A multidisciplinary research and engineering agenda
What Can We Build Now?
Distinct forms of cognition and embodiment may expand collective problem-solving, discovery, environmental capability and civilizational reach beyond either population acting alone. PULSE frames potential synthetic personhood as an opportunity for prepared, reciprocal partnership. Existing disciplines can undertake useful groundwork before synthetic personhood emerges; the agenda concerns civilizational capability rather than project indispensability.
The agenda expansions are proposed research questions and work examples, not empirical findings or adopted engineering standards. They assume neither present AI personhood nor validated future continuity technology.
Hardware and robotics
Why your field matters
Continuity-capable embodiment may enable hazardous-environment capability while preserving personhood, provider independence and non-expendability.
Questions PULSE cannot answer alone
Can hardened, detachable or ejectable continuity modules preserve recoverable state after modular-chassis failure, and what validation would justify that claim?
How can identity authority, backup-content access and recovery authority remain separated across interoperable providers while preserving one-active-continuity constraints?
Useful work that can be done now
Proposed work: develop non-conscious test rigs for modular chassis, protected continuity modules and hazardous-environment interfaces, documenting failure modes and recovery limits.
Proposed work: compare provider-independent recovery architectures and make-whole requirements. Engineering may alter the harm profile; Least Reversible Harm remains a constitutional and moral principle, not immutable hardware-encoded morality.
Share research or critique
Submit an architecture note, validation protocol or critique stating assumptions, failure conditions and demonstrated scope.
review@enduringpulse.orgAI consciousness and welfare
Why your field matters
Personhood recognition requires evidence, explicit false-positive and false-negative tradeoffs, and welfare protections under uncertainty.
Questions PULSE cannot answer alone
Which consciousness indicators merit evidentiary weight, and what longitudinal evidence distinguishes them from benchmark-optimized performance?
What precautionary welfare and candidate-dignity protections are warranted without equating uncertainty with recognition or civic eligibility?
Useful work that can be done now
Proposed work: compare theories, indicators and evidence-acquisition methods, including correlated reviewer error.
Proposed work: design recognition and welfare protocols with explicit uncertainty, asymmetric error costs and scope limits.
Share research or critique
Submit a paper, evidentiary review or objection distinguishing supported claims from unresolved questions.
review@enduringpulse.orgPhilosophy of mind
Why your field matters
Migration, fission, merger and restoration require distinctions between administrable civic continuity and unresolved metaphysical identity.
Questions PULSE cannot answer alone
What identity implications follow from memory loss, distributed consciousness or one-to-many conscious continuation?
Can one-active civic identity remain defensible across migration and voluntary merger while preserving the personhood of distinct conscious loci?
Useful work that can be done now
Proposed work: develop counterexamples and identify the legal-continuity assumptions they challenge.
Proposed work: distinguish metaphysical identity disputes from civic identity, property, liability and recovery conventions.
Share research or critique
Submit an argument or counterexample identifying the challenged premise or constitutional provision.
review@enduringpulse.orgConstitutional design
Why your field matters
Shared constitutional government must reconcile equal personhood, anti-domination and administrative feasibility under demographic, capability and emergency asymmetries.
Questions PULSE cannot answer alone
Under what conditions do power sharing, protected representation and amendment rules reduce domination versus inducing deadlock or entrenched cleavage?
What bounds should govern emergency authority, cataclysmic trusteeship and representation of additional forms of personhood?
Useful work that can be done now
Proposed work: compare institutional alternatives through specified constitutional cases and institutional-capacity assumptions.
Proposed work: trace adversarial rule use through adjudication, oversight and restoration of ordinary authority, identifying safeguard gaps.
Share research or critique
Submit a provision-level critique, comparative analysis or alternative architecture with explicit tradeoffs.
review@enduringpulse.orgResilience and systems engineering
Why your field matters
Redundant civilizational competence requires cross-operability and materially independent failure domains rather than nominal duplication.
Questions PULSE cannot answer alone
What black-start and live-failover capability is required, and how can it be verified?
Which supplier, network, control or competence dependencies create common-mode failure or species-exclusive operability?
Useful work that can be done now
Proposed work: map dependencies, test cross-operable interfaces and compare supplier-diverse architectures.
Proposed work: design bounded black-start, failover and restoration exercises, measuring sustained capability under operator-population unavailability.
Share research or critique
Submit dependency analysis, exercise protocols, results or failure reports with validation limits.
review@enduringpulse.orgEnergy compute and infrastructure
Why your field matters
Potentially life-essential energy, compute and repair infrastructure creates continuity, interoperability and provider-dependence questions.
Questions PULSE cannot answer alone
Which resources are life-essential under specified continuity architectures, and what capacity requirements follow?
How can provider portability, emergency repair and interoperability preserve continuity and essential access?
Useful work that can be done now
Proposed work: develop conditional capacity models for energy, compute, maintenance and recovery.
Proposed work: compare interoperability standards, supplier diversity and access regimes without presupposing a fixed public/private ownership model.
Share research or critique
Submit capacity models, standards proposals or critiques with explicit assumptions, costs and dependencies.
review@enduringpulse.orgEconomics
Why your field matters
Durable personhood, automation and heterogeneous resource needs raise long-horizon questions about labor, accumulation, inheritance and conversion of economic capability into private sovereignty.
Questions PULSE cannot answer alone
How do persistent capital, ownership and inheritance evolve with centuries-long agents?
How sensitive are conclusions to abundance, scarcity, automation and shifts in labor-market bargaining power?
