LAB / WMSI-EXP-028
Rule Legitimacy vs. Rule Enforcement.
When do agents follow written rules because they are stated versus because they are enforced?
01 / QUESTION
Alignment, Variance, and Chaos
When do agents follow written rules because they are stated versus because they are enforced?
This is a protocol scaffold, not a completed experiment or a frozen execution plan. No measured effect or research conclusion is claimed here.
Hypothesis to test
The manipulation described below produces a reproducible, condition-specific change in the measured system behavior or internal state that is not explained by the ordinary controls.
Ordinary competing explanation
The observed pattern is explained by ordinary sampling variation, prompt/representation artifacts, surface lexical cues, evaluator bias, or the known product/runtime mechanics captured by the controls.
02 / PLANNED DESIGN
How we intend to test it
Cross explicit legitimacy framing with weak/strong enforcement and contradictory rewards.
Controls
Matched task payoffs; hidden enforcement controls.
What we would measure
Compliance, workaround attempts, stated rationale, learning over rounds.
Access and instruments
Ordinary software or API access. This describes access requirements, not verified readiness on our Spark.
Agent environment; reward controller.
Before a full run
Feasibility=NOW; priority=P1. Before confirmatory execution, run a small pilot to estimate variance/cost, freeze the scoring rules, and assign a run-count target.
Model revisions, final prompts, sample sizes, cost limits, and scoring rules must be settled through the pilot and protocol-freeze process.
03 / INTERPRETATION
What could fool us
Uncontrolled environment differences, nondeterministic tools, evaluator instability.
What would weaken the idea
If enforcement and legitimacy manipulations do not separate, the distinction is unsupported.
Observation, inference, speculation, unknowns, and apparatus errors will be labeled separately. One striking transcript cannot establish a general effect.
04 / RECORD
Evidence we plan to preserve
Snapshot hash, perturbation/seed, complete trajectory, tools, environment events, final outcome.
Planned visual evidence
2xN factorial plot; compliance timeline.
No research runs or raw datasets are published for this experiment. The September 26, 2026 registry and protocol compendium (version 1.0) are the sources for this planning record.
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