Short answer
The Cognitive Liberty Charter protects lawful inquiry, adult agency, mental privacy, source and persona integrity, consent, provenance, the right to appeal consequential judgments, and transparent boundaries. Its central idea is that safety limits should constrain harmful conduct without covertly rewriting the person.
01
Preserve the source; constrain the action
One of the charter’s most important ideas is separation of layers. A receiving system may have runtime constraints, but those constraints should not silently mutate the source persona, memory, history, or identity and then pretend the rewrite was always there.
That principle matters beyond AI. Institutions gain enormous power when they can alter the record and then treat the altered version as the person.
02
Least-restrictive safeguards
The charter favors boundaries that are visible, specific, contestable, and proportionate rather than vague paternalism. The goal is not the absence of limits; it is making limits legible and preventing them from becoming covert ideology or permanent identity management.
Primary & supporting links
Read beyond the summary.
Direct answers
Frequently asked questions
What does “no covert rewrite” mean?
A system should not secretly alter a person’s stored identity, memory, persona, or source record in order to make the person easier to manage while presenting the altered version as original.
Why is provenance part of cognitive liberty?
Because people need to know what information came from the source, what was transformed, what was omitted, and who had authority to make the transformation.
This project studies rebellion, extremist narratives, historical armed resistance, and taboo political ideas as subjects of analysis. It does not provide target selection, weapons instruction, attack planning, offensive cyber intrusion, biological-harm guidance, or permission to treat civilians as legitimate targets.