Thresholds compress graded experience into crude before-after discontinuities

Evidence

For the distribution over time of the various attitudes (familiarity, trust and distrust) the existence of thresholds is important. The concept of thresholds, which was first developed in the psychology of perception5 but which in its general function can be applied to all experience, denotes an artificial discontinuity which levels out the area of experience before and after the threshold, and thus makes for simplification. A whole range of possible differences is thus drawn together under a single crude distinction and the rest are repressed into a sub-threshold latency. … Instead of being faced with an immense mass of slightly differently shaded experiences, one is concerned with the substitute problem of recognizing the threshold, from whence one’s orientation becomes essentially different. And this problem is easier to master. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 269

Categorization

• XREF: Borrowed from psychophysics (signal detection/Weber-Fechner), this mechanism parallels how Stevens reclassifies moral evasions at crisp narrative turning points rather than registering gradual ethical erosion. — connects to: When quantification destroys qualitative perception, bare sensation replaces experience. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 257
• SEED: Angle: thresholds as the mechanism behind Stevens’s moral collapse — the head butler’s ethical failures happen at discrete threshold crossings, not gradual slide, which is why his self-justification reads as ‘professional’ rather than corrupt.