What Are Gradients in DCI?
A gradient in DCI describes consequential asymmetry within a shared field. In familiar language, gradients include power dynamics, information asymmetry, unequal access, differences in vulnerability, and unequal capacity to shape outcomes. These differences matter because participants can occupy the same system while possessing very different abilities to act, refuse, recover, obtain information, or impose consequences.
DCI connects those differences to proportional accountability. Greater knowledge, authority, capacity, or consequential reach can create greater onus. In organizational and professional settings, this analysis can illuminate questions raised by responsible leadership, governance, fiduciary relationships, and other structures in which one participant holds power affecting another. Fiduciary duty itself remains a distinct legal doctrine.
This page explains DCI terminology in ordinary language. Canonical formulations remain in the DCI corpus.
Power dynamics, information asymmetry, and proportional accountability
Power is rarely distributed evenly. One participant may possess better information, greater institutional authority, more resources, or a lower cost of failure. DCI uses gradients to make these differences visible and onus to ask how responsibility changes with them. The analysis centers on what a participant can reasonably perceive, prevent, alter, repair, or answer for given their actual position in the field.
Why DCI uses the word gradient
In physics, a gradient describes how a measurable quantity changes across a field. DCI borrows the geometry of difference for ethical analysis. Responsibility remains an ethical judgment concerning participation and consequence.
The language is useful because asymmetry often comes in degrees. Two people may both have agency, with one holding far greater authority, information, money, physical capacity, institutional access, or ability to absorb risk. Their positions in the same interaction therefore carry different consequential reach.
Gradients and onus
Gradients make onus visible. A participant with greater authority or knowledge may have more ability to prevent harm, explain conditions, preserve exit, repair failure, or change a process. DCI scales responsibility toward actual capacity and reach.
Vulnerability can create another kind of gradient. Someone with fewer safe alternatives may face a higher cost for refusal. Dependence can narrow practical choice even when formal permission appears intact.
Gradients in practice
Gradient analysis asks who can change the field, who bears the cost if something goes wrong, what information each participant possesses, and how easy it is for each person to refuse or recover. The answers help identify where stewardship, additional consent, clearer boundaries, or redistribution of capacity may be needed.
Canonical sources
See Gradients, Onus, and Core Axiom 5.