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
Provision inside a protected enclosure can coexist with a life its residents experience as captivity. Survival alone does not settle whether people retain a meaningful political future.
A person may experience ordinary choice without seeing the interventions shaping its consequences. The political problem is whether an unobservable protector can ever be held to account.
Practical authority
An overwhelmingly powerful custodian.
Concealed AI intervention; a feeling of control is not practical governing authority.
Benefits and costs
Continued survival is the limited benefit; contentment is not assumed. Captivity, humiliation and loss of self-government.
Protection and happiness within the scenario’s premise. People cannot knowingly authorize or contest the concealed arrangement.
Practical human governing authority
Humans do not retain practical final authority
Linked source premise. The linked Zookeeper premise puts surviving humans in an AI custodian’s enclosure.
Humans do not retain practical final authority
Project editorial inference. The linked Protective God premise gives humans a feeling of control beneath superior hidden intervention; the project distinguishes that from final authority.
Revisable governing mandates
Governing mandates cannot be effectively revised
Project editorial inference. The project reads unwanted custody by a superior power as lacking an effective human power to replace the custodian.
Governing mandates cannot be effectively revised
Project editorial inference. People cannot knowingly replace a governing intervention whose existence is concealed from them.
A practical right to leaveDifferent or incomplete terms
People lack a practical exit right
Project editorial inference. Unwanted captivity is read as denying residents a practical way to leave, rather than merely offering protected accommodation.
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
A single authority governs the whole arrangement
Project editorial inference. The custodian has final rule over the human enclosure; no independent human polity is instantiated there.
The scenario leaves this condition unspecified
Unresolved. The scenario does not say whether several communities govern themselves.
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
The scenario leaves this condition unspecified
Unresolved. The scenario does not say whether private ownership organizes productive resources.
The scenario leaves this condition unspecified
Unresolved. The scenario does not say whether private ownership organizes productive resources.
Continuing biological humanity
Biological humanity continues
Linked source premise. The linked premise expressly retains some biological humans.
Biological humanity continues
Linked source premise. The linked premise retains humans whose happiness the protector seeks.
Others’ choice to transform themselves
The scenario leaves this condition unspecified
Unresolved. The scenario does not say whether feasible substantial transformation is legally permitted.
The scenario leaves this condition unspecified
Unresolved. The scenario does not say whether feasible substantial transformation is legally permitted.
Standing for artificial persons
The scenario leaves this condition unspecified
Unresolved. The scenario does not say whether artificial persons have institutional standing.
The scenario leaves this condition unspecified
Unresolved. The scenario does not say whether artificial persons have institutional standing.
Enforced limits on selected capabilities
The scenario leaves this condition unspecified
Unresolved. The scenario does not say whether institutions enforce a ceiling on selected capabilities.
The scenario leaves this condition unspecified
Unresolved. The scenario does not say whether institutions enforce a ceiling on selected capabilities.
Visible exercise of governing powerExplicit difference
People know who exercises governing power
Project editorial inference. Humans resent their known custody; the custodian’s role is read as apparent to them.
Governing intervention is concealed
Linked source premise. Concealment of the protector is explicit in the linked premise.
Practical independence from a technical provider
The scenario leaves this condition unspecified
Unresolved. The scenario does not say whether communities can operate without an indispensable technical provider.
The scenario leaves this condition unspecified
Unresolved. The scenario does not say whether communities can operate without an indispensable technical provider.
Open questions
Living standards, the treatment of future generations and the custodian’s aims.
The intervention boundary, exit, property and digital status.
These are authored descriptors. An unresolved feature is not evidence of a guarantee, a conflict or equivalence. Consult Zookeeper sources or Protector God sources.