coordination token (n.)
/koʊˌɔːrdəˈneɪʃən ˈtoʊkən/ (koh-or-duh-NAY-shun TOH-kən)
: a number, label, or signal that retains authority after its referent is no longer directly verifiable. Unlike a zombie statistic — which survives despite recognized error — a coordination token survives because it has become a Schelling point: something people continue to rely on because others do, whether or not it can still be verified.
A coordination token is a post-verification convention.
It is a convention that has outlived its epistemic grounding.
Comparable to a scoreboard for a game where nobody can actually see the field very well and the board is never updated.
A coordination token persists because mutual expectation substitutes for verification.
Coordination tokens reveal how social systems continue to function even when their empirical scaffolding has eroded.
Examples include:
- the 2°C climate target, which functions as a global coordination anchor even though its precise empirical basis is no longer directly verifiable
- p < 0.05, which persists as a methodological Schelling point even after its original evidentiary grounding has been widely challenged
- Drake equation parameters — the variables (fp, ne, etc.) in Frank Drake’s 1961 formula for estimating communicative alien civilizations — which SETI researchers continue to use despite their conjectural nature and wide uncertainty