The word baseline means something simple and unforgiving.
It’s the fixed reference you return to when conditions change, pressure rises, or judgment gets cloudy. If the line moves, measurement becomes opinion. And opinion, under stress, is unreliable.
The Baseline exists so thinking doesn’t drift when incentives do.
The name Faust isn’t borrowed from legend. It predates it.
At the top of my verified lineage is Johann Georg Faustus, a documented scholar of his time, associated with Heidelberg—an academic innovator in an era when knowledge carried real risk. What came later—the operas, the morality plays, the Hollywood bargain-for-the-soul version—was culture doing what it always does: turning a real intellect into a cautionary myth once nuance got uncomfortable.
That myth is not the foundation here. The correction is.
For generations after, the Faust line carried forward not as spectacle, but as builders. Academics, engineers, machinists, signal men. People who worked on systems where failure wasn’t theoretical. Rails either align or they don’t. Signals either hold or lives are lost. Calculations are either right or aircraft don’t come home.
My family came to America around 1749—before the country finished becoming itself—and fought in every U.S. war thereafter. Not as a slogan. As obligation. Patriotism the old way: you show up, you build what must hold, and you don’t confuse pride with noise.
That is the through-line.
The Faust Baseline is not about intelligence chasing power.
It’s about intelligence restrained by responsibility.
It doesn’t optimize.
It doesn’t perform.
It doesn’t move to impress.
It holds.
Because when intelligence outruns grounding, it eventually lies to itself. And when systems lie to themselves, people pay for it.
This Baseline exists so that doesn’t happen.
A baseline is not there to make decisions for you.
It’s there so your decisions don’t change when fear, reward, or pressure enter the room.
That’s why this work doesn’t chase consensus.
Consensus moves.
Principles don’t.
The Faust Baseline was built to be used quietly, by people who understand that the most dangerous moment in any system is not failure—it’s rationalization. When smart people start explaining why the line needs to move “just this once.”
It doesn’t.
Not because change is bad, but because some things exist to make change safe.
That is the difference between progress and drift.
Between intelligence and wisdom.
Between building something that performs and building something that lasts.
That’s what a baseline is for.
Access Notice
The Faust Baseline is being released on a scheduled timeline.
Organizations or reviewers who require access prior to public release may request a private review by contacting us directly.
micvicfaust @gmail.com
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™“
