Public Claim Policy
A fail-safe policy for every statement published under the SIBurst name — in this repository, on any future site, and in any material derived from them.
The policy exists because the subject invites overstatement. A framework about transitions in intelligence is only credible if it is strict about what it does not know.
Claim classes
Every public statement belongs to one of five classes.
| Class | What it is | Standard it must meet | Example form |
|---|---|---|---|
| DEFINITION | Framework-defined terminology. | Consistent with NAME_ARCHITECTURE.md and GLOSSARY.md. True by stipulation inside the framework, and never presented as more. |
"Within SIBurst, burst denotes discontinuity." |
| OBSERVATION | Externally documented factual observation. | Supported by an authoritative public source, cited where it appears. If sourcing is unnecessary to the argument, remove the claim instead. | "[Source] reports that…" |
| INTERPRETATION | Reasoned reading of evidence. | Labelled as a reading; the evidence it rests on is identifiable; alternative readings are not excluded by assertion. | "One way to read this is as an oversight mismatch." |
| SCENARIO | A possible future condition. | Framed as conditional ("if", "could", "one possibility"). No dates, probabilities, or inevitability unless separately sourced. | "If agents begin to…, a threshold could…" |
| METAPHOR | Explanatory conceptual language. | Recognizable as figurative; never used as evidence. | "Phase change", borrowed from physics. |
The separation rule
Public materials must make the class of a claim clear whenever confusion is possible. In particular:
- A definition must not be presented as an observation. ("SIBurst defines X" is not "research shows X".)
- A metaphor must not be used as evidence for an interpretation. (Physical phase transitions do not show that AI capability has thresholds.)
- A scenario must not drift into the indicative mood. ("Could" must not become "will".)
- An interpretation must not be stated as settled fact.
Where a single passage mixes classes, the transitions between them should be visible to the reader.
Prohibited claims
The following are prohibited in all public SIBurst materials:
- Achieved superintelligence without evidence — no statement that superintelligence exists, or that a named system is superintelligent, absent governed, authoritative evidence meeting the OBSERVATION standard.
- Unsupported AGI or SI dates — no predicted dates or time windows for AGI, superintelligence, or any specific transition.
- Unsupported inevitability — no statement that a transition must, necessarily, or certainly occur.
- Unsupported capability numbers — no quantitative capability figures without a cited source.
- Arbitrary scores — no intelligence scores, multipliers, or indices invented for effect.
- Sensational singularity claims — no rhetoric of arrival, runaway, or "the singularity is here".
- Fabricated market statistics — no invented figures about markets, adoption, or industry size.
- Conceptual definitions presented as scientific consensus — the SIBurst framework is a lens, not a consensus position, and must not be described as one.
Interface language (see SITE_ARCHITECTURE.md) such as "TRANSITION DETECTED"
describes states of the interface, not facts about the world. Where that could
be misread, the interface must make the distinction clear.
Review questions
Before anything is published, ask:
- Which class is this claim?
- Does it meet that class's standard?
- Could a reasonable reader mistake it for a stronger class?
- If it were quoted alone, out of context, would it still be accurate?
The rule
If a claim sounds stronger than the evidence behind it, weaken the claim — not the standard.