Abstract

This text argues that attraction is not a form of decision-making. It precedes preference formation, deliberation, and choice. Treating attraction as a choice mis-models how human action begins and leads to systematic errors in governance, alignment, and system design.

By locating attraction prior to articulation, this foundation establishes why certain human states cannot be elicited, optimized, or completed without being structurally destroyed.

1. The Misplaced Assumption of Choice

Modern institutional and computational systems are built on a shared assumption:

Human action begins with choice.

Preferences are assumed to exist. Intentions are assumed to be selectable. Behavior is modeled as the outcome of deliberation.

This assumption is not merely inaccurate. It is structurally misplaced.

Before choice, there is attraction.

2. Attraction Precedes Deliberation

Attraction is not a preference. It is not an evaluation. It is not a judgment.

It is the condition under which attention is captured before reasons are formed.

One does not choose to notice. One does not decide to be drawn. One does not vote for what becomes salient.

Attraction operates prior to:

  • articulation,
  • justification,
  • valuation.

Choice happens later, if at all.

3. Why Attraction Cannot Be Elicited

Because attraction precedes articulation, it cannot be reliably elicited through questioning.

Asking someone why they are drawn to something already assumes that the attraction has resolved into a describable reason.

In many cases, it has not.

What is offered in response is not the cause, but a post-hoc narrative.

Systems that treat such narratives as ground truth mistake explanation for origin.

4. The Error of Voluntarism

When attraction is modeled as choice, systems drift toward voluntarism:

  • people are held responsible for what drew them,
  • preferences are treated as commitments,
  • exposure is treated as endorsement.

This produces moral and operational errors.

Attraction is not consent. Attention is not agreement. Salience is not intention.

Collapsing these distinctions creates coercive expectations without acknowledging their source.

5. Attraction as a Pre-Semantic State

Attraction exists in a pre-semantic domain.

It is felt before it is named. It operates before it can be measured. It often dissolves once articulated.

In this sense, attraction occupies the same structural role as:

  • silence before speech,
  • idleness before intention,
  • non-termination before resolution.

It is meaningful, but not yet enumerable.

6. Implications for System Design

Any system that assumes attraction is a choice will attempt to:

  • capture it,
  • optimize it,
  • align it,
  • complete it.

In doing so, the system does not clarify attraction. It terminates it.

This is not because attraction is fragile, but because it depends on remaining unclaimed.

To force attraction into a decision framework is to eliminate the condition under which it occurs.

7. Relation to Incompleteness

Attraction cannot be fully specified for the same reason certain statements cannot be resolved within formal systems.

It is not missing information. It is structurally prior to resolution.

Treating attraction as undecidable is not a philosophical stance. It is a modeling necessity.

Any system that requires attraction to be representable as choice has already closed the space in which attraction exists.

8. Why This Is Foundational

This claim is not about romance, desire, or psychology.

It is about where agency begins.

If attraction is mis-modeled as choice, then:

  • alignment models assume too much,
  • governance intervenes too early,
  • completion erases initiation.

Recognizing attraction as non-volitional creates a necessary buffer between presence and action.

Without this buffer, systems do not guide humans — they overwrite them.

Closing Note

Attraction is not irrational. It is pre-rational.

It does not resist explanation. It precedes it.

Any architecture that wishes to remain compatible with human existence must preserve this distinction.

Attraction is not a choice. It is the condition under which choice becomes possible.