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IAQ Lexicon

Context Attrition

The record keeps what happened after forgetting what made it happen.

⚙ Hidden Mechanism

The gradual loss of circumstances, constraints, intentions, and local meaning as an event moves through records, summaries, databases, and institutional time. Context Attrition allows the durable error code, violation, or outcome to survive after the narrative needed to interpret it fairly has disappeared.

Examples

Related Concepts

First Appeared In

Why Do Systems Remember Errors Better Than Context?

Origin

Placed beneath Institutional Memory because institutional storage preserves different kinds of information unevenly: standardized violations and outcomes remain durable while explanatory narrative decays across transfer and time.

Lexicon HomeBroader Concept↑ Institutional Memory
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