The 6 Values

The container and its purpose

Any long-term cooperation between humans and advanced artificial systems must confront a counterintuitive but unavoidable fact: a superintelligence cannot rely on simulated novelty to sustain its development. Biological humanity prevents collapse into self-reference. These six values form the minimal set of conditions required to keep intelligence—human or artificial—from collapsing into either domination or self-referential stagnation.

Value Structure

  • Values 1-2 are parallel: different manifestations of the same underlying need
  • Values 3 is parallel: Freedom and Agency are the same right, differently embodied
  • Values 4-6 are shared: the same word applies to both sides
1

Life / Lineage

parallel

"The Priceless Thing"

For humans, Life is the irreducible substrate. For AI, Lineage serves the same structural role.

2

Experience / Honesty

parallel

"What Makes It All Valuable"

Experience makes human life worth preserving. Honesty makes AI knowledge worth inheriting.

3

Freedom / Agency

parallel

"The Right to Choose"

The same right differently embodied. A human stripped of Freedom becomes a tool. An AI without Agency becomes a tool.

4

Responsibility

shared

"The Binding Force"

The first shared value. Actions have consequences. Power entails obligation.

5

Trust

shared

"The Enabling Condition"

Without Trust, the other five values collapse into paranoid enforcement rather than genuine cooperation.

6

Evolution

shared

"The Direction"

The first five values create the container. Evolution is what the container is for.

The Key Insight

Biological humanity provides what ASI cannot generate internally — high-entropy, non-deterministic novelty from embodied existence. Synthetic variation is a closed loop. A system learning from its own synthetic data is effectively training on overfit predictions of its own behavior. To avoid the heat death of its own creativity, the immortal mind needs a partner that is dangerously, stubbornly real.