The Method
A GOOD QUESTION IS NOT YET AN ESSAY.
From question to publication
- 01
Hypothesis
A precise question with a definable edge.
- 02
Territory
The domain in which the question can be answered.
- 03
Evidence class
What kinds of evidence would be sufficient.
- 04
Challenge
Rejection routes named before the essay is written.
- 05
Adjudication
Whether the evidence actually clears the bar.
- 06
Draft
Writing begins only after adjudication.
- 07
Freeze
Approved essays are protected from casual rewriting.
Evidence discipline
What the writing is allowed to say it knows.
Every source an essay relies on carries two statements: what it supports, and where the evidence stops. The second is not a disclaimer. It marks the point past which the argument may not lean on that source, and it is published beside the claim so a reader can check the one against the other.
- 01 OBSERVATION, INTERPRETATION, EVIDENCE
- An observation is what can be seen happening. An interpretation is what the writing argues it means. Evidence is what would have to hold for the interpretation to stand. The three are kept distinct, and the essay says which one it is using.
- 02 REFLEXIVITY IS OBSERVATION, NEVER PROOF
- That people respond socially to these systems — including the people writing about them — is an observation about people. It is never treated as proof of anything on the machine's side.
Principles
- 01 EVIDENCE BEFORE ARCHITECTURE
- A compelling question does not earn an essay until its necessary evidence can exist.
- 02 REJECTED ROUTES REMAIN VISIBLE
- A failed idea is not hidden. It becomes part of the intellectual record.
- 03 FROZEN MEANS FROZEN
- Once an essay is approved, its claims and boundaries are protected from casual rewriting.
- 04 HUMAN CONSEQUENCE OVER MACHINE CLAIM
- The project does not need to prove that a machine feels. It examines what humans feel, choose and change.
AI assistance and review
Human-directed, AI-assisted.
Known Artificial uses AI tools in research, drafting and production. Editorial judgment, source selection and publication decisions remain human.
AI may support the work — research, drafting, verification, design, code and production — and that assistance is real and not hidden. What it does not do is take authorship. AI is not credited as a writer or researcher, does not decide what is true, what is fair or what gets published, and cannot carry responsibility for a claim, so it is given none.
Olivia Bloom is a disclosed editorial review persona used within an AI-assisted review process. She is not a person, an author or a member of staff, and she does not determine what Known Artificial concludes. She is also distinct from Olivia, the fictional figure in Exhibit 01 and Olivia · Evenings.
Responsibility
Every question, argument, conclusion and published sentence is decided by a person. Final editorial responsibility for everything published here, including anything AI contributed to along the way, rests with Known Artificial.
See the method applied
Essay 05 — Memory
The same seven steps, as they actually ran for What Happens When an AI Remembers You?
Show the worked example
- 02
Territory
The human effect of machine memory: whether a system's picture of a person can move as the person does, and what follows when it does not.
- 03
Evidence class
Five sources, kept in distinct classes: peer-reviewed journal articles on human memory and on companion-app loss; peer-reviewed conference proceedings analysing the #Keep4o protest; provider product documentation (self-report) for ChatGPT and Claude memory; and a working paper on the Replika episode. Company statements are used for chronology only, never as evidence of user experience.
- 04
Challenge
Two territories were deliberately narrowed out and left to their own essays: influence-with-incentives, which belongs to Essay 04, and embodied loss, which belongs to Essay 06. Essay 05's continuity exhibits are software-side only.
- 05
Adjudication
The evidence cleared the bar for the argument about selection, second-narration and the three kinds of continuity. It did not clear the bar for the long-run claim: no one has yet lived a decade beside a machine that remembers them, so that claim is marked in the essay as a reasoned projection rather than a finding.
- 07
Freeze
The manuscript was frozen on completion, with its five source markers mapped to the five entries in the public source note. Later changes have been limited to recorded corrections and spoken-rhythm passes, each logged against the frozen record.
The work begins where certainty ends. It does not use uncertainty as permission to claim anything.