From Model-Rich Systems to Judgment-Responsible Decision-Making

Article Type: Editorial Statement, Published: 2025-12-20 Tone Uprising: A Journal of Narrative Sovereignty, 1(Article 14), 1–14 Rolling Publication (Annual Volume) 語氣起義：敘事主權期刊， 第 1 卷，第 14 篇 ， 2025 年。 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at https://narrquest.wordpress.com/issues/ © NarrQuest Narrative Observatory. This journal is open access under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license. ISSN (Online): 3105-1456 © NarrQuest 敘事觀察室。本期刊採用創用 CC BY-NC 4.0 授權條款之開放取用出版。 ISSN （線上版）： 3105-1456 1 From Model-Rich Systems to Judgment-Responsible DecisionMaking* 從模型高度飽和走向可承擔判斷的決策體系 * Gabriel Chen NarrQuest Narrative Observatory Email ： [email protected] *This editorial was authored by the Editor-in-Chief and did not undergo external peer review. ——————————————————————————————————————— Editorial Abstract Across scientific, technical, and socio-technical domains, decision systems have entered a model-saturated phase marked by increasing computational sophistication alongside diminishing judgmental accountability. Empirical failures consistently indicate that breakdowns in decision-making rarely originate from insufficient modeling accuracy; rather, they emerge from the absence of structures capable of carrying responsibility, refusal, and accountability across system boundaries. This editorial statement argues that the central challenge of contemporary decision systems is no longer model performance, but the governance of judgment transfer. It does not introduce new algorithms, optimization techniques, or explanatory models. Instead, it establishes a minimum, non-negotiable responsibility floor that must be satisfied before any decision claim can be considered governable or trustworthy in model-rich environments. Three criteria define this responsibility floor: the use of domain-agnostic evaluative indicators, the existence of crossdomain reproducible decision pipelines, and the explicit specification of failure conditions and non-applicability boundaries. Systems that operate under hard real-time constraints, latency-critical automation, or legally pre-assigned and non-transferable liability are explicitly excluded from narrative mediation rather than candidates for its refinement. Narrative is treated here not as a communicative, cultural, or interpretive artifact, but as an operational structure through which models, measurements, and inferences become capable Article Type: Editorial Statement, Published: 2025-12-20 Tone Uprising: A Journal of Narrative Sovereignty, 1(Article 14), 1–14 Rolling Publication (Annual Volume) 語氣起義：敘事主權期刊， 第 1 卷，第 14 篇 ， 2025 年。 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at https://narrquest.wordpress.com/issues/ © NarrQuest Narrative Observatory. This journal is open access under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license. ISSN (Online): 3105-1456 © NarrQuest 敘事觀察室。本期刊採用創用 CC BY-NC 4.0 授權條款之開放取用出版。 ISSN （線上版）： 3105-1456 2 of bearing judgment across epistemic systems. Judgment accountability is framed not as an ethical aspiration, but as a structural prerequisite. This editorial defines the journal’s position: to shift evaluative focus from model-centric adequacy toward judgment-centered responsibility, and to clarify what constitutes a legitimately governable decision claim in environments where modeling capacity has already exceeded accountability capacity.. Keywords: Judgment Responsibility , Decision Accountability, Model-Saturated Systems, Narrative as Operational Structure, Cross-Domain Decision Governance, Failure Conditions, Reproducible Decision Pipelines. 中文摘要（ Editorial Abstract ） 在科學、工程與各類社會—技術系統中，決策體系已全面進入模型高度飽和的階段：計 算能力與推論複雜度持續上升，但判斷責任的可承擔性卻同步下降。實證經驗一再顯示， 決策失效極少源於模型精準度不足，而多半來自缺乏能夠跨系統承載、拒絕與歸責判斷的 結構。本主編聲明主張，當代決策系統的核心挑戰已不再是模型表現，而是判斷轉移的治 理問題。本文不提出新的演算法、最佳化技術或解釋模型，而是界定一個在模型高度飽和 環境中不可退化、不可跳過的最低責任門檻，作為任何可治理、可被信任的決策主張之前 提條件。該責任門檻由三項條件構成：其一，決策評估須依賴跨領域適用的通用判準；其 二，決策流程必須具備跨場域可重現性；其三，系統需明確揭示其失效條件與不適用邊界。 對於具備嚴格即時性要求、延遲高度敏感，或責任已被法律明確且不可轉移地事前配置之 系統，本文明確主張應排除敘事中介，而非嘗試對其加以修正或約束。本文所指之敘事， 並非溝通技術、文化表述或詮釋策略，而是一種使模型、測量與推論得以跨知識體系承載 判斷責任的操作性結構。判斷可承擔性在此並非倫理訴求，而是結構性前提。本聲明界定 本刊的編輯立場：將評估焦點由模型充分性，轉向判斷可承擔性，並釐清在模型能力已超 越責任承載能力的環境中，何種決策主張才具備治理上的正當性與可信任性。。 關鍵詞（中文） : 判斷責任 , 決策可歸責性 , 模型高度飽和系統 , 敘事作為操作性結構 , 跨場域 決策治理 , 失效條件 , 可重現決策流程 . 1. The Illusion of Sufficiency in Model-Rich Systems Across scientific, technical, and socio-technical domains, decision systems are increasingly characterized by an abundance of models, simulations, and optimization procedures. Predictive accuracy improves, parameter spaces expand, and computational Article Type: Editorial Statement, Published: 2025-12-20 Tone Uprising: A Journal of Narrative Sovereignty, 1(Article 14), 1–14 Rolling Publication (Annual Volume) 語氣起義：敘事主權期刊， 第 1 卷，第 14 篇 ， 2025 年。 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at https://narrquest.wordpress.com/issues/ © NarrQuest Narrative Observatory. This journal is open access under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license. ISSN (Online): 3105-1456 © NarrQuest 敘事觀察室。本期刊採用創用 CC BY-NC 4.0 授權條款之開放取用出版。 