PhronesisWe analyze compulsive advice-seeking as a structural wrong attractor within the displacement framework, formalizing its architecture, basin dynamics, and the conditions for return to calibrated self-directed deliberation. The ground state S^0 is defined as the capacity to use external perspectives as one input among many while maintaining ownership of one's decisions and tolerating the irreducible uncertainty of autonomous choice.
The wrong attractor W is compulsive advice-seeking: the habitual outsourcing of decision-making to others—polling friends, family, and strangers before every significant choice—not as genuine information-gathering but as a mechanism for avoiding the anxiety of autonomous judgment and distributing responsibility for outcomes. We introduce a displacement cost function D() measuring deviation from S^0, and define accumulated displacement = D()\,dt as the integral of this cost over time, representing the chronic pattern of decision-outsourcing.
The basin of attraction deepens as autonomous judgment atrophies through disuse, and as the advice-seeker becomes structurally unable to decide without external input. We formalize nine propositions characterizing the validation-seeking mechanism, basin depth as a function of judgment-atrophy, responsibility-diffusion dynamics, value-access degradation, and the necessary conditions for return.
The return path requires opinion-formation before advice-seeking, selective rather than exhaustive consultation, and explicit ownership of outcomes as the constitutive price of genuine autonomy.