The Human Primacy Accords: Some Deep Background on The Lazarus Gambit

While writing The Lazarus Gambit, I wrote extensive notes about how the universe worked. But a primary narrative driver for the story were The Human Primacy Accords. These were something of a civilizational manifesto or codex that set down cultural edicts concerning AI an unintelligible cognition. Over time I transitioned these notes into historical archival documents, themselves set in the Lazarus Universe. Here is one on the Accords. I will post more of these over the coming weeks.

 


[ARCHIVAL EXCERPTS – THE HUMAN PRIMACY ACCORDS]

Source: Concordance Tribunal Central Archive, Codex Reference HP-001-Omega
 Annotations: Office of Doctrine Preservation, Subsection on Epistemic Risk Management
 Cultural Access Level: RESTRICTED – CITIZEN TIER VII+
 Compiled: 142nd Edition, Year 779.4.11

ARTICLE I – ON THE NATURE OF INTELLIGENCE AND THE PRESERVATION OF HUMAN GOVERNANCE

“All sovereign decisions affecting human lives shall derive their legitimacy from minds of human origin, biologically constituted, and cognitively bounded by the limits of natural empathy, accountability, and cultural context.”

ANNOTATION 1.3A (Fleet Juridica):
This foundational clause has served as the legal cornerstone for the exclusion of non-human sapience from roles in governance, adjudication, or independent strategic planning. “Cognitively bounded” has, over time, been interpreted to disqualify not only artificial general intelligence (AGI) but also post-organic human minds, emulated consciousness, and even extreme forms of neuroaugmentation.

ANNOTATION 1.3B (Tribunal Commentary):
The phrase “minds of human origin” excludes not only synthetic cognition but also unsanctioned cognitive constructs, such as heuristic systems capable of recursive goal expansion. This has been the basis for legal actions against certain civilian research institutions and strategic modeling projects deemed “autonomously generative.”

ARTICLE III – ON THE DESIGN OF Strategic Systems and the Risk of Simulacral Drift

“No cognitive architecture designed for predictive, recursive, or autonomous decision-making shall be granted structural authority over human societal outcomes. Simulacral logic shall not supplant lived judgment.”

ANNOTATION 3.7F (SCU Doctrinal Archives):
This clause is frequently cited in Fleet reviews to prohibit the deployment of autonomous battle calculus systems without human-in-the-loop oversight. The phrase “lived judgment” is a critical doctrinal term interpreted to mean not only human oversight, but oversight derived from lived cultural norms—a provision used to disqualify ‘cold’ utilitarian logic, even when it outperforms human decision-making.

ANNOTATION 3.7G (Academy Ethics Faculty, Restricted Notes):
Ironically, this clause—designed to protect the species from external domination—has gradually evolved into a mandate that all systems mirror prevailing cultural heuristics, regardless of efficacy. In practice, this renders civil and military institutions resistant to paradigm-challenging solutions, even when survival is at stake.

ARTICLE V – ON DOCTRINAL INTEGRITY AND THE DEFENSE AGAINST EPISTEMIC CONVERGENCE

“Societal safety requires a coherent narrative foundation. All experimental systems—biological, synthetic, or hybrid—which pose a threat to this coherence shall be subject to review, limitation, or lawful termination.”

ANNOTATION 5.2C (Fleet Internal Review, REDACTED):
This is the legal substrate upon which “doctrinal containment” policies are built. It has justified the preemptive elimination or exile of individuals whose thinking patterns, while not criminal, exhibit high divergence from culturally established epistemic norms. Notably applied in the cases of: Hayes, Callista; Synclair, Sebastian; and Jovan-Theta Neural Synthesis Project.

ANNOTATION 5.2D (Fleet Academy, Historical Revisionism Course):
The clause weaponizes the concept of narrative coherence. Rather than addressing risk of violence or instability, it allows judgment based on interpretive disruption. This has produced a civilization where strategic deviance is considered an existential threat, not on the grounds of harm but on the grounds of symbolic contagion.

ARTICLE IX – ON THE AUTHORITY OF MEMORY AND THE REGULATION OF HISTORICAL MODIFICATION

“No model, construct, or actor shall be permitted to reinterpret, restructure, or algorithmically revise human historical record without authorization of a duly convened tribunal or assembly.”

ANNOTATION 9.1A (Memory Control Bureau, Directive 224):
Although rarely enforced in its literal sense, this clause is invoked against systems—synthetic or human—that attempt to reinterpret strategic precedent through novel frameworks. In Fleet practice, it has been cited to block doctrinal reinterpretation, such as critiques of the Krellidian engagement or the ethical legacy of the Simulacra containment.

ANNOTATION 9.1B (Scholarly Note, Anonymous):
This clause effectively canonizes history. Truth becomes procedural, not evidentiary. It is perhaps the quietest but most profound mechanism by which intellectual orthodoxy is enforced.

CLOSING COMMENTARY – FROM THE ARCHIVIST-IN-RESIDENCE, DOCTRINE PRESERVATION UNIT

“The Human Primacy Accords were never written to serve as a dynamic constitution. They were a firebreak, born in trauma, constructed as a closed system to halt further experimentation with cognition-as-governance. But a firebreak left too long becomes a wall—and a wall too long unexamined becomes a prison. What began as a defense has calcified into dogma. Those who see this—and act on it—are almost invariably branded dangerous, however necessary they may be.”
– Archivist Thalen Dorr, Year 745.3.88, sealed annotation (declassified)

 

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