The

Most problems don’t start with bad intent.
They start with something small, going out into the world before it’s fully settled.

An email.
A reply.
A comment.
A decision stated out loud.

At the time, it feels fine. Clear enough. Good enough.
Then later—sometimes minutes later, sometimes days—you see it.

That’s not what I meant.
That’s not how I wanted that to land.

And now it’s already out there.

Anyone who’s lived long enough knows this pattern. It’s universal.
Not because people don’t think clearly, but because thinking and expressing are two different acts.

The mind moves faster than language.
Emotion rides alongside logic.
Context lives in our head but not on the page.

So what leaves us isn’t wrong—it’s just unfinished.

That gap is where most unnecessary conflict, cleanup, and regret comes from.

Not dishonesty.
Not carelessness.
Friction.

We rush because we’re tired.
We rush because we’re busy.
We rush because we’ve already spent too much energy just getting to the point.

So we hit send.

Later, we replay it.

We wonder why it escalated.
Why it was misunderstood.
Why it took more explaining than it should have.

The truth is simple and uncomfortable at the same time:

Most of us already know what we think.
We just don’t always give ourselves one clean moment to make sure it survived the trip out of our head.

That’s all this is about.

Not editing for style.
Not polishing.
Not second-guessing yourself into silence.

Just a pause.

A single check before something becomes permanent.

What do I actually want the other person to understand?
What part of this could be misread?
What’s extra noise that doesn’t help my point?

Those aren’t academic questions.
They’re practical ones.

They don’t weaken your position.
They protect it.

There’s a difference between being careful and being timid.
This isn’t about softening anything.

It’s about precision.

People respect clarity far more than force.
And clarity almost always requires one more look than impulse wants to allow.

Think about how many times you’ve had to explain yourself after the fact.
How many follow-ups.
How many unnecessary back-and-forths.

Most of that could have been avoided by a short pause at the beginning.

Before you send it.
Before you commit.
Before something that mattered became harder than it needed to be.

This isn’t a rule.
It’s a habit.

And like most good habits, it doesn’t announce itself.
It just quietly saves you work later.

Nobody sees the problems that never happened.
But you feel the difference when they don’t.

One last look doesn’t slow life down.
It keeps it from spinning out.

Before you send it—
make sure it’s actually what you mean.

That’s usually enough.

The Faust Baseline has now been upgraded to Codex 2.4 (final free build).

The Faust Baseline Download Page – Intelligent People Assume Nothing

Post Library – Intelligent People Assume Nothing

© 2025 Michael S. Faust Sr.MIAI: Moral Infrastructure for AI
All rights reserved.

Unauthorized commercial use prohibited.

“The Faust Baseline™“