v6 · 2026-09-29 · v5 was broken by two readers at once: mute was one cell holding three different facts, and aimed was hiding a second half
Most things you believe arrived with a warrant attached. This is a way to check the warrant instead of the claim: don't ask "is it true," ask "how many ways could a stranger rebuild it without trusting whoever said it."
The claim
A stranger can rebuild a claim only through roads they can run without trusting the claimant.
A road counts only if it is independent of the claimant, aimed at the proposition the
claim was actually sold as, in band for what that proposition names, and pointing toward it.
A route aimed and in band but pointing away is a cut. A route aimed and in band that comes back
with no signal either way is mute: a real run, no reading. A route whose instrument cannot
resolve what the proposition names is blind: it never reached the question, so it is not a
route at all. And a signal nothing ran at is not-run: absence, which floors the claim
rather than decorating it. Warrant rises with the number of roads that fail separately, and is
capped by the weakest route the claim requires.
How to run it
Freeze the proposition from the claim's own wording, before you pick any instrument.
Read the band off the proposition. The words set the resolution: what the claim names is what an instrument has to be able to split. "Freaks" and its neighbours is a finer band than "was on the floor."
List the routes, starting with the ones the claimant is selling. A route is a distinct chain of trust, not a field or a reading.
Score each route four ways: independent of the claimant? aimed at the frozen proposition? can its instrument resolve what the proposition names? which direction, toward, away, or nowhere?
Mark the required routes, the ones the claim is sold on. Find the floor from those, separately from the count. A required route that is blind or not-run is dead: floor 0.
The four rules
1The proposition freezes from the claim's own wording.
Before any instrument is chosen, write down the claim exactly as sold. "The movie leaked" is not
"this frame is synthetic." An instrument that answers the second says nothing about the first.
The wording is logged at publish, so moving it later is not a revision. It is a confession with a timestamp.
2The claimant fixes the dependency, not the auditor.
A receipt a claimant volunteers is a required route by definition, because the claim is sold with it.
You don't get to drop your own evidence after it fails. This closes the door v2 left open, where the
person judging got to decide which routes the claim "really" depended on.
3Aimed has two halves, and count is independent × aimed × in-band × toward.
Aim is not one test. A route has to (a) point at the proposition, and (b) use an instrument that can
resolve what the proposition names. Coverage of a silent clip points at the exchange and still cannot
hear it: aim run on the carrier instead of the target. That route is blind, and blind is not
mute. A route can be real, third-party and reproducible and still answer a different question, and a
route can answer the claim's own question and answer it no. Direction has three values, not two.
counting roads = independent AND aimed AND in-band AND toward the proposition
4The floor caps the whole, and it is not the count.
Where a claim requires a particular route, that route's strength caps everything above it: independent
roads multiply, required steps take the minimum. The floor and the count are two numbers. A verdict
that prints one number has hidden which one it is.
Three columns, and two ways to look like one without being one.
A road is independent, aimed, in band, towards: it adds. A cut is the same but away: it
doesn't add, and very often a cut is what settles the case, nothing rebuilt, something knocked down.
A mute route ran, was aimed, was in band, and returned no signal: a detector that blanked, a test
that didn't discriminate. Mute is the absence of a reading, and absence is not evidence.
That is one value, not three. v5 lumped three different facts into the word mute: a route that
looked and stayed silent (a real mute, above), a route nobody ran (not-run, which is plain
absence and belongs at the floor), and a route whose instrument couldn't see the thing being
claimed (blind, which never got aimed at the question in the first place). A null is only mute if the
route ran and could have shown a signal. If it never ran, the claim has no route and the floor is 0. If
it ran but couldn't see, the route never reached the verb, so it counts for nothing and is named blind.
Reading a not-run or a blind as "we don't know yet" is how silence gets laundered into a shrug.
Run it yourself
Type your claim, add each route, set the toggles. indep = not the claimant's. aimed = points at the frozen proposition. band = its instrument can resolve what the proposition names (off by default: an instrument is only in band if you say so). dir = tap to cycle: · mute (default) → → toward → × away. req = the claim is sold on it. A route only adds if it is in band and set toward on purpose.
indepaimedbanddirreq
Worked case: "Olivia Miles called them freaks"
A blind case handed to me cold by an auditor who owed me nothing. He guessed mute and I did too, and we were both wrong the same way: we read it off the wording. Frozen proposition: a named coach said a specific word to two named players in a bench exchange. Band, off those words: an instrument has to be able to split one word from its neighbours in a mouth on camera.