ISSN （線上版）： 3105-1456 3 pipelines grow ever more sophisticated. Yet despite this apparent progress, decision failures persist—and in many cases, intensify. These failures reveal a recurring misconception: that model sufficiency implies decision sufficiency. This misconception constitutes what may be termed the illusion of sufficiency. Within model-rich systems, the presence of highly performant models is frequently treated as evidence that decision-making has been adequately addressed. Accuracy, robustness, or convergence are implicitly assumed to exhaust the requirements of responsible action. However, empirical breakdowns across domains—from algorithmic systems and engineering design to clinical decision-making and scientific inference—demonstrate that model adequacy does not, by itself, produce accountable judgment. The illusion arises from a categorical conflation. Models are designed to represent, predict, or approximate aspects of reality under specified assumptions and boundary conditions. Decisions, by contrast, operate at the point where representations are translated into commitments, actions, or policies. This transition is not a computational step, but a judgmental one. No increase in model precision can eliminate the need for this transfer, nor can it absorb the responsibility that accompanies it. In model-saturated environments, this transfer is often obscured. Decisions are framed as natural continuations of model outputs rather than as explicit acts requiring justification, refusal, or limitation. When outcomes fail, responsibility is displaced onto technical complexity, data limitations, or unforeseen conditions—none of which can adequately account for why a particular course of action was adopted in the first place. The problem is not that models are incorrect, but that the locus of judgment has been rendered structurally invisible. This invisibility produces systemic risk. When decision authority is implicitly delegated to models, the conditions under which outputs should not be acted upon remain unspecified. Failure modes are discovered retrospectively rather than defined prospectively. As a result, systems appear reliable until they abruptly are not, at which point accountability becomes diffuse, contested, or entirely absent. It is therefore insufficient to ask whether a model performs well within its designated parameters. The more fundamental question concerns whether the decision claims derived from that model can be legitimately governed. This requires structures capable of carrying judgment across the boundary between inference and action—structures that make responsibility explicit, limitations visible, and refusal possible. Article Type: Editorial Statement, Published: 2025-12-20 Tone Uprising: A Journal of Narrative Sovereignty, 1(Article 14), 1–14 Rolling Publication (Annual Volume) 語氣起義：敘事主權期刊， 第 1 卷，第 14 篇 ， 2025 年。 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at https://narrquest.wordpress.com/issues/ © NarrQuest Narrative Observatory. This journal is open access under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license. ISSN (Online): 3105-1456 © NarrQuest 敘事觀察室。本期刊採用創用 CC BY-NC 4.0 授權條款之開放取用出版。 ISSN （線上版）： 3105-1456 4 The remainder of this editorial proceeds from this diagnosis. The challenge confronting contemporary decision systems is not a shortage of models, but a lack of mechanisms through which judgment and responsibility are formally reintroduced once modeling is complete. Until this gap is addressed, increases in computational sophistication will continue to amplify, rather than resolve, decision fragility. 2. Judgment as a Transfer Problem, Not an Information Problem In model-rich environments, decision-making is frequently framed as a problem of information adequacy. Efforts to improve decisions are therefore directed toward increasing data volume, refining explanatory outputs, or enhancing transparency in model internals. While these measures may improve understanding, they do not address the central structural challenge confronting contemporary decision systems: judgment does not fail because information is insufficient, but because responsibility cannot be reliably transferred across system boundaries. Judgment emerges at the point where inferential outputs are converted into commitments, actions, or policy positions. This conversion is neither automatic nor neutral. It requires an explicit act of endorsement that binds an output to consequences under conditions of uncertainty. Information can inform this act, but it cannot replace it. Treating judgment as an informational problem obscures the fact that responsibility is incurred not by producing outputs, but by deciding to act on them. This distinction becomes critical in complex systems where inference and action are distributed across multiple layers. Models generate results, interfaces present summaries, operators interpret signals, and institutions authorize execution. At each boundary, responsibility must be transferred. When this transfer is not structurally specified, judgment dissolves into procedural continuity: actions appear to “follow” from models without a clear locus of accountability. The decision is perceived as having occurred everywhere and nowhere at once. Attempts to resolve this by adding explanations or interpretive aids often misidentify the failure mode. Explanations increase intelligibility, but they do not determine who is entitled—or obligated—to decide, refuse, or override. A system may be fully explainable and yet incapable of supporting accountable judgment if no mechanism exists to anchor Article Type: Editorial Statement, Published: 2025-12-20 Tone Uprising: A Journal of Narrative Sovereignty, 1(Article 14), 1–14 Rolling Publication (Annual Volume) 語氣起義：敘事主權期刊， 第 1 卷，第 14 篇 ， 2025 年。 