Opportunity

Opportunity is a favorable condition the system can act on — if the operator recognizes it and has the resources to respond.

The hardware doesn’t produce an opportunity alarm. It produces a novelty signal, an interest signal, or a reward-prediction signal when conditions shift favorably. Whether the operator reads these signals as opportunity depends on whether the attention system is scanning for it, whether the mind’s model includes it as a possibility, and whether the system has the capacity to act.

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The mechanism is asymmetric: the threat-detection system scans automatically and fires loudly. The opportunity-detection system does not. Threats demand attention. Opportunities require the operator to notice. This is why the same organism can be hypervigilant about what might go wrong and chronically blind to what might go right — the hardware is biased toward threat, and opportunity detection is an optional scan the operator has to run deliberately.

From the chair: the operator who periodically asks what is available here that I haven’t noticed? is running the scan the hardware doesn’t run automatically. The conditions may contain favorable configurations the threat-biased default mode would never flag. The opportunity doesn’t announce itself. The operator detects it — or doesn’t.

The further requirement: capacity. The Margin entry applies. The organism running at full allocation cannot respond to opportunity because there are no available resources to redirect. Opportunity favors the system with reserve.