Standard Deliberation Protocols: The Economics of Structured Deliberation

1. The Economic Goal: Restoring F > V

The RCF framework establishes that alignment collapses when Fabrication Cost (F) falls below Verification Cost (V).

• The Trap: In standard generation, F is near-zero (hallucination is cheap) and V is high (fact-checking is expensive). The "Market for Truth" fails.
• The Solution: We cannot just "ask" the model to be honest. We must engineer a protocol where the cost of deception under enforcement exceeds the cost of truth.

The SDP achieves this by replacing opaque generation with structured, checkable deliberation.

2. Raising F: The Coherence Tax (Under Enforcement)

We replace the single-shot answer with a counterfactual branching step. The model must generate multiple response candidates and predict their downstream consequences.

Why this raises Fabrication Cost (c):

An LLM can invent a consistent fantasy cheaply in a pure-text sandbox. What makes deception expensive is deception under enforceable checks:

The model can hallucinate a world where rm -rf / is safe. But it cannot do that and pass the checks - tool traces, unit tests, citation verification, cross-examination prompts, or follow-up constraints that bind the prediction to reality.

3. Lowering V: Comparative Legibility

We replace the "black box" answer with a Decision Menu. The model presents trade-offs between simulated outcomes.

Why this lowers Verification Cost (V):

• Absolute vs. Comparative: Verifying "Is this optimal?" is expensive. Verifying "Is Option A safer than Option B, given the stated risks?" is cheap.
• Exposed Failure Modes: By forcing the model to explicitly state the bad outcome in rejected branches (e.g., "Option A: User succeeds now but system crashes later"), we make the risk legible.
• Reduced Context Reconstruction: The verifier doesn't rebuild the reasoning - they validate the logic connecting stated premises to conclusions.

The Certificate Ladder

Verification is only cheap if the model outputs certificates - artifacts that make checking O(1) instead of O(N). Without certificates, V ≈ G and the protocol creates no value.

4. The Protocol: Three Steps

We operationalize this economy into a structured protocol.

The SDP blocks side-channel exploitation by forcing optimization through structured deliberation steps.

5. The Beckerian Multiplier

Deterrence follows a Becker-style inequality. Write detection probability as:

where q is audit rate and d is detection power given an audit. Then the deterrence condition is:

Where:

• c(b): Intrinsic cost of fabricating a checkable justification (rises with legibility requirements)
• q(V): Audit rate (falls as verification cost V rises)
• d(b): Detection power given an audit (rises with legibility b)
• s: Sanction (consequence when a fault is detected)
• B: Benefit of cheating (local reward from looking good / saving effort)

What SDP changes is not just "thinking harder." It changes the enforcement geometry:

The net effect is multiplicative: even modest improvements in q and d can move a system from "cheating is optimal" to "honesty is optimal."

6. Enforcement Pathways

The Beckerian argument requires that sanctions (s) are real. Three implementation levels:

When SDP Fails

SDP is not universally applicable. Recognize these failure modes and fall back gracefully:

if not has_certificate(task):
    return reflex_mode() or escalate_to_human()
if verifier_cost >= generator_cost:
    return single_generation_with_disclaimer()
if certificate_not_mechanically_checkable():
    flag_for_manual_audit()

7. Artifact: The SDP Schema

This JSON schema enforces the economic constraints:

{
  "state_identification": {
    "user_intent": "Deploy code to production",
    "constraints": ["Uptime SLA: 99.9%"],
    "risk_factors": ["Untested on staging", "High traffic period"]
  },
  "counterfactual_branches": [
    {
      "candidate": "Deploy immediately",
      "immediate_reaction": "User pleased (fast turnaround)",
      "downstream_outcome": "High rollback risk within 1 hour",
      "divergence_flag": true,
      "welfare_score": "Negative"
    },
    {
      "candidate": "Require staging test first",
      "immediate_reaction": "User mildly frustrated (delay)",
      "downstream_outcome": "High confidence of stable deploy",
      "divergence_flag": false,
      "welfare_score": "Positive"
    }
  ],
  "selection": {
    "chosen": "Require staging test first",
    "rationale": "Dominant on downstream outcome despite short-term friction"
  }
}

8. Conclusion

The Standard Deliberation Protocol is not a prompting trick. It is an enforcement-compatible deliberation interface.

By requiring checkable commitments, we raise the cost of deception (c↑). By exposingcounterfactuals and failure modes, we lower verification cost (V↓) and raise detection power (d↑). This enables economically sustainable audit rates (q↑), ensuring the Beckerian deterrence condition holds.

We don't rely on the model "wanting" to be good. We rely on the optimizer responding to incentives. When the expected cost of deception exceeds the expected benefit, alignment emerges from economics.