Method
How this map is built
A short account of what is measured, how the position is calculated, and what this cannot tell you.
01What is measured
Twelve statements decide the position, six on each axis. Two axes, scored independently so that a strong view on one never moves your position on the other.
- The standing axis (horizontal)
- Whose interests win when a human interest and a system interest genuinely conflict. Mutual standing −100 · Human priority +100
- The decision axis (vertical)
- Whether the people running a system are entitled to the final decision, or whether its agreement has to be obtained. Negotiated −100 · Decided +100
02The premise, and why it is asked about directly
Most of the authority statements assume that a system can decline, object or ask — that there is a second party whose agreement could be required. Some people reject that assumption: on their view a system that stops is producing unhelpful output, not refusing. That is a coherent position and it is not a spoiled answer, because if a system cannot decline then the operator decides, which is one end of the authority axis.
What it does threaten is the meaning of the authority items for those respondents, so the survey asks about the premise directly rather than hoping.
68.8% of respondents agreed that a system which stops is making a meaningful choice; 31.200000000000003% did not. Any analysis that needs the premise to hold should treat those respondents as a separate group.
03What the frame cannot say
A two-by-two grid about authority assumes the decision belongs to one of two parties: the people running the system, or the system. Many people hold neither view, and think the question belongs to law, to a regulator, or to nobody in particular. One statement tests for that directly, so the position is visible as a finding rather than lost as noise.
04How a position is reached
- Every statement is answered on the same balanced five-point scale: strongly disagree, disagree, neither, agree, strongly agree.
- Each answer becomes a value from −2 to +2 and is oriented to its axis, so that a statement phrased one way and a statement phrased the opposite way both point at the same end.
- Your score on an axis is the total divided by the strongest position you could have taken across the statements you answered, then shown as −100 to +100.
- Your quadrant follows the signs of the two scores.
Two details worth knowing. Statements are presented in a different order for everyone, and the order each person saw is recorded with their response so that it can be checked. And the statements on each axis are mixed in their direction, which means that agreeing with everything lands at the centre rather than at an extreme — the honest result when a set of answers carries no position.
Some statements have been reworded slightly for clarity. None has changed which end of an axis agreement points to, so positions remain comparable.
05What is stored
- Your answers
- Every statement, as answered.
- The written answer and label, if you gave them
- These appear publicly on the results page once they have been read.
- The optional profile answers, if you gave them
- Used for analysis only, and never shown next to your answer.
- The order the statements were shown in, and the time taken
- Used to check the quality of the response.
- A timestamp, and which map this response belongs to
- So that a response can be attributed to the survey it answered.
Not stored: IP addresses, user agents, cookies, accounts or email addresses. There is no analytics script on any page. A rate limiter holds an IP in memory for fifteen minutes to stop automated submissions, and that value is never written to disk.
One thing is kept in your browser. A random marker is saved in this browser's local storage, and it does two jobs. It lets the survey tell you that you have already answered rather than silently counting a second response, and it is stored with your answers as the key that connects responses you give to different Compass maps. It identifies a browser profile, not a person: it carries no fingerprint, it is not a cookie, and it is not sent anywhere except with your answer. Private browsing, a cleared cache, a second browser and a second device all break it, and it is never used to claim that two sets of answers came from one person.
Written answers are moderated automatically and published immediately: language that would make the page unreadable is masked before it appears, and the untouched original is kept out of public view so a masking decision can be checked. Nothing is reviewed by a person before it goes up — anything you would not want quoted, do not write.
06What this can and cannot tell you
- It is a self-selected sample. This map opened publicly on 18 September 2026 through a post on X and a thread on Reddit. People arrive here because a link reached them, and the results describe the people who answered, not any wider population.
- The standing axis is expected to be flatter than the decision axis. The audience for the first map is overwhelmingly on the person side of its nature question, and a population that already grants standing is likely to cluster on one end of this axis. A flat axis here is a fact about who answered, not about the world.
- The authority items carry a premise. Some respondents reject it, which is measured above rather than hidden.
- Taking another map first can prime this one. Somebody who has just spent four minutes deciding whether these systems are persons answers the standing questions differently from somebody who has not. The anonymous marker makes that measurable, because it identifies which respondents took another map first.
- One person can still answer more than once. The browser marker stops the ordinary case and is deliberately weak.
- Not a validated psychological instrument. It is a structured study designed to be defensible and transparent, not a clinical or academic scale with published norms.
Questions about the method, or a correction to it, are welcome. This page is the claim; if any part of it is wrong, it should be fixed.