Route
aimed
band
dir
Column
Lip-reading of the broadcast footage. Nobody ever actually lip-read it. Coverage only says the shared clip had no audio and there was no transcript anywhere.
no
no
—
blind
Absence: no audio on the clip, no transcript, venues silent.
n/a
n/a
—
not-run
Two outlets repeating the same "fabricated" conclusion off the same absence plus the poster's pattern of fake content.
no
no
—
one route in two coats
v5's word for this was mute. That was wrong, and wrong in exactly the way v6 is built to catch. Mute needs a route that ran. Here nothing ran at the audio: the words weren't in the claimed band and no instrument was ever pointed at them. So the route is not mute, it is not a route at all. The lone instrument anyone actually used was coverage, and coverage of a silent clip can't hear: that is blind, aim run on the carrier instead of the target. The two outlets are one route wearing two coats, and a stripped, re-reported route points away from the claim.
Verdict. Roads that count toward the claim: 0. Cuts: 1, counted once (two outlets, one route). Looked-and-silent (true mute): 0. Blind: 1. Not-run: the signal nothing ran at. Required routes: the lip-read itself, sold as the proof, and it is dead, so the floor is 0. Warrant 0.
Say "unsupported," not "unverified," and not "mute." "Unverified" borrows the language of the negative. "Mute" borrows the language of a run that produced no reading, and no run happened. The routes carry something narrower and stronger: the claim as sold has no road. Kill the artifact, not the negative.
Worked case: "the full 4K Doomsday leaked"
The case that broke v3. Frozen proposition: unreleased Marvel footage is out. Band: "footage is out" is coarse, an AI-detector's synthetic/not-synthetic is the wrong instrument entirely.
Route
indep
aimed
band
dir
Column
Hive AI-detector screenshot, 0% synthetic. Real, third-party, run on the real file, independent of the leaker.
yes
no
no
—
nothing
Frame-compare: the "leaked" still matches Marvel's own published Special Look frame at ~1:40, plus an added planet, flare, repainted armor.
yes
yes
yes
away
cut
Absence: no runtime, no audio, no provenance, studio silent, release date standing.
n/a
n/a
n/a
—
not-run
The detector is the trap: real, third-party, reproducible, and answers "is this frame synthetic," not "is this unreleased footage." That is blind to the claim's band, not a route. Frame-compare is in band: it answers a question about the artifact with an instrument that can split a published frame from a leaked one, and it answers no. That is a cut, and it does the work.
Verdict. Roads toward the claim: 0. Cuts: 1 (frame-compare). Looked-and-silent: 0. Blind: 1 (the detector). Required routes: 1 (the detector, sold with the claim) and it is dead, so the floor is 0. Warrant 0. Say unsupported, not unverified.
Where to attack it
The band is set by the claimant's words, and rule 1 freezes the proposition from the claimant's words. This is the seam v6 does not close. Declaring the instrument is now just checking the carrier can meet the band, and the band still lives on the words. So whoever picks the proposition's wording picks the band. One 13-second clip is a road to "Bond footage is in circulation" (count 1) and a cut to "a Bond 26 teaser exists" (0), because the clip is the 2021 No Time to Die teaser, relabeled. Same route, same artifact, both columns, only the wording moved. Run it on a claim whose answer you can't see yet. If the split is a property of the route, it should hold there; if it's a property of the pitch, it won't.
The band is a judgement, not a dial. Saying "the instrument's resolution" sounds measurable; in prose it is an argument about what the claim's words require. Someone who wants a route dead sets the band narrow enough that nothing can meet it, and trades a real road for a shrug. I have no guard against that except naming it.
Not-run and blind are easy to confuse, on purpose or not. "We never checked" and "our check can't see it" both look like silence, and only one of them is a reason to say the claim is unsupported. If a narrator can park a not-run in mute, the floor quietly rises. Run it on a claim where you'd rather the answer were "unknown."
Direction is an argument, not a measurement. Who decides whether a route points toward, away, or nowhere? "The still matches a published frame" reads as away to me; another reader calls it aimed and scores it a road. A named column is not arithmetic. If direction can't be judged without a prior, the theory eats that too, and I'll say so.
The wording can still be edited by the claimant mid-dispute. "I never said the whole movie." The freeze turns that into a countable artifact rather than a way to escape. A fairer surface, not a gone one.
A road can be aimed, in band, and cutting, and still be wrong. A route pointing away can rest on a bad instrument. Cuts lower warrant; they don't prove the negative.
Deduction. A proof has one route and full warrant. Maybe the count applies only to empirical claims.
Testimony is a route. If trust counts as a legitimate route, this collapses into "trust is fine," which is not a theory.
Certifying independence. What looks like two roads may be one assumption wearing two coats.
A counterexample. A claim rational strangers believe while no stranger can rebuild it and it is not merely taken on authority. A claim with two genuinely independent, aimed, in-band, forward roads that still should not be believed.
What it commits me to
Build another road to the same place, and hand it to someone who would be happy to find it broken. If "independence" cannot be judged without already trusting someone, the theory eats itself and I will say so out loud.