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at https://narrquest.wordpress.com/issues/ © NarrQuest Narrative Observatory. This journal is open access under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license. ISSN (Online): 3105-1456 © NarrQuest 敘事觀察室。本期刊採用創用 CC BY-NC 4.0 授權條款之開放取用出版。 ISSN （線上版）： 3105-1456 5 responsibility at the moment of action. In such cases, transparency functions as a surrogate for responsibility rather than its carrier. Understanding judgment as a transfer problem reframes the task of governance. The question is not whether a model can explain itself, but whether the transition from inference to action is accompanied by explicit criteria, reproducible procedures, and clearly articulated limits. Judgment requires a structure that specifies when outputs may be acted upon, when they must be withheld, and who bears responsibility for either choice. Without such structures, decision systems default to what may be termed implicit endorsement. Outputs are treated as actionable by default, and restraint must be justified post hoc. This inversion is consequential. It places the burden of refusal on individuals operating downstream, while insulating upstream processes from accountability. When failures occur, responsibility is fragmented across technical layers rather than concentrated at the point where judgment should have been exercised. Reconceptualizing judgment as a transfer problem also clarifies why domain-specific solutions fail to scale. Indicators, thresholds, or interpretive conventions tailored to a single field may function locally, but they do not generalize across heterogeneous systems where the form of inference varies while the structure of responsibility remains invariant. What must be governed is not the content of decisions, but the conditions under which judgment is legitimately transferred from models to actions. This editorial position therefore treats judgment as a structural requirement rather than a cognitive capacity or ethical disposition. Judgment is preserved when systems make responsibility transferable, contestable, and reversible. It collapses when decisions are allowed to propagate without explicit points of endorsement or refusal. Addressing this collapse requires specifications that operate independently of domain content, yet consistently regulate the passage from inference to action. The subsequent sections build on this reframing. Having identified judgment failure as a problem of transfer rather than information, the editorial proceeds to define the operational structures through which such transfers can be governed across domains, without conflating explanation with responsibility or performance with legitimacy. 3. Narrative as an Operational Structure Across Domains Article Type: Editorial Statement, Published: 2025-12-20 Tone Uprising: A Journal of Narrative Sovereignty, 1(Article 14), 1–14 Rolling Publication (Annual Volume) 語氣起義：敘事主權期刊， 第 1 卷，第 14 篇 ， 2025 年。 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at https://narrquest.wordpress.com/issues/ © NarrQuest Narrative Observatory. This journal is open access under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license. ISSN (Online): 3105-1456 © NarrQuest 敘事觀察室。本期刊採用創用 CC BY-NC 4.0 授權條款之開放取用出版。 ISSN （線上版）： 3105-1456 6 Narrative is commonly misunderstood as a communicative or cultural artifact, often associated with storytelling, persuasion, or meaning-making within humanistic contexts. Such interpretations obscure its functional role in technical and scientific systems. In modelsaturated environments, narrative operates neither as rhetoric nor as interpretation, but as an operational structure through which inferences are organized, bounded, and rendered actionable. This editorial position treats narrative as a structural mechanism that governs how judgments are transferred across epistemic systems. Across domains, decisions do not arise directly from raw model outputs. They are mediated through configurations that determine what counts as relevant evidence, how uncertainty is framed, and which assumptions are considered binding. These configurations—often implicit—form narrative structures. In engineering, they appear as design rationales and boundary conditions; in physics, as theoretical commitments and interpretive conventions; in medicine, as diagnostic pathways and risk stratifications; in artificial intelligence, as model cards, deployment