Bridge: The Attribution Gap and Capability Loss

Where Human Intelligence Debt and the Attribution Gap converge on a shared failure pattern — offered as an observation, not a proof.

This bridges two independently developed lines of work: the Human Intelligence Debt series — an account of why automatable human work persists, rooted in the scarcity of governance decision capacity — and the Attribution Gap theory — an account of why firms destroy the capabilities they most depend on, rooted in the divergence between contribution and credit. The two were not built to meet. This note records where they do, keeps each theory’s formal machinery in its own house, and is deliberately modest about what the meeting proves. The convergence is offered as something worth attention — a coincidence between two roads — not as evidence for either theory. The case for that restraint is the last section, and it is the point of the note.