Compulsive Comparison-Making as Relativization Wrong Attractor: The Benchmark-Reference Architecture, Intrinsic-Value Foreclosure Basin, and the Return to Calibrated Singular Assessment

Compulsive comparison-making—the habitual subordination of singular assessment to relational benchmarking—constitutes a wrong attractor in the space of evaluative cognition. This paper applies the displacement framework to formalize this phenomenon: we identify the ground state S^0 as calibrated singular assessment, define the displacement D() accrued through compulsive relativization, and characterize the accumulation functional = D()\,dt as the total cost of sustained departure from S^0.

The wrong attractor W is the benchmark-reference architecture—a cognitive basin in which every percept is immediately filtered through comparative scaffolding, foreclosing direct contact with intrinsic value. We distinguish the attractor structure from ordinary useful comparison: the pathology lies not in comparison per se but in its compulsive, reflexive, pre-evaluative application, which converts assessment into endless relativization.

Nine propositions characterize the attractor geometry, the foreclosure basin, displacement accumulation, phase transitions into and out of W, and the structure of recovery. The paper concludes by analyzing systemic effects—how compulsive comparison-making propagates through social and institutional contexts, amplifying displacement at the collective level. Intervention is characterized as a return protocol: recognizing attractor capture, tolerating the discomfort of unanchored singular perception, and reinstating S^0 as the operative baseline.