Outcome Severity

How bad being wrong is — the second calibration dimension

MARKO ŽIVKOVIĆ In review

Outcome severity is the second calibration dimension in When the Commitment Boundary Needs Reinforcing: how bad being wrong is for the decision at hand — not how complex the task is, and not how confident the model appears.

Four levels (lowest downstream harm → highest):

Level	Term	Typical harm profile
Negligible	Negligible severity	No meaningful consequence
Minor	Minor severity	Quickly caught, cheaply corrected
Significant	Significant severity	Meaningful, recoverable harm
Catastrophic	Catastrophic severity	Death, serious injury, irreversible ruin, major legal consequences

Severity is plotted against task nature and frequency in the Decision Framework map.

Rule 4: severity is set by the highest downstream use, not the point of generation — output from a negligible task that feeds a catastrophic bind must be evaluated at catastrophic severity.

Rule 2: Catastrophic severity always requires a human at the commitment boundary — no volume or efficiency argument removes that.

Orthogonal to decision reversibility: a bind can be reversible yet catastrophic while wrong, or irreversible yet minor.