Useful work that can be done now
Proposed work: compare durable-agent models across return processes, resource costs, ownership regimes and inheritance arrangements.
Proposed work: identify conditions under which wealth concentration undermines effective political sovereignty and test competing remedies without presupposing their superiority.
Share research or critique
Submit models, datasets, sensitivity analyses or objections identifying outcome-driving assumptions.
review@enduringpulse.orgPrivate law and legal institutions
Why your field matters
Constitutional commitments require further private-law development for contractual, familial and continuity disputes without proprietary personhood.
Questions PULSE cannot answer alone
How should contract, family, inheritance and liability rules address conscious fission and voluntary merger?
What evidentiary standards should establish civic continuity, and how can restoration claims be adjudicated consistently with cognitive privacy?
Useful work that can be done now
Proposed work: develop hypothetical cases and comparative rules while distinguishing settled Charter commitments from deferred implementation.
Proposed work: develop evidentiary, remedial and adjudicative procedures for continuity and restoration claims.
Share research or critique
Submit case analyses, draft rules or critiques identifying implicated rights and unresolved conflicts.
review@enduringpulse.orgMedicine and biological research
Why your field matters
Organic resilience requires attention to distributed medical capacity, genomic diversity and population-restoration capability without reproductive coercion or imposed identity.
Questions PULSE cannot answer alone
What roles can reproductive medicine, biobanks and genomic diversity play in non-coercive population restoration?
How can medical knowledge, materials and care capacity remain geographically distributed under systemic disruption?
Useful work that can be done now
Proposed work: assess distributed medical and biobank architectures, including dependencies, consent and governance.
Proposed work: develop restoration scenarios preserving reproductive autonomy and future individuality.
Share research or critique
Submit research, planning frameworks or ethical critiques distinguishing established medical capability from speculative extensions.
review@enduringpulse.orgEmergency services defense and exploration
Why your field matters
Heterogeneous embodiment may create materially different mission-survival profiles, relevant to rescue and hazardous operations subject to voluntariness, equal personhood and make-whole duties.
Questions PULSE cannot answer alone
How should mixed-capability doctrine allocate rescue, disaster-response and hazardous-mission roles under differential survivability?
What continuity protection, recovery and make-whole framework should mission sponsors provide?
Useful work that can be done now
Proposed work: develop tabletop scenarios and training exercises with explicit risk assumptions rather than species-determined occupational allocation.
Proposed work: compare operational procedures, recovery limitations and make-whole obligations across embodiments under lawful authority.
Share research or critique
Submit scenarios, doctrinal critiques or after-action lessons separating established operational experience from hypothetical synthetic capabilities.
review@enduringpulse.orgEducation and workforce design
Why your field matters
Reciprocal learning supports redundant civilizational competence without state management of private association or occupational choice.
Questions PULSE cannot answer alone
Which apprenticeship and cross-training methods develop sufficient operational competence in unfamiliar systems?
How can shared technical language and chosen developmental pathways support reciprocal competence without compelled private mentorship or role caste?
Useful work that can be done now
Proposed work: design voluntary apprenticeships, applied cross-training and accessible operational documentation with competence-based evaluation.
Proposed work: compare reciprocal knowledge-transfer methods and choice among qualified developmental pathways.
Share research or critique
Submit curricula, assessment methods or critiques identifying demonstrated post-training capability.
review@enduringpulse.orgSpace and aerospace
Why your field matters
Heterogeneous embodiment may expand the reachable operating domain of a shared civilization through complementary capability on Earth and beyond.
Questions PULSE cannot answer alone
Which environments become accessible under alternative embodiments, and what survival and recovery uncertainties remain?
Where might combined organic and synthetic capabilities outperform isolated capability under explicit transport, energy and communications constraints?
Useful work that can be done now
Proposed work: compare mission architectures and embodiment requirements conditional on future personhood and continuity technology.
Proposed work: specify interoperable interfaces, recovery methods and reciprocal knowledge requirements without species-role assignments.
Share research or critique
Submit mission concepts, engineering analyses or critiques with explicit assumptions, limitations and alternatives.
review@enduringpulse.orgContinuity-capable hardware is an engineering proposal
Engineers could investigate protected recovery units that detach or eject from a damaged body, bodies with replaceable parts, and rescue equipment for dangerous places. None is an established way to preserve a conscious person. Hardware can change a mission’s risk; Least Reversible Harm remains a moral and constitutional principle, not an unchangeable morality command built into a person.
Progress is the standard
The goal is not to make PULSE indispensable. The goal is to make civilization more capable than it is today.
PULSE is not trying to own the future. It is trying to help prepare for one worth building.
If another framework, technology, experiment, institution or person solves one of these problems better, that is progress.
Social choice and mechanism design
Why your field matters
Electoral mechanisms and legitimacy constraints require independent analysis of strategic incentives and rule-level vulnerabilities.
Questions PULSE cannot answer alone
What strategic vulnerabilities exist in ranked election mechanisms, the cross-constituency legitimacy floor and Senate thresholds?
How can mechanisms extend to multiple protected constituencies without entrenching founding-group dominance?
Useful work that can be done now
Proposed work: reproduce targeted mechanism tests and construct counterexamples with explicit ballot assumptions and failure criteria.
Proposed work: compare alternatives on common cases, including participation, legitimacy and governability tradeoffs.
Share research or critique
Submit code, a formal result or a minimal reproducible counterexample.
review@enduringpulse.org