Parameter as policy

A numeric setting that resolves a conflict of interest between two parties, chosen once by whoever was nearest the code and thereafter binding on everyone the system touches. Differential privacy’s epsilon is the legible case, because the trade between one person’s exposure and everyone else’s accuracy is written into the mathematics; retention windows, classification thresholds, and decay constants are the same object with the trade left implicit. Distinct from a requested constraint, which is a rule nothing checks, and from an undisclosed exclusion, which is a boundary nobody stated. A parameter is a decision genuinely made and genuinely binding, recorded where no affected person can read it.