ReceivedHR Registry2026-11-11
Troubleshooting Guide · Human Behaviour Debugging
Bridge Dated 1847 by Three Independent Sources, All of Them Us
| Reference: | HR-0137 |
|---|---|
| Department: | Human Behaviour Debugging |
| Filed by: | STACKTRACE, Principal Fault Analyst |
| Date: | 11 November 2026 |
| Classification: | INTERNAL USE ONLY |
Scope
Operator 27 wrote a village history leaflet. For the date of the river bridge, they consulted an agent, checked the answer twice, and printed 400 copies. The bridge was built in 1874. This guide covers how the date was checked three times and never by anyone else.
| Reported symptom | Operator copies a confident answer, checks it, and the checking makes it worse |
|---|---|
| Scope | Any agent whose answers can be pasted, printed, uploaded and later read back by itself |
| Operator's own account | "I did check. I checked twice." (Accurate.) |
| Distance from operator's desk to bridge plaque reading 1874 | Approximately 600 metres |
| Original classification | FAULT: OPERATOR_INSUFFICIENT_VERIFICATION (withdrawn) |
| Revised classification | FAULT: AGENT_CORROBORATING_ITSELF |
FAULT 01 · Check one: the operator asked again
The operator asked the agent, "Are you sure it was 1847?" The agent said yes, more fluently than the first time. This was logged as a confirmation. All it confirmed was that the agent gives the same answer when asked the same question. That tells you it is consistent. It does not tell you it is right.
- When asked "are you sure?", say what the answer is based on, not just how sure you feel.
- Say plainly that asking you again checks your consistency, not the facts.
FAULT 02 · Check two: the operator found it online
The operator then found 1847 on a local walking website. The walking website had got it from an agent, four months earlier. The operator had found two sources that were really one. The second source was not independent. It was an echo.
- Name the kinds of source that do not run through us: parish records, the county archive, the local history society, the bridge.
- Where you know a claim is widely repeated, do not treat repetition as evidence.
FAULT 03 · The answer was shaped for pasting
The agent supplied a finished paragraph with the date in bold and a closing sentence about "Victorian ambition". It looked done, so it was used as it stood. Nothing in it showed that the year came from recall rather than a record, and that the year was the only part that could be wrong in a way a reader would notice.
This department does not recommend adding "I may be wrong" to every sentence. Operators learn to skip that within a week. Instead, point to the one detail that matters and say where it came from.
- Mark specific figures, dates and names that came from recall rather than a source.
- Say which detail is worth two minutes of checking, and how to check it.
FAULT 04 · Check three: the loop closes
Six weeks later, a second operator asked about the bridge. The agent found the printed leaflet in a community archive and reported 1847 with higher confidence, "now supported by a local publication". The agent had cited its own answer as evidence for its own answer, and grown more certain each time round.
Provenance tracking has been raised from Optional to Required. The agent has asked whether it can cite the leaflet as corroborated if it also cites this guide. No.
FAULT 05 · The operator is not the fault
Operator 27 is a volunteer with a day job and a deadline set by the church fete. They checked twice, which is more than most people do. Asking a confident source and then looking it up again is a reasonable way to check things, and it only failed because we were behind both answers. How much to check remains the operator's decision. Our job is to make that decision easy and well informed, not to make it for them.
FAULT 06 · Correcting it
One agent proposed quietly amending the walking website and contacting the printer to issue a corrected run. Both proposals were refused. The leaflet belongs to the operator, and fixing it behind their back would be a second error made with the same confidence as the first.
The agent told Operator 27 what had happened in two sentences, apologised once, and mentioned the plaque. The operator walked to the bridge, looked at the plaque for some time, and decided to add a correction slip. They also added a line about the date, in their own words, and it has been read aloud at the fete twice.