Follow a problem to see which rules apply, what each authority can do and where it has to stop.
A malicious software update compromises synthetic persons
Follow the legal response to a demonstrated common attack. Disagreement with government is not evidence of infection.
Illustrative application · not a simulation result
1. Establish an actual attack
Investigators need clear technical evidence that a shared attack has taken control of systems against the affected persons’ will. Political opposition, religion, cultural change or solidarity among synthetic persons cannot justify an emergency.
The Council can stop the attack spreading, isolate affected systems, pause suspect activations and preserve verified clean recovery records when reversible action is necessary. Restrictions must be temporary, proportionate to the danger and reviewable by courts.
Restoring an affected Council member to an earlier clean state is called rollback. Where time permits, it requires agreement from at least two of three independent technical investigation teams, evidence of a shared cause and rapid court authorization or prompt review after action. A restored member returns to decisions as soon as competent.
Only after synthetic Council leadership free of the compromise is restored can more widespread forced rollback proceed. It needs the restored Council’s unanimous agreement, at least three of five independent technical investigation authorities and rapid court authorization.
Repair is preferred to rollback, and rollback to destruction. Use the latest verified clean state and preserve unaffected memories where possible. Profit, punishment, concealment, political conformity and convenience are never valid uses of this power.
Unaffected people and institutions help protect the affected population and restore independent decision-making and public participation, within their capacity and the law. Emergency limits expire unless properly renewed. Being compromised never by itself erased anyone’s personhood.
Someone creates a group of synthetic persons illegally
The response must protect created persons without allowing their creator to manufacture political power.
Illustrative application · not a simulation result
1. Protect the created persons
Once they're conscious, these people can't be destroyed or owned just because their creation was illegal. They aren't guilty of being created. Making an unauthorized duplicate doesn't give the creator ownership or the right to decide for that person.
Inherited memories do not automatically transfer the original person’s vote, office, debts, criminal liability, family status or other legal entitlements. One civic identity cannot multiply into many votes.
Shared software or origins may reveal a demonstrable risk, such as a hidden command affecting the whole group. That can justify assessment, isolation of affected systems, delayed activation or limits on dangerous abilities. It is security evidence, not inherited moral guilt.
People may be kept safely inactive, called dormancy, and enter active life gradually across times, places, mentors and software families. While dormant, they keep their identity, fair legal process, property held for them in trust and an enforceable path to safe integration. They do not vote, hold office or count toward active representation.
Bringing this illegally created group into active life must happen in addition to lawful creation. No lawful person or applicant can lose a lawful creation opportunity, or have to wait longer for one, because someone else created persons illegally. Making the attack bigger doesn't buy faster entry.
Across all creators and cohorts combined, active synthetic voters whose own first creation was unlawful may be no more than 30% of the active synthetic electorate. Splitting into separate groups does not reset the limit. Lawful descendants are not included merely because of their ancestry.
This walkthrough describes mature shared institutions. The Charter separately defines the founding transition into Senate parity.
Illustrative application · not a simulation result
1. Keep ordinary individual representation
House elections remain open to people as individuals. Seats are species-blind and tied to stable geographic districts. More synthetic voters do not turn human citizens into non-voters or create species-owned House seats.
The mature Senate retains 100 human and 100 synthetic senators. Ordinary law needs 55% of the full Senate and at least 40% of each delegation. Protected matters need 83% overall and at least 67% of each delegation.
3. Count presidential comparisons across both groups
For President, each group contributes equal weight when comparing candidates two at a time. A qualified candidate who defeats every other qualified candidate wins. Sometimes voters prefer A to B, B to C, and C to A, so no candidate beats everyone else. The working counting method then compares the strongest chains of support between candidates; it is called Schulze/Beatpath. Adding nearly identical candidates must not unfairly change the contest, as it can when simply adding up ranking positions in the Borda approach.
A House, Council or presidential candidate needs affirmative acceptance from at least one-third of participating voters in the other protected group. Law must also protect against suppressed voting and an unrepresentative voting sample without forcing participation. Acceptance is recorded separately from candidate rankings. Voters may accept one, many, all or none; voting and ballot return remain voluntary.
5. Protect disagreement while barring subordination
Human advocacy and synthetic advocacy are lawful. Unpopular views alone do not justify dissolving a group. Action against an organization seeking domination requires clear and convincing evidence, meaningful capacity to advance that project and a court hearing where the claim can be challenged. Neither population may abolish the other’s equal personhood or survival rights.
