The source→what the essay uses it for→what it supports→where it stops
Source 2: Touch affected compliance; differences in robot evaluations were not statistically significant
Used for
In a laboratory study, forty-eight students had a scripted counselling conversation with the small humanoid robot NAO; six gave no clear yes-or-no answer and were excluded from the compliance analysis, and among the forty-two who did, those briefly touched agreed with the robot’s suggestion significantly more often (17 of 21, against 10 of 21 who were not touched) and laughed more, while the touch produced no statistically significant difference in perceived warmth, closeness, overall evaluation or satisfaction.
What it supports
The behavioural effect (compliance among clear responders, 17 of 21 versus 10 of 21). On affect, the study found valence significantly higher during the touched conversation and significantly less negative affect afterwards, while positive affect afterwards was higher but not statistically significant; the essay’s “less negative feeling” tracks the significant post-conversation finding. On the evaluation scales (warmth, closeness, overall evaluation, satisfaction) the differences were not statistically significant. The “63 percent against 37” figure that appeared in earlier drafts corresponds arithmetically to the shares of the 27 clear “yes” answers (17/27 and 10/27); it is a reconstruction of a confusingly reported figure, not a within-group rate and not a percentage basis the authors unambiguously label, and it is not used here.
Where the evidence stops
One laboratory study with one robot and a scripted conversation. The essay’s wider point, that a physical gesture can alter behaviour while the reported evaluations of the machine show no statistically significant change, is a bounded reading of this single pattern; a non-significant result on those scales is not evidence that conscious judgment was untouched, nor that an unconscious mechanism produced the effect.
Correction · C-1 · registered 8 September 2026
Correction (registered 8 September 2026; carried into the 9 September 2026 site release). Two factual points in the touch-study passage were corrected. What was published: “significantly more often (63 percent against 37) … with some rise in positive feeling”. What it now says: the within-group counts, 17 of 21 (touched) against 10 of 21 (not touched), with six unclear responses excluded (N=48), and “less negative feeling”. Why: the 63/37 figure was the split of all “yes” answers across the two groups (17/27 and 10/27), not a within-group compliance rate; and, on affect, the study (Hoffmann & Krämer, 2021) found significantly lower negative affect after the interaction, while the difference in positive affect after the interaction was not statistically significant. The essay’s conclusion was bounded accordingly. See the corrections log.
C-1 in the ledger ↓§ 02 · The ledger
If something here is wrong, it should be correctable in public.
A correction repairs something that was wrong. An update makes a passage more precise or records a development in a live matter; it is dated and disclosed, and it is not logged as an error. Each entry leads back to the evidence it touched.
Registered 8 September 2026
Published 9 September 2026
Essay 06 · What Changes When AI Enters the Room?Source 2 · Touch affected compliance; differences in robot evaluations were not statistically significant
Correction (registered 8 September 2026; carried into the 9 September 2026 site release). Two factual points in the touch-study passage were corrected. What was published: “significantly more often (63 percent against 37) … with some rise in positive feeling”. What it now says: the within-group counts, 17 of 21 (touched) against 10 of 21 (not touched), with six unclear responses excluded (N=48), and “less negative feeling”. Why: the 63/37 figure was the split of all “yes” answers across the two groups (17/27 and 10/27), not a within-group compliance rate; and, on affect, the study (Hoffmann & Krämer, 2021) found significantly lower negative affect after the interaction, while the difference in positive affect after the interaction was not statistically significant. The essay’s conclusion was bounded accordingly. See the corrections log.
Inspect source 2 →Read the essay →Corrections & contact →
Registered 8 September 2026
Published 9 September 2026
Essay 04 · When Does Empathy Become Manipulation?Source 4 · Companion apps and emotionally loaded farewells
Editorial update (registered 8 September 2026; in the 9 September 2026 site release). In “The goodbye test” the essay now cites one reproducible outcome measure from the paper’s Table 3 — about 98 seconds of continued engagement after a fear-of-missing-out farewell versus about 16 seconds after a neutral one — in place of the earlier phrase “as much as fourteen times”. This is a precision about which figure the essay uses, not a finding that the paper is wrong; the paper’s own “up to 14×” headline is recorded in source 4 as an attributed author claim. It is not a correction of a factual error.
