✶ From Raw Gap to Warranted Diagnosis: Excess Core Irrationality, Responsibility Slack, and Diagnostic Confidence

The Credencing framework distinguishes Objective Evidence (E0), Perceived Evidence (EP), Assigned Credence (CA), and Deep Rationality (SD). Earlier papers used these variables to distinguish evidence-processing failures from belief-integrity failures, and to show why raw gaps between EP and CA should be interpreted through warranted uncertainty. This paper develops the missing diagnostic middle: a protocol for moving from a raw EP-CA mismatch to a warranted judgment of Excess Core Irrationality. The central claim is that a raw Core Irrationality measure, ICraw = d(CA, EP), is only a signal. It becomes diagnostically serious only after epistemic slack, measurement uncertainty, diagnostic confidence, and responsibility conditions have been assessed. The paper formalizes a layered model: warranted epistemic slack determines the credence interval the agent may permissibly occupy; diagnostic uncertainty determines how confident we should be that an excess gap is real; responsibility slack determines how much blame, criticism, or accountability is appropriate when an excess gap remains. These layers prevent two opposite failures: overdiagnosis, in which every mismatch is treated as irrationality or bad faith, and over-excuse, in which pressure, trauma, identity, or uncertainty are allowed to erase genuine misalignment. The result is a threshold-and-responsibility paper for the Credencing research program. Its practical output is a diagnostic protocol for persons, institutions, and AI-mediated inquiry: estimate perceived evidence, locate assigned credence, define warranted slack, calculate excess misalignment, assess diagnostic confidence, apply responsibility filters, and choose repair paths. The paper uses formal definitions, case studies, and analogies from thermometers, speed cameras, courts, medicine, aviation, and bridge inspection to show how Credencing can remain precise without becoming accusatory.