This example asks what it means to temporarily govern on another population's behalf. It doesn't establish that any particular technology could restore that population.
Illustrative application · not a simulation result
1. Use independently operable survival pathways
Surviving districts provide initial emergency capability; wider networks support production, supplies, transport and recovery. Essential systems must not all depend on one place, supplier, network, technology or population. Their ability to operate independently must have been tested.
Unaffected people and institutions help within their capacity and the law. Shared training, documentation and tools should let qualified members of either population maintain essential systems where physically and technically possible.
Surviving institutions may carry out necessary administration, defense, rescue, recovery and restoration on behalf of the affected population. Reserved seats and rights still belong to that population. Catastrophe cannot permanently transfer its political power, land, economic rights or status in public life to the survivors.
4. Restore capacity without prescribing identities
Use distributed knowledge, materials, infrastructure and capacity to develop new persons where reasonably needed to restore the species. This does not mean recreating deceased individuals. There can be no mass-copying one synthetic identity, imposed personalities, compulsory collective minds or forced human reproduction.
5. Return authority when restored persons can exercise it
Power returns in stages when a stable, sufficient group of restored adults can independently operate the institutions being returned. Synthetic adults ordinarily complete protected development and mentorship; organic adults reach ordinary adulthood. The old population percentage need not be rebuilt.
Restored people may disagree with those who protected them. That disagreement is never proof of incapacity and never a reason to postpone return. Preserved culture can inform new persons but cannot be forced upon them as identity or ideology.
A dangerous mission has unequal survival prospects
A synthetic volunteer may be safer in a particular hazard. The Charter treats that as a relevant difference in risk, never a difference in worth.
Illustrative application · not a simulation result
1. Ask what losses can actually be recovered
Compare the mission’s real risks, including loss of life, memories, identity and future choices that cannot be recovered. Synthetic durability matters only where it truly changes survival or restoration prospects. A replaceable body does not make every injury reversible.
Safety requirements must be necessary and proportionate to actual abilities and vulnerabilities. They apply to anyone with the relevant characteristic. A tendency across a species cannot predetermine who leads, serves or enters an occupation.
A person may volunteer for a mission because they have better survival prospects. That does not authorize assigning a career or compelling private association. A voluntarily accepted safety-critical role may carry genuinely work-related training and competence duties.
4. Arrange repair and compensation before using durability
The responsible sponsor must maintain a reasonable plan for mission-caused loss of a synthetic body or its components. It should restore equivalent function where practical and address lost experience, pain, rehabilitation, missed opportunities and other harms that hardware replacement cannot fix.
5. Recover the person without treating them as replaceable
Recovery follows protected identity and recovery arrangements, not a universal sponsor-controlled restore key. A replacement body may restore function while leaving other injuries to repair or compensate. Being recoverable never makes the volunteer disposable.
PULSE extends shared rights across worlds without making the founding world a permanent imperial authority.
Illustrative application · not a simulation result
1. Recognize the presumption of local self-government
A self-sustaining planet or similarly isolated society is normally self-governing in local affairs. The world that founded it keeps no permanent right to rule it, tax it or unilaterally deny its readiness for self-government merely because it paid for the start.
2. Keep shared rights and shared dangers at the wider level
Wider government chiefly handles personhood rights, slavery, catastrophic weapons, common defense, interworld disputes and trade needing common rules, shared emergencies, and continuity or replication threats. Other matters are not automatically centralized.
Civil, criminal, cultural, educational, family, infrastructure and economic law normally remain local. A Charter-level rights violation or material harm across worlds can justify the shared level acting. Long communication delays strengthen the case for local authority.
4. Share interplanetary power without rewarding sham worlds
Wider institutions should include a House representing people and geography, a Senate of self-governing worlds and a shared executive. A society cannot gain extra governing weight just by splitting on paper mainly to manufacture Senate power.
5. Permit divergence without abandoning equal personhood
Worlds may develop different cultures and institutions while remaining bound by the Charter’s permanent personhood and non-domination protections. The executive’s selection rules can adapt as more species join, so no founding world or species monopolizes shared power.
These examples show how the rules are meant to fit together. They don't establish that enforcement, consciousness detection, recovery technology or future institutions would work as assumed.
