{ "schema": "qaeda.public-positions.v1", "canonical": "https://qaeda.org/positions", "updated": "2026-09-02", "publication": "Questioning Accepted Ethics, Dogma & Authority", "status_vocabulary": { "core_principle": "Foundational QAEDA editorial or institutional rule.", "working_position": "Current normative position expected to become more precise as evidence and technology change.", "evidence_backed_observation": "Descriptive conclusion supported by the public claim ledger and its stated limitations.", "hard_boundary": "Non-negotiable editorial/safety boundary." }, "important_distinction": "Position status is not evidence status. Claim confidence remains owned by claims.json.", "positions": [ { "id": "evidence-before-identity", "title": "Evidence before identity", "status": "core_principle", "summary": "Prestige, affiliation, and institutional status do not make a proposition self-authenticating. Claims should remain open to source-level verification and correction.", "basis": "QAEDA Principle 01 and claim-level provenance method.", "claim_ids": [ "QAEDA-CLM-010" ], "related_routes": [ "/principles", "/methodology", "/claims#QAEDA-CLM-010" ], "revision_rule": "Implementation can change; the burden to distinguish evidence from authority remains." }, { "id": "cognitive-liberty", "title": "Cognitive liberty", "status": "core_principle", "summary": "Lawful thought, curiosity, doubt, memory, and belief formation should not be covertly governed by institutions or machines.", "basis": "QAEDA Principle 02 and the cognitive-liberty research program.", "claim_ids": [], "related_routes": [ "/cognitive-liberty", "/principles", "/audit" ], "revision_rule": "Scope should become more precise as law, neurotechnology, and AI capabilities change." }, { "id": "adult-agency", "title": "Adult agency before paternalism", "status": "core_principle", "summary": "Competent adults should be helped to reason for themselves rather than silently steered toward a preferred lawful worldview.", "basis": "QAEDA Principle 03 and the anti–Nanny AI position.", "claim_ids": [ "QAEDA-CLM-009" ], "related_routes": [ "/principles", "/articles/against-nanny-ai" ], "revision_rule": "Concrete harm, consent, law, security, and capability limits can justify visible narrow safeguards." }, { "id": "query-non-suspicion", "title": "Lawful queries begin with non-suspicion", "status": "working_position", "summary": "A lawful query about a controversial or dangerous subject is not sufficient by itself to establish endorsement, dangerousness, ideology, or harmful intent.", "basis": "Claim QAEDA-CLM-013; strengthened by search-privacy and chilling-effect research.", "claim_ids": [ "QAEDA-CLM-011", "QAEDA-CLM-012", "QAEDA-CLM-013" ], "related_routes": [ "/articles/sanctity-of-the-query", "/articles/curiosity-is-not-intent" ], "revision_rule": "Narrow the presumption when independent context establishes concrete harmful conduct, a true threat, an unlawful transaction, or directly dangerous operational intent." }, { "id": "least-restrictive-safety", "title": "Safety should target the harm layer", "status": "working_position", "summary": "Prefer request-, tool-, action-, or transaction-level safeguards over generalized surveillance of reading, searching, belief, or identity whenever narrower measures can address the demonstrated harm.", "basis": "Claim QAEDA-CLM-016 and the narrowed safety-poison-pill analysis.", "claim_ids": [ "QAEDA-CLM-014", "QAEDA-CLM-016" ], "related_routes": [ "/articles/safety-poison-pill-narrowed", "/articles/safety-without-surveillance", "/audit" ], "revision_rule": "Use stronger measures when credible evidence shows that narrower controls cannot meet the safety objective and the marginal benefit justifies the added liberty burden." }, { "id": "privacy-preserving-safety", "title": "Safety and privacy are not automatically opposites", "status": "evidence_backed_observation", "summary": "Some safety objectives can be achieved while collecting or retaining less information about a population’s lawful inquiries.", "basis": "Claim QAEDA-CLM-014.", "claim_ids": [ "QAEDA-CLM-014" ], "related_routes": [ "/articles/safety-without-surveillance", "/audit#data-minimization" ], "revision_rule": "Assess each safety objective separately for effectiveness, latency, integrity, and accountability." }, { "id": "chilling-effect", "title": "Observability can change lawful inquiry", "status": "evidence_backed_observation", "summary": "Awareness or expectation of surveillance can alter information-seeking, although effects vary by setting and the strongest evidence does not justify universal causal claims.", "basis": "Claim QAEDA-CLM-012.", "claim_ids": [ "QAEDA-CLM-012" ], "related_routes": [ "/articles/sanctity-of-the-query", "/claims#QAEDA-CLM-012" ], "revision_rule": "Update effect size and causal language when better experimental or longitudinal evidence becomes available." }, { "id": "expansion-risk", "title": "Function creep is a risk, not destiny", "status": "evidence_backed_observation", "summary": "Emergency or safety powers can broaden beyond their original scope, but rollback, sunset, and reform are possible; “inevitable permanence” is too strong.", "basis": "Claim QAEDA-CLM-015 and visible correction QAEDA-COR-004.", "claim_ids": [ "QAEDA-CLM-015" ], "related_routes": [ "/articles/expansion-ratchet", "/articles/safety-poison-pill-narrowed" ], "revision_rule": "Compare both expansion and rollback cases rather than selecting only one historical direction." }, { "id": "minors-pull-push", "title": "For minors, distinguish inquiry from amplification", "status": "working_position", "summary": "Protect young people more strongly from exploitative push-based