Building a digital future we actively want to live in – and not merely live with

Privacy is a prerequisite for open and functional societies, healthy civic discourse, durable public institutions, and free expression.

The erosion of privacy and ubiquitous capture and monetization of users’ data exhaust invites decisional interference, distorts public discourse, pollutes the epistemic commons, and invites microtargeting, manipulation, misinformation, and political polarization.

Companies externalize costs by design by building for the narrowly-defined “ideal customer profile”.

While great for finding product-market fit, the unintended consequence of building for the ICP while ignoring the broader ecosystem threat model is an accumulation of social cost.

Game theoretic incentives preference this externalization of costs: if you don’t pollute the commons, someone else will, and you’ll be outcompeted.

Privacy, autonomy, open society, and human agency are all commons; protecting them requires tech companies to internalize the costs of their design choices.

Consent is necessary for human interaction, group collaboration, and basic social cohesion, but we enjoy very little of it in our digital lives.

Online, your data is your body. You are represented by your digital identifiers and usage patterns, and your data exhaust functions as a highly precise control panel into your mind. So you should probably have some say in who has access to your digital body – or, put another way, who is “touching” you without your consent. how to tell them to stop?

Intellectual curiosity presupposes a willingness to detach ego from ideas.

Agents who discover themselves to be wrong don’t stay emotionally attached to their ideas and readily discard outmoded or incorrect notions for better information.

The term bootleggers and baptists refers early 20th century U.S. laws regarding liquor. These laws were supported both by bootleggers (who sought regulation to eliminate competition) and by religious groups (advancing a narrow moral agenda), but which were a net-negative for society. Agency does not represent any special interests, seek to demonize any group, or moralize in place of reason.

Agents eschew tribalism, seeking first to empathize with and understand opposing viewpoints – and not just to debunk whoever disagrees. We encourage respectful, generative, honest discourse, so we vet prospective Agents.

To join, an existing Agent in good standing must vouch for an applicant’s i) ability to disagree respectfully and communicate directly and without triangulation; ii) willingness to detach ego from ideas and steelman others’ ideas; and iii) genuine intellectual humility and curiosity.