Infrastructure · Primitives
Quorum
Minimum participation threshold
Definition
Mechanism
A threshold-checking primitive. Validates if a count of Ballot signals exceeds a required number (K). It does not negotiate; it simply counts. Used as a gating function for higher-level protocols.
Preconditions
- N agents in voting set.
- K threshold defined where K ≤ N.
- Proposal formulated.
Postconditions
- Result selected (approve/reject/timeout)
- Voting tally recorded
Invariants
- K cannot decrease mid-vote.
Risks
Failure modes
Veto threshold tuning is hard - too low enables cheap blocking, too high makes it useless.
Strategic abstention to avoid commitment.
Deadline pressure enables rushing bad proposals through.
Relationships
Builds on
Accepts
Immutable record of one agent's cast choice
Used by
References
Society
Emergency state checkpointing
Society
Discovering existing agreement
Society
Graceful group dissolution with state disposition and resource release
Society
Mitigating groupthink via mandatory devils advocacy
Society
Geometric neighbor consensus
Society
Optimistic execution, retroactive verification
Mind
Value-based state evaluation
Mind
Detection of value-laden facts
Society
Fluid, organic synchronization without rigid clock ticks.
Mind
Detecting structural breaks in reality
Reference
Parameters
kInteger, [1, total_members]- Required count of affirmative {{ballot}}s. A count, matching the invariant and preconditions. Sub-majority values are legitimate — an any-one-approves gate is a quorum of 1.
total_membersInteger, [3, 100]- Eligible participants (N)