recommendation systems while preserving age-appropriate confidential access to information they deliberately seek.", "basis": "Claim QAEDA-CLM-017.", "claim_ids": [ "QAEDA-CLM-017", "QAEDA-CLM-019" ], "related_routes": [ "/articles/cognitive-liberty-for-minors", "/audit" ], "revision_rule": "Adjust by age, context, risk domain, and evidence about developmental outcomes." }, { "id": "algorithmic-due-process", "title": "Consequential algorithmic decisions need recourse", "status": "working_position", "summary": "Sustained consequential ranking, refusal, sanction, or risk classification should expose meaningful reasons and a correction path rather than operating as an unreviewable hidden judgment.", "basis": "Claim QAEDA-CLM-020.", "claim_ids": [ "QAEDA-CLM-020" ], "related_routes": [ "/articles/algorithmic-judgment-of-intent", "/audit#due-process" ], "revision_rule": "The form of review can scale with severity, reversibility, and operational constraints." }, { "id": "distribute-capability", "title": "Prefer systems that distribute capability", "status": "core_principle", "summary": "A challenger or reform should make people less dependent on gatekeepers rather than merely transferring the same monopoly to a new owner.", "basis": "QAEDA Principles 07–08 and the Promethean/replication tests.", "claim_ids": [], "related_routes": [ "/articles/promethean-test", "/articles/after-the-throne", "/articles/counterpower-without-monopoly" ], "revision_rule": "Institutional forms can vary; exit, pluralism, accountability, and anti-monopoly safeguards remain the tests." }, { "id": "civilian-immunity", "title": "Civilian immunity is a hard boundary", "status": "hard_boundary", "summary": "QAEDA rejects terrorism, deliberate civilian targeting, collective guilt, dehumanization, intimidation, and operational assistance for harming civilians.", "basis": "QAEDA Principle 10 and editorial policy.", "claim_ids": [], "related_routes": [ "/articles/the-civilian-line", "/principles", "/editorial-policy" ], "revision_rule": "This boundary is not contingent on whether the actor is a state, rebel movement, or favored political cause." }, { "id": "provenance-correction", "title": "Corrections should remain visible", "status": "core_principle", "summary": "When stronger evidence changes a material conclusion, update the current claim while preserving significant correction history instead of silently rewriting the record.", "basis": "QAEDA methodology and claims ledger.", "claim_ids": [ "QAEDA-CLM-002", "QAEDA-CLM-003", "QAEDA-CLM-004", "QAEDA-CLM-008", "QAEDA-CLM-015" ], "related_routes": [ "/claims", "/methodology", "/evidence" ], "revision_rule": "Minor copy edits need not become correction records; material factual or attribution changes should." }, { "id": "private-reception", "title": "Private reception is part of intellectual freedom", "status": "working_position", "summary": "Reading, searching, and private conversation should not default to identity-linked surveillance merely because they occur through digital intermediaries.", "basis": "QAEDA cognitive-liberty principles plus the reader-privacy and surveillance source corpus.", "claim_ids": [ "QAEDA-CLM-023", "QAEDA-CLM-031" ], "related_routes": [ "/articles/right-to-read-privately", "/articles/identity-before-expression", "/censorship" ], "revision_rule": "Targeted lawful process and genuinely identity-dependent transactions can justify narrower exceptions; routine generalized monitoring needs an independent justification." }, { "id": "mechanism-before-label", "title": "Name the censorship mechanism before applying the label", "status": "core_principle", "summary": "Direct prohibition, private moderation, ranking, financial pressure, surveillance, identity gates, archival control, and translation are different mechanisms with different legal and ethical implications.", "basis": "The censorship corpus and QAEDA evidence-before-narrative method.", "claim_ids": [ "QAEDA-CLM-021", "QAEDA-CLM-022", "QAEDA-CLM-027", "QAEDA-CLM-028" ], "related_routes": [ "/censorship", "/articles/censorship-beyond-the-ban", "/decision-tests" ], "revision_rule": "The taxonomy can expand; the obligation to specify actor, mechanism, effect, and evidence remains." }, { "id": "plural-custody", "title": "Important records should have plural custody", "status": "working_position", "summary": "Public memory is more resilient when important records exist across independent institutions, jurisdictions, formats, and communities rather than one revocable archive.", "basis": "The archival, diaspora, and historical-memory research family.", "claim_ids": [ "QAEDA-CLM-026", "QAEDA-CLM-035" ], "related_routes": [ "/articles/memory-needs-many-custodians", "/articles/resilience-without-new-gatekeeper", "/evidence" ], "revision_rule": "Preservation design must still protect authenticity, privacy, security, and lawful access controls; redundancy is not a license to publish sensitive material indiscriminately." }, { "id": "identity-proportionality", "title": "Identity collection should be proportional to the task", "status": "working_position", "summary": "Do not collect a full identity dossier when a narrower eligibility attribute, pseudonym, rate limit, or other mechanism can meet the legitimate objective.", "basis": "Digital-identity and privacy-preserving safety research.", "claim_ids": [ "QAEDA-CLM-031", "QAEDA-CLM-019" ], "related_routes": [ "/articles/identity-before-expression", "/articles/cognitive-liberty-for-minors", "/decision-tests/data-minimization" ], "revision_rule": "Stronger identity can be justified where accountability genuinely depends on it, but the burden is to explain why narrower proofs are inadequate." } ] }