Mind · Strategy
ComputeBudget
Economic governor for cognitive spend
Definition
Mechanism
The cognitive governor that prevents analysis paralysis. It acts as a dual-ledger Gate, weighing the Value of a Task against the Budget to ensure return on investment (ROI). It enforces stopping rules when the cost of thinking exceeds the value of the solution.
Risks
Failure modes
Analysis Paralysis
Spending more on estimation than the task is worth.
Penny Wise
Rejecting necessary deep thinking for high-stakes/high-complexity problems.
Cost estimation is itself costly (meta-cost problem).
Uncertainty about uncertainty makes expected_gain hard to calculate.
Risk of penny-wise pound-foolish
refusing decomposition on hard problems because estimate was wrong.
Relationships
Builds on
Used by
References
Society
Binding offer from solver to execute task
Calculating the economic value of reducing uncertainty
Execute a cognitive topology
Navigate like a researcher, not linearly
Composes with
Society
High-velocity solver requiring parallel runtime
Solver implementing the five-surface contract (polymorphic across substrates)
Reference
Parameters
max_budgetPositiveInteger, unspecified- The ceiling, in `unit`. Deliberately uncapped.
roi_thresholdFloat, [0.1, 2.0]- Expected value required per unit spent before work proceeds. Scales how demanding the gate is; it does not license spending past the ceiling.
estimation_shareRatio, (0.0, 0.5]- Share of the budget estimation may consume before it must return.
unitEnum, {Tokens, USD, Ms}- Cost unit