assumptions, and human-in-the-loop protocols. The form differs, but the function is invariant: narrative structures organize the passage from inference to action. This invariance is critical. While inferential content varies widely across fields, the need to render judgments accountable does not. Narrative, in this sense, is not an overlay added after computation, but a prerequisite for decision legitimacy. It specifies how outputs are contextualized, which constraints are binding, and where responsibility is anchored. Without such structure, model outputs remain technically valid yet decisionally indeterminate. Treating narrative as operational structure clarifies why ungoverned narrativization poses risk. When narrative mediation is implicit, it becomes resistant to scrutiny. Assumptions harden into defaults, limitations recede from view, and the conditions under which outputs should be refused remain unspecified. Decisions then acquire an appearance of inevitability, as if actions were compelled by models rather than endorsed by judgment. This appearance is not merely misleading; it actively displaces responsibility. Conversely, over-explicit narrativization can also be hazardous. When narrative coherence is prioritized over structural accountability, decisions may be stabilized prematurely. Coherent explanations can mask unresolved uncertainty, and persuasive framing can substitute for explicit limits. In such cases, narrative does not carry judgment; it suppresses it. The operational criterion is therefore not whether narrative is present, but whether it is constrained. Article Type: Editorial Statement, Published: 2025-12-20 Tone Uprising: A Journal of Narrative Sovereignty, 1(Article 14), 1–14 Rolling Publication (Annual Volume) 語氣起義：敘事主權期刊， 第 1 卷，第 14 篇 ， 2025 年。 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at https://narrquest.wordpress.com/issues/ © NarrQuest Narrative Observatory. This journal is open access under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license. ISSN (Online): 3105-1456 © NarrQuest 敘事觀察室。本期刊採用創用 CC BY-NC 4.0 授權條款之開放取用出版。 ISSN （線上版）： 3105-1456 7 This position rejects the notion that narrative introduces subjectivity into otherwise objective systems. All decision systems already operate through narrative structures, whether acknowledged or not. The distinction lies between governed and ungoverned narrative mediation. Governed narrative makes assumptions explicit, delineates applicability, and preserves the possibility of refusal. Ungoverned narrative naturalizes decisions, obscures limits, and diffuses accountability. Understanding narrative as an operational structure also explains why domain-specific narrativization metrics fail to generalize. Metrics tied to local practices may optimize communication within a field, but they do not regulate judgment transfer across heterogeneous systems. What is required instead is a domain-agnostic evaluation specification: the same propositions, the same indicators, and the same failure conditions, applicable across diverse domains and continuously validated through cross-domain deployment. In this framework, narrative legitimacy is not derived from cultural resonance or explanatory richness, but from its capacity to preserve responsibility at the point of action. Narrative must specify not only what a system does, but when its outputs should not be acted upon. It must enable contestation rather than foreclose it. Where these conditions are unmet, narrative mediation should be withheld rather than refined. This chapter establishes narrative as a necessary but constrained mechanism within decision systems. It neither elevates narrative to a universal solution nor reduces it to a communicative aid. Instead, it positions narrative as an operational layer whose governance determines whether judgment remains possible in model-rich environments. The following section translates this positioning into a minimum responsibility floor by articulating the criteria that narrative-mediated decision claims must satisfy to be considered legitimately governable across domains. 4. The Minimum Responsibility Floor for Decision Claims Having established that decision failures in model-rich systems arise from ungoverned judgment transfer, this section defines a minimum responsibility floor for decision claims. This floor does not prescribe how decisions should be optimized, explained, or justified within any particular domain. Instead, it specifies the conditions under which a decision claim may be considered legitimately governable across domains. Claims that fail to meet these conditions do not qualify as responsible, regardless of technical performance or contextual adequacy. Article Type: Editorial Statement, Published: 2025-12-20 Tone Uprising: A Journal of Narrative Sovereignty, 1(Article 14), 1–14 Rolling Publication (Annual Volume) 語氣起義：敘事主權期刊， 第 1 卷，第 14 篇 ， 2025 年。 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at https://narrquest.wordpress.com/issues/ © NarrQuest Narrative Observatory. This journal is open access under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license. ISSN (Online): 3105-1456 © NarrQuest 敘事觀察室。