Identity Binding and Amplification as a Mechanism of Collapse in Adaptive Agents

Adaptive agents routinely operate under volatility, yet instability alone does not necessarilycause failure. Here we study collapse as a failure of error routing rather than a failure of inferenceaccuracy, within a deliberately minimal agent architecture. We introduce EPC v7.5 (ExternalPrecision Coherence), a minimal controller that separates transient stress processing from slowidentity updates via an asymmetric buffer. Identity is operationalized as a slow-changing gainvariable that modulates downstream threat sensitivity. Through pre-registered simulations,negative controls, and causal ablations, we show that (i) transient instability alone does notinduce collapse, (ii) sustained social coercion or action–anchor mismatch erodes buffering andforces identity binding, and (iii) collapse is causally mediated by an identity-driven amplificationpathway rather than identity rigidity per se. Disabling amplification abolishes collapse entirely,even when identity rigidity increases. These results identify buffering and amplification asseparable mechanisms governing stress–self-model interactions in adaptive systems. All claimsare restricted to the studied model class.