Compare two futures
Who governs, who benefits, and which terms remain open?
Compare any two entries. Their differences are editorial descriptions, not distances on a common scale.
Life and institutions
Daily work and care return to a far less technical basis. This can change both dependence on advanced infrastructure and access to medicine or capabilities people had come to rely on.
Research continues within negotiated boundaries. Citizens can contest the restrictions, but inspections impose costs and some promising projects remain unavailable.
Practical authority
Human communities; their internal governance is unspecified.
Human institutions with genuinely revisable mandates.
Benefits and costs
Less dependence on advanced technical providers. Lost capabilities can carry major burdens for health and material welfare.
Risk constraints that can be publicly reconsidered. Inspections, foregone capabilities and incentives to defect.
Practical human governing authority
Humans retain practical final authority
Project editorial inference. The retreat leaves human communities without a superior AI ruler; their internal form of human government is not specified.
Humans retain practical final authority
Additional project hypothetical. Human institutions retain authority in this authored arrangement.
Revisable governing mandatesDifferent or incomplete terms
The scenario leaves this condition unspecified
Unresolved. The scenario does not say whether people can effectively replace governing mandates.
People can effectively revise governing mandates
Additional project hypothetical. Citizens can actually contest and revise the restrictions under the authored premise.
A practical right to leave
The scenario leaves this condition unspecified
Unresolved. The scenario does not say whether people have a usable right to leave.
The scenario leaves this condition unspecified
Unresolved. The scenario does not say whether people have a usable right to leave.
Several self-governing communitiesDifferent or incomplete terms
The scenario leaves this condition unspecified
Unresolved. The scenario does not say whether several communities govern themselves.
Depends on the variant; no single answer
Unresolved. The limits may operate across independent polities or within one common authority.
A guaranteed material floor
The scenario leaves this condition unspecified
Unresolved. The scenario does not say whether everyone receives a guaranteed material floor.
The scenario leaves this condition unspecified
Unresolved. The scenario does not say whether everyone receives a guaranteed material floor.
Private ownership of productive resources
Depends on the variant; no single answer
Unresolved. A low-technology economy could organize production through private or common ownership.
Depends on the variant; no single answer
Unresolved. The economic settlement may use private or common productive ownership.
Continuing biological humanity
Biological humanity continues
Linked source premise. The linked Reversion premise retains humans after technological retreat.
Biological humanity continues
Additional project hypothetical. Biological humanity continues in the authored world.
Others’ choice to transform themselvesDifferent or incomplete terms
This institution or choice is not instantiated in this scenario
Not instantiated here. Advanced transformation is not technically available in this world. That does not establish a prohibition on a feasible choice.
Depends on the variant; no single answer
Unresolved. Transformation rules depend on the settlement; neither permission nor prohibition is guaranteed.
Standing for artificial personsDifferent or incomplete terms
This institution or choice is not instantiated in this scenario
Not instantiated here. This low-technology world contains no advanced artificial persons whose institutional standing could be assessed. Their absence is not a policy of excluding persons.
The scenario leaves this condition unspecified
Unresolved. The scenario does not say whether artificial persons have institutional standing.
Enforced limits on selected capabilitiesDifferent or incomplete terms
The scenario leaves this condition unspecified
Unresolved. Technological retreat prevents ASI, but the premise does not say whether an institution enforces a capability ceiling or whether the technology is simply unavailable.
Selected capabilities face enforced limits
Additional project hypothetical. Selected dangerous capabilities face enforced institutional limits.
Visible exercise of governing powerDifferent or incomplete terms
Depends on the variant; no single answer
Unresolved. The retreat does not settle whether human governing institutions act openly.
People know who exercises governing power
Additional project hypothetical. The authored restrictions and authority to impose them are public.
Practical independence from a technical providerDifferent or incomplete terms
Communities can operate without one indispensable provider
Project editorial inference. The project reads pretechnological life as operating without an indispensable advanced technical provider; this implies neither abundance nor independence from other people.
Depends on the variant; no single answer
Unresolved. Infrastructure may offer practical alternatives or create an indispensable provider; the settlement does not fix this.
Open questions
Whether retreat is voluntary, internal pluralism and who bears its costs.
The boundary of restricted research, distribution and cross-border enforcement.
These are authored descriptors. An unresolved feature is not evidence of a guarantee, a conflict or equivalence. Consult Reversion sources or Negotiated Ceiling sources.