Negotiated Ceiling
A project-authored scenario
Human societies limit selected dangerous capabilities through revisable institutions while retaining useful technology.
Life under this arrangement
Research continues within negotiated boundaries. Citizens can contest the restrictions, but inspections impose costs and some promising projects remain unavailable.
- Practical authority
- Human institutions with genuinely revisable mandates.
- Benefits and ownership
- Useful technologies remain; ownership and universal provision are not fixed.
- Human and digital status
- Biological humanity continues. Limits may constrain some transformations.
- Technical premises
- Enforcement and revision both remain workable; the scenario does not require ASI.
- Attractions
- Risk constraints that can be publicly reconsidered.
- Costs and objections
- Inspections, foregone capabilities and incentives to defect.
- Not specified
- The boundary of restricted research, distribution and cross-border enforcement.
All authored features used in comparison
These are editorial descriptors, independent of the historical map. Unspecified and variant-dependent properties remain unresolved when matching preferences.
- Practical human governing authority
- Present
Humans retain practical final authority
Additional project hypothetical. Human institutions retain authority in this authored arrangement.
- Revisable governing mandates
- Present
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
- Unspecified
The scenario leaves this condition unspecified
Unresolved. The scenario does not say whether people have a usable right to leave.
- Several self-governing communities
- Variant-dependent
Depends on the variant; no single answer
Unresolved. The limits may operate across independent polities or within one common authority.
- A guaranteed material floor
- Unspecified
The scenario leaves this condition unspecified
Unresolved. The scenario does not say whether everyone receives a guaranteed material floor.
- Private ownership of productive resources
- Variant-dependent
Depends on the variant; no single answer
Unresolved. The economic settlement may use private or common productive ownership.
- Continuing biological humanity
- Present
Biological humanity continues
Additional project hypothetical. Biological humanity continues in the authored world.
- Others’ choice to transform themselves
- Variant-dependent
Depends on the variant; no single answer
Unresolved. Transformation rules depend on the settlement; neither permission nor prohibition is guaranteed.
- Standing for artificial persons
- Unspecified
The scenario leaves this condition unspecified
Unresolved. The scenario does not say whether artificial persons have institutional standing.
- Enforced limits on selected capabilities
- Present
Selected capabilities face enforced limits
Additional project hypothetical. Selected dangerous capabilities face enforced institutional limits.
- Visible exercise of governing power
- Present
People know who exercises governing power
Additional project hypothetical. The authored restrictions and authority to impose them are public.
- Practical independence from a technical provider
- Variant-dependent
Depends on the variant; no single answer
Unresolved. Infrastructure may offer practical alternatives or create an indispensable provider; the settlement does not fix this.
Compare the institutional difference
Origin and source status
Project-authored hypothetical. These institutional arrangements are declared premises, not observed developments or claims of original invention.
- IR Worldview Inventory: authored scenario premises · Negotiated Ceiling; catalogue futures-catalogue-0.3
Project-authored hypothetical · Checked 2026-09-11
IR Worldview Inventory · AI-assisted editorial draft · futures-catalogue-0.3. Attribution does not imply endorsement. No current-development or community-attribution claim is inferred from this entry.