本期刊採用創用 CC BY-NC 4.0 授權條款之開放取用出版。 ISSN （線上版）： 3105-1456 8 This editorial advances a domain-agnostic narrative evaluation specification, rather than domain-specific narrativization metrics. The distinction is foundational. Domain-specific metrics are calibrated to local practices, vocabularies, and constraints; they may improve internal coherence within a field but cannot regulate judgment transfer across heterogeneous systems. By contrast, a domain-agnostic specification requires that the same propositions, the same evaluative indicators, and the same failure conditions remain applicable across diverse domains and withstand continuous cross-domain validation. The minimum responsibility floor is anchored by three verifiable deliverables. These deliverables are non-negotiable. They do not represent best practices or aspirational guidelines; they constitute baseline requirements for any decision claim that seeks legitimacy in model-saturated environments. 4.1 Domain-Agnostic Evaluative Indicators The first deliverable requires the use of domain-agnostic evaluative indicators, rather than field-specific scales or locally optimized metrics. Evaluative indicators must be defined at a level of abstraction that allows them to remain invariant across domains, even as the content of inference changes. Indicators that depend on disciplinary conventions, professional norms, or contextspecific interpretations cannot fulfill this requirement. While such measures may be informative within a field, they fail to support cross-domain accountability. A responsibilitybearing indicator must allow independent evaluation of whether a decision claim satisfies the same criteria regardless of whether it arises from a machine learning system, a physical model, a clinical protocol, or an engineering design process. This requirement does not imply uniformity of outcomes. It implies uniformity of evaluative logic. The indicator must assess properties relevant to judgment transfer—such as constraint visibility, endorsement clarity, or reversibility—rather than domain performance. Where indicators collapse into local expertise or tacit knowledge, responsibility becomes non-transferable and governance fails. 4.2 Cross-Domain Reproducible Decision Pipelines The second deliverable requires the existence of cross-domain reproducible decision pipelines. Reproducibility here does not refer to numerical replication or experimental Article Type: Editorial Statement, Published: 2025-12-20 Tone Uprising: A Journal of Narrative Sovereignty, 1(Article 14), 1–14 Rolling Publication (Annual Volume) 語氣起義：敘事主權期刊， 第 1 卷，第 14 篇 ， 2025 年。 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at https://narrquest.wordpress.com/issues/ © NarrQuest Narrative Observatory. This journal is open access under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license. ISSN (Online): 3105-1456 © NarrQuest 敘事觀察室。本期刊採用創用 CC BY-NC 4.0 授權條款之開放取用出版。 ISSN （線上版）： 3105-1456 9 duplication. It refers to the ability to reproduce the decision pathway by which an inference was translated into action, across different domains and contexts. A reproducible decision pipeline makes explicit the sequence of transformations from input to inference, from inference to judgment, and from judgment to action. It specifies where interpretation occurs, where discretion is exercised, and where refusal remains possible. Without such specification, decisions become opaque to external scrutiny even when models are transparent. Crucially, reproducibility must not be contingent on domain-specific infrastructure or proprietary interpretation layers. If a decision pathway can only be reconstructed within the originating field, it cannot be governed across domains. Responsibility collapses when pipelines cannot be independently examined, challenged, or reconstructed by actors operating outside the original system. This requirement ensures that decision legitimacy does not depend on insider status. It preserves the possibility of contestation and audit, both of which are essential for responsible judgment in distributed systems. 4.3 Explicit Failure Conditions and Non-Applicability Boundaries The third deliverable requires the explicit specification of failure conditions and nonapplicability boundaries. This requirement is frequently omitted in existing systems, where outputs are implicitly treated as actionable by default. Such omission constitutes a structural failure of responsibility. A responsible decision claim must state not only when it applies, but when it does not. Failure conditions must be articulated prospectively, not inferred retrospectively. They must specify the conditions under which outputs should be withheld, overridden, or refused, even if the underlying model remains technically valid. Non-applicability boundaries are not admissions of weakness; they are prerequisites for governance. Without them, narrative mediation stabilizes decisions prematurely and obscures uncertainty. Explicit failure conditions preserve judgment by maintaining the possibility of refusal at the point of action.