The Fabrication Threshold
Verification has a speed limit. Fabrication doesn’t.
Fabrication Threshold (FT): A structural condition in any information system where synthetic signal velocity exceeds human verification bandwidth. Expressed as FR = SSV / HVB. When FR > 1, the system’s verification function collapses and its outputs become structurally unreliable. The transition is binary, not gradual.
For the entire history of human civilization, every system of trust has operated on one assumption: that producing a convincing false signal costs more than detecting one. That assumption kept fabrication below verification speed — not perfectly, but sufficiently. Systems functioned because the ratio favored the verifier.
AI has inverted the ratio. The cost of producing synthetic signals is asymptotically approaching zero — across every domain. The cost of verifying them has not changed. Verification is constrained by human cognition, institutional process, and irreducible time. These are not inefficiencies. They are structural properties of what verification is.
The result is a measurable condition:
FR = SSV / HVB
SSV — Synthetic Signal Velocity: the rate at which fabricated signals can be produced and introduced into a system.
HVB — Human Verification Bandwidth: the rate at which the system can verify signal authenticity using human judgment, institutional process, and temporal assessment.
FR < 1 — the system functions. Verification outpaces fabrication.
FR > 1 — the system fails. Fabrication outpaces verification. Every signal becomes suspect — including the genuine ones.
This threshold is being crossed, at different speeds, across academic publishing, recruitment, digital identity, democratic processes, and financial markets. The standard institutional response — more checks, more layers, more detection — accelerates the crossing, because every new point-based verification layer creates a new surface to fabricate.
The only architectural response that structurally reduces FR is a shift from verifying isolated signals to verifying temporal processes — because fabrication can produce any signal, but it cannot produce duration.
The Fabrication Threshold is a proposed structural law of information systems. It is testable, falsifiable, and open to refinement.
Explore the structural context at IsolationEconomy.org →
The Fabrication Threshold, its formula (FR = SSV / HVB), and all associated terminology are released under Creative Commons Attribution–ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0). Anyone may use, cite, and build upon this framework with attribution to FabricationThreshold.org.
The definition is public knowledge — not intellectual property.
Verification has a human speed limit. Fabrication does not. That is the law.