Evaluate a rule without turning unknown evidence into false

An absent confirmation is not necessarily evidence that a condition is false. Before combining incomplete information, define how unknown should behave. This manual exercise uses expressly chosen three-state rules and invented facts in an ordinary document. It does not describe a Kiguri approval engine or decide what someone is authorized to do.

Define the three states and the chosen operators

Use true for an established condition, false for an established failure of that condition, and unknown when the fictional evidence does not settle it. Give each input one state. Keep the reason for an unknown alongside the value; a missing record and a checked negative are different observations.

For this exercise, AND is false if either input is false, true if both are true, and unknown otherwise. OR is true if either input is true, false if both are false, and unknown otherwise. NOT exchanges true and false but leaves unknown unchanged. These are stipulated rules, not a claim that every policy or software system adopts them.

Trace a condition that needs both confirmations

The fictional packet question is whether both its source and review are confirmed. Set source-confirmed to true and review-confirmed to unknown. Under the chosen AND rule, the combined result is unknown. Confirming the source alone cannot supply the missing review information.

Now use a separate fixture with source-confirmed false and review-confirmed unknown. The combined result is false because the required source condition is known not to hold. Review remains unknown. Do not rewrite that result as the review failed; the compound condition can fail without every input being false.

Trace a condition that needs at least one route

Ask a different fictional question: is route A or route B confirmed usable? With route A true and route B unknown, the chosen OR result is true. That establishes at least one confirmed route within the model, not that both routes were checked.

With route A false and route B unknown, the result is unknown. One checked failure does not establish that no route works. Apply NOT to that unknown result and it remains unknown. A worksheet that turns no known route into a confirmed absence silently changes the stated interpretation.

Record what would resolve the remaining unknown

Keep a claim ledger with the expression, input states, supporting fictional observations, calculated result, and next missing observation. For the packet, the next question concerns review confirmation. Rechecking the already confirmed source cannot settle that input. For the route example, information about route B can distinguish a true result from a false one.

Do not change unknown to a convenient default merely to complete the ledger. If contradictory information prevents choosing an input state, record the conflict for a separate evidence review. The three-state calculation assumes its inputs have the stated meaning; it does not resolve their provenance for you.

Keep the result separate from action authority

Ask another reader to reconstruct true AND unknown, false AND unknown, and true OR unknown. They should identify which results remain unsettled and why. Preserve the declared operator contract so a reader does not unconsciously apply a different one.

An action policy may require holding work whenever a prerequisite is unresolved, but that is a separate agreement. A logical true is not publication authorization, and unknown is not an automatic rejection. Finish with reproducible results and explicit missing evidence rather than a confident decision manufactured from incomplete information.