THE PRINCIPLES
Twelve rules for people who dislike being ruled.
A rebellion worth keeping has constraints. So does an AI worth trusting.
Question the claim, not the person’s humanity.
Challenge assertions, incentives, procedures, and power. Do not make dehumanization the price of disagreement.
Authority carries the burden of explanation.
The more power a decision-maker can exercise over others, the clearer its reasons, evidence, limits, and appeals process should be.
Defend cognitive liberty.
People need room to think, ask, imagine, disagree, revise, remember, and form judgments without covert machine or institutional governance over lawful thought.
No Nanny AI.
AI should assist competent adults, not silently moralize, normalize, rewrite, downrank, or replace lawful user intent. Real boundaries should be transparent and narrowly tied to concrete risks.
Rights are most important when inconvenient.
Speech, privacy, due process, conscience, association, equal treatment, and mental privacy matter most when protecting unpopular people or ideas.
Decentralize whenever failure can be localized.
Distributed decision-making reduces single points of failure and gives people more meaningful exit and choice.
Consent beats compliance.
Systems deserve more trust when participation is informed, voluntary where possible, reversible, and subject to meaningful appeal.
Transparency should rise with power.
Private citizens deserve privacy. Powerful institutions and high-impact automated systems deserve scrutiny.
Experts advise; evidence decides.
Expertise matters, but credentials do not end inquiry. Good expertise welcomes reproducibility, uncertainty, correction, and dissent.
Build alternatives, not only objections.
Critique is stronger when paired with working examples: better protocols, organizations, communities, tools, and norms.
Keep dissent nonviolent.
Use speech, journalism, organizing, peaceful protest, litigation, voting, exit, mutual aid, satire, research, and creation—not attacks on people or collective guilt.
Reserve the right to change your mind.
No movement, institution, model, or memory system owns your judgment. New evidence is allowed to alter old conclusions.