When Does Expertise Go? Pre-registration of a Test of a Dating Principle for Knowledge on Stack Overflow (v1.0)

Abstract

A pre-specification, not a result. This record deposits, before any Stack Overflow data is read for this design, the pre-registration of an observational test of a dating principle for knowledge. The principle holds that understanding of an object's mechanism is a sunk stock lost on the date the mechanism changes, for every holder at once, so a cheap substitute for expertise shows up in holders' exits and renewals at the object's next mechanism change rather than at the shock date. The rivals date the response by the shock (demand), by each holder's own asset (sunk-cost hysteresis), or by a calendar. Setting: Stack Overflow answerers of software-library questions after conversational models arrived (30 November 2022), with library major releases as mechanism changes. Confirmatory hypotheses: renewal at post-shock releases falls net of the flow margin (H1a), more in thin tags (H1b); a dark period exists after releases (H3-0). Placebos: a fake 2020 shock date, non-release question spikes, non-breaking minor releases, calendar-cadence libraries. Prior exposure to Stack Overflow outcomes (earlier deposited exercises and the published literature) is disclosed in full. Included: the registration, the literature-exposure check, the dated-predictions table, the blind theory derivations with reconciliation and priority checks, and the rule-first enumeration of candidate settings. Registry outputs, coder-agreement results and pre-period hashes follow as v1.1 before any post-shock row is read. All derivers, coders and readers are AI agents of one model family. SHA-256 manifest included.