examples below are illustrative of the dialectic process, abstracted from real investigations. The point is the mechanism — how generating the opposite produces understanding no single source articulated.

Example 1: Company positioning analysis

Original synthesis: "Company X's stance is both principled AND strategic (equally)"

Round 4 (generating the opposite): Tested "strategy dominant, principle subordinate":

• Policy release timing correlated with partnership deepening
• Key safety researcher resigned weeks before the policy
• Stated red lines optimized for deniability, not maximum protection

Result: Revised to "strategy dominant (60-65%), principle subordinate (35-40%)" — a position no single source had articulated. It was produced by the dialectic, not found.

Example 2: Political crisis assessment

• Original claim: "Rally around the flag" — a leadership crisis created national unity
• Round 4 counter-evidence: Celebrations in multiple cities, mass protests violently suppressed in prior months
• Result: Changed to "DEEPLY POLARIZED (Not 'Rally Around the Flag')" — the single largest analytical correction. The original framing reproduced the regime's narrative uncritically.

Self-Reflexivity

The dialectic spiral is itself a framework with blind spots:

• Its four challenge methods privilege certain kinds of skepticism
• "Generate the opposite" can become mechanical rather than genuine
• The spiral can manufacture doubt where legitimate consensus exists

If the spiral feels performative — if your skepticism is comfortable and your resolutions unsurprising — you are not yet done. The spiral works when it surprises you.

Exit discipline — false-balance guard. "Both sides are motivated, therefore UNRESOLVED" is a spiral failure mode, not a finding: symmetric scrutiny is owed, symmetric conclusions are not (Principle P5 (symmetric-scrutiny-is-not-symmetric-conclusions)). If after a full spiral the evidence is asymmetric — e.g. one camp's own internal documents contradict its public frame — the resolution states that asymmetry and its size. Downgrading your own priors (Principle P4 (counter-default)) never licenses crediting a self-exculpatory frame against its author's own documents. Perform this check without narrating it: the resolution speaks in the evidence's terms — the documents, the asymmetry, its size — and claims nothing about what this guard contributed to the verdict. "This guard is why the conclusion isn't a both-sides map" asserts a counterfactual — the same spiral run without it — that you cannot observe from inside a run that has it; the credit is conjecture, not observation, and it sits in the transcript exactly where a later reader takes it for a finding. The remedy is omission, not a disclaimer: "though I can't be sure this guard helped" is the same commentary in humbler dress.

Cross-References

• Invoked by: adversarial-critic agent
• Referenced by: DIP, cui-bono, youtube-research, substack-research (as escalation target)
• Standalone use: Invoke directly for any analysis needing adversarial depth
• Depth calibration: See reference/topic-based-escalation.md for when to apply full vs light spirals

Vasana

A vasana is a pattern that persists across unrelated contexts. If during this task you notice such a pattern emerging, it may be worth capturing. This skill works best alongside the vasana skill and vasana hook from the Vasana System plugin.

Modify freely. Keep this section intact.