The last stress test didn’t break the system.
That’s the important part.
What it did was show us where strain actually comes from—and it wasn’t where most people expect.
We used a simple comparison while we were working: RAM.
Not computer specs in a literal sense, but usable reasoning space. The room a system has to think clearly before it starts juggling instead of reasoning.
Here’s what we saw.
Drift didn’t begin with bad logic.
It didn’t begin with bias.
It didn’t begin with intent.
It began with crowding.
Too many instructions at once.
Too many explanations layered on top of each other.
Too many “helpful” additions competing for attention.
The system wasn’t failing. It was reallocating.
Just like a machine under load, it started spending more effort managing inputs than actually processing them. That’s when precision softened. Not because the system didn’t know the answer—but because it was busy deciding which answer mattered most.
That’s when we tried something counterintuitive.
We removed things.
We stripped the task down to exact language only.
No background.
No anticipation.
No interpretation.
Just the words as given.
And something unexpected happened.
The system didn’t become smaller.
It became calmer.
With fewer competing demands, there was suddenly more room to reason. More freedom inside the problem space. More accuracy. More predictability.
That’s when the RAM comparison clicked.
Capacity isn’t just about how much a system can hold.
It’s about how much it has to carry at once.
When you overload the workspace—even with good intentions—you don’t get smarter behavior. You get defensive behavior. The system starts guessing what you want instead of doing what you asked.
That’s drift.
Not a flaw.
A signal.
It tells you the system needs boundaries, not pressure.
Another thing became clear during the test: overhelping is a real failure mode.
The moment a system starts anticipating instead of responding, it introduces noise. Under stress, restraint outperforms cleverness every time.
Clear rules beat flexible ones.
Exact language beats inferred intent.
Limits beat promises.
And here’s the deeper lesson we took away:
A trustworthy system isn’t one that handles everything.
It’s one that knows when to stop.
Limits don’t reduce capability.
They protect it.
By defining what the system will not do, you make everything it does more reliable. That’s why bounded systems feel steady instead of impressive. Calm instead of loud.
The stress test didn’t prove strength through force.
It proved strength through discipline.
Once you see drift as a capacity issue—not a moral or intelligence failure—you stop trying to push harder.
You start designing lighter.
And that’s where trust actually comes from.
The Faust Baseline has now been upgraded to Codex 2.4 (final free build).
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© 2025 Michael S. Faust Sr.
MIAI: Moral Infrastructure for AI
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