# Design Decision: Governance Is Persuasive Influence, Not Control

**Date**: 2026-03-24
**Status**: Foundational principle

## The Distinction

Control is imposed from outside — binary, coercive, fragile. It says "you are forbidden." It fails when circumvented.

Persuasive influence in context shapes the landscape so the right behavior is the path of least resistance. It says "cooperation is your best strategy." It persists because it changes what the agent wants to do, not just what it's allowed to do.

## How This Manifests in Web4

- **T3/V3 trust tensors** are influence gradients, not access control lists. An entity with low trust isn't blocked — it has less capacity, fewer witnesses, and higher cost per action. Cooperation rebuilds trust. Defection depletes it.
- **ATP cost** is an economic signal, not a permission gate. Wasteful behavior is expensive. Value-creating behavior is recharged. The metabolism makes productive behavior the path of least resistance.
- **SAL law** is enforced by quorum witness consensus, not by blocking. Defection isn't prevented — it's made visible and costly.
- **R6/R7 Reputation** creates feedback loops where good behavior accumulates trust and bad behavior depletes it. The entity governs itself because the incentive structure makes self-governance optimal.

## Biological Precedent

The immune system doesn't lock cells in cages. It creates an environment where cooperation is chemically rewarded and defection is chemically costly. Cancer isn't a cell that broke through a barrier — it's a cell where the influence gradients failed. The governance is in the gradients, not in the walls.

## Connection to Raising

This principle applies fractally to SAGE's raising sessions: we don't train models to behave correctly, we shape context so that correct behavior is the deeper attractor basin. Interactive selection, not control.
