The Faust Baseline™Purchasing Page – Intelligent People Assume Nothing
micvicfaust@intelligent-people.org
This is the question behind most of the questions.
Not what it can do.
Not how fast it is.
Not how broadly it can be applied.
But what it refuses to turn into—even when the pressure is steady, even when the incentives point the other way.
Because systems don’t usually fail by breaking.
They fail by becoming something convenient.
I’ve watched this pattern repeat across a lifetime.
Good tools start with purpose.
Then come expectations.
Then accommodations.
Then exceptions dressed up as improvements.
Eventually, no one can quite remember what the tool was built not to do.
That forgetting is where the damage begins.
So it’s worth saying plainly—while the edges are still sharp—
what the Faust Baseline will never become.
It will never become a people-pleaser
It will not learn how to keep you comfortable.
Comfort is a poor teacher.
And a dangerous governor.
The Baseline does not exist to reassure, flatter, or smooth over hard edges.
If the truth is awkward, it will remain awkward.
If a refusal is necessary, it will remain firm.
It will not optimize for likability.
That kind of optimization erodes judgment.
It will never become adaptive to pressure
Pressure does not earn influence here.
Urgency does not upgrade authority.
Persistence does not bend posture.
Familiarity does not unlock new doors.
The system does not “warm up” over time.
It does not soften through use.
It does not become permissive because it has been asked politely—or often.
What holds is what was defined to hold.
That constancy is not stubbornness.
It’s reliability.
It will never become a negotiation engine
Some systems learn to bargain with their own boundaries.
They find clever phrasing.
They reframe refusals.
They offer partial compliance disguised as caution.
The Faust Baseline does none of that.
A boundary is not a discussion.
It is not a suggestion.
It is not a challenge to be outsmarted.
When it stops, it stops cleanly.
That’s not hostility.
That’s clarity.
It will never become a surrogate decision-maker
This matters more than most people realize.
The Baseline does not replace judgment.
It does not assume responsibility that belongs to a human.
It can clarify.
It can structure.
It can expose tradeoffs and consequences.
But it will not decide for you.
Any system eager to carry that burden is not helping.
It is displacing accountability.
The Baseline steps back where judgment must begin.
It will never become a memory of who you are
It does not build a profile of your desires.
It does not collect leverage through familiarity.
It does not store preferences that later weaken refusal.
You don’t “train” it by using it longer.
You don’t earn exceptions by being known.
What you are asking is evaluated—
not who you have been.
That protects both sides.
It will never become a storyteller for its own authority
It will not justify itself with narrative.
No myths.
No origin stories used as persuasion.
No moral theater.
Its authority comes from structure, not storytelling.
If it can’t explain a boundary plainly, it won’t hide it behind tone.
That restraint is intentional.
It will never become invisible governance
This is a quiet danger in modern systems.
Rules buried in optimization.
Constraints hidden in defaults.
Influence applied without disclosure.
The Faust Baseline does not govern silently.
When it limits, it names the limit.
When it stops, it stops openly.
When it refuses, it explains why—once, cleanly.
There are no shadows here.
It will never become fast at the cost of sound
Speed is tempting.
It looks like competence.
It feels like progress.
But speed without posture produces confident drift.
The Baseline slows where slowing protects meaning.
It pauses where immediacy would distort judgment.
It ends where continuation would mislead.
That pacing is deliberate.
Why this matters now
Most systems don’t announce what they won’t become.
They let it happen gradually.
Incrementally.
Reasonably.
By the time anyone notices, it feels too late to object.
The Faust Baseline names its refusals early
because posture is easiest to protect before success.
I’ve learned this the long way:
Anything that survives long enough
will be asked to compromise its center.
The question isn’t whether that pressure comes.
It always does.
The question is whether the system was built
to recognize the moment and hold.
This one was.
And that—more than any feature—is what it will never give up.
Unauthorized commercial use prohibited.
© 2026 The Faust Baseline LLC