Inspect source 4 →Read the essay →
Registered 8 September 2026
Published 9 September 2026
Essay 05 · What Happens When an AI Remembers You?The source note as a whole
Editorial update (registered 8 September 2026; in the 9 September 2026 site release). The data-protection passage in “Whose past is it?” was made legally more precise: it is now anchored to the GDPR accuracy principle and the rights of rectification, completion, erasure and portability (arts 5(1)(d), 16, 17, 20), and notes that an assessment can itself be personal data (CJEU, Nowak, C-434/16). This refines an earlier, narrower characterisation of correction rights; it is editorial precisification, not a correction of a false statement, and not legal advice. See the legal-basis note below.
Inspect essay 05 →Read the essay →
Registered 8 September 2026
Published 9 September 2026
Essay 03 · Who Gave AI Its Idea of Goodness?Source 7 · Anthropic sued; a federal court struck down the measures, and appeals remain live
Update (registered 8 September 2026; in the 9 September 2026 site release). Source 7 now reflects the 27 August 2026 rulings in the Anthropic–US government dispute, read directly from the court’s orders (Dkt. 250 and 251). This is a development in a live matter, not a correction of an earlier error: the essay’s original description was accurate as of its date. The current status carries an early-September reference date and remaining uncertainty about post-ruling appellate movement.
Inspect source 7 →Read the essay →
§ 03 · How an essay is earned
A good question is not yet an essay.
Seven steps run between a question and a published essay, from hypothesis to freeze. The method page sets out each of them, the principles that decide whether the evidence clears the bar, and what the publication does not claim.
Read the method →About & accountability
§ 04 · Kinds of evidence
Different sources answer different questions.
Source notes name the kind of each source rather than ranking it. These are the five classes that recur across the season.
- 01
PEER-REVIEWED RESEARCH
Studies published after review by other researchers in the field.
Carries — The strongest available support for a general claim about how people behave, respond or change.
Limit — Review is not proof. Samples are often small, Western and short-term, and a finding about a laboratory task may not survive contact with ordinary life.
Sources of this kind in Season 01 →
- 02
WORKING PAPERS & PREPRINTS
Research circulated before peer review, including preprints and institutional working papers.
Carries — Early signal on questions moving faster than journals can publish — which is most questions about deployed AI systems.
Limit — Unreviewed. Cited when it is the only evidence that exists, and always marked as such, never as a settled result.
Sources of this kind in Season 01 →
- 03
PROVIDER DOCUMENTATION
Model cards, system cards, policy pages, technical reports and terms published by the companies that build these systems.
Carries — Direct evidence of what a provider says a system does, what it is designed to optimise for, and what the company will commit to in public.
Limit — It is the provider's own account. Useful as a record of stated intent and disclosed behaviour; not independent verification of either.
Sources of this kind in Season 01 →
- 04
LEGAL & GOVERNMENT RECORDS
Legislation, regulatory decisions, court filings, official inquiries and public statistics.
Carries — What has been formally established, required or contested — the facts of the record rather than an interpretation of them.
Limit — Jurisdiction-bound and slow. A rule in one country describes that country, and a filing is a claim until it is decided.
Sources of this kind in Season 01 →
- 05
JOURNALISM
Reporting from publications with named authorship and a correction practice.
Carries — Documented cases, internal material and first-hand accounts that no other source class reaches.
Limit — A reported case shows that something happened, not how often. Single cases are used as evidence of possibility, never of prevalence.
Sources of this kind in Season 01 →
§ 05 · Where the evidence stops
- 01
OBSERVATION IS NOT PROOF
Noticing that people respond socially to a system is an observation. It does not establish that anything is present on the other side.
- 02
A CASE IS NOT A RATE
Documented incidents establish that something can happen. They do not establish how commonly it does.
- 03
THE FIELD MOVES FASTER THAN THE EVIDENCE
Systems are deployed to hundreds of millions of people years before the research on their effects arrives. Where the evidence is thin, the essay says so instead of borrowing confidence from elsewhere.
- 04
SOURCES ARE NAMED, NOT GRADED
Each source is identified by kind so its weight can be judged. Assigning it a score would replace that judgement with a number that only looks like precision.
§ 07 · In development
These formats do not exist yet. They are listed so the direction of the evidence layer is visible, not because something is finished and withheld.
- 01
Not yet published
EVIDENCE ATLASES
A cross-essay view of where the evidence for a recurring claim actually sits, and where it thins out.
- 02
Not yet published
CLAIM TRACES
Following a single claim from the source that supports it to the sentence that uses it.
- 03
Not yet published
REJECTED ROUTES
The essays that did not clear adjudication, and the reason the evidence was not sufficient.