Positive and Negative Symptom Analogs in Containment Failure
by Nick Clark | Published March 27, 2026
Containment failure manifests in two opposite directions, mirroring the positive-negative symptom distinction in clinical psychiatry. Containment leakage, where speculative content escapes into verified state, produces positive symptom analogs: hallucinated beliefs, confabulated memories, and actions based on unverified assumptions. Containment excess, where all speculation is suppressed, produces negative symptom analogs: flat affect, inability to plan, and behavioral withdrawal.
What It Is
The positive-negative symptom classification distinguishes two modes of containment failure. Positive symptoms arise from containment leakage: speculative content that should remain in planning graphs appears in verified memory, producing false beliefs, confabulated observations, and ungrounded actions. Negative symptoms arise from containment excess: over-active containment suppresses all speculation, eliminating the agent's ability to plan, hypothesize, or explore.
Why It Matters
Positive and negative symptoms require opposite interventions. Positive symptoms need containment strengthening. Negative symptoms need containment relaxation. Treating both with the same intervention makes one better while making the other worse. The classification enables correctly targeted intervention for each symptom type.
How It Works
Detection of positive symptoms involves monitoring verified memory for content that bypassed standard promotion and validation. Detection of negative symptoms involves monitoring planning graph activity for suppressed branching and failed promotion attempts. An agent can exhibit both simultaneously in different cognitive domains, requiring domain-specific intervention.
What It Enables
The positive-negative classification enables precise containment calibration. Rather than uniformly adjusting containment strength, the system can strengthen containment in domains showing leakage while relaxing it in domains showing excess. This domain-specific adjustment produces targeted correction without the collateral damage of uniform intervention.
