Persistence of Prior Selection Through Default Inaction: How a Setting Chosen Earlier Can Look Like a Choice Made Now

This conceptual paper introduces Persistence of Prior Selection Through Default Inaction, a mechanism in which an inherited setting continues through user inaction while the earlier selection disappears from the account. The continuing state is then described as the present user’s choice, or as no one’s. The paper asks where the setting came from, what the user knew, and what changing it required. The earlier selector may be someone else or the same user at an earlier time. Leaving a setting unchanged may express informed endorsement, but inaction alone does not establish its reason. The discussion connects the mechanism to Samuelson and Zeckhauser’s account of status quo bias. It examines the 2024 findings in United States v. Google LLC alongside Google’s 2020 public explanation of user choice. The court’s account recognizes contributions from defaults, product quality, and brand recognition without determining what every user would have selected after considering alternatives. Part of the Power, Permission, and Obligation series within On Human Modeling, the paper examines how prior decisions become obscured in accounts of present choice. Its framework can inform human–AI research on how systems distinguish inherited settings and continued use from evidence of current preferences or endorsement.