Most people don’t realize when the line gets crossed.
They think they’re getting help.
What they’ve actually done is hand something off.
That difference matters more now than it ever has.
Help keeps the human in the loop.
Delegation quietly removes them.
And the moment that happens, judgment starts leaking out of the system.
At home, this shows up in small, ordinary places.
Reading an email.
Looking at a tax form.
Helping a child with homework.
Researching a medical question.
Asking AI to “take a look.”
None of those feel dangerous.
Until they are.
Help looks like this:
The tool explains.
It clarifies language.
It points out structure.
It surfaces questions you didn’t know to ask.
You are still the one deciding what matters.
Delegation looks different.
The tool decides what’s important.
It summarizes without showing what it removed.
It gives conclusions instead of context.
It moves you straight to action.
That feels efficient.
It is not the same thing as safe.
The problem isn’t AI.
The problem is where the decision boundary sits.
When you ask for help, the boundary stays with you.
When you delegate, the boundary moves — often without you noticing.
That’s how people end up:
- trusting emails they should have questioned
- following medical advice meant to be general, not personal
- accepting “official-looking” requests that bypass safeguards
- letting homework answers replace understanding
Nothing broke.
No alarm went off.
The system just… slid.
This is exactly the gap Home Guardian is designed to close.
The Faust Baseline does not try to make tools smarter.
It makes decision ownership explicit.
It enforces a simple rule:
AI may clarify.
AI may explain.
AI may summarize.
AI may not decide, judge, or act in place of a human.
That single constraint changes everything.
When reading a suspicious email, Home Guardian doesn’t ask,
“Is this real?”
It asks,
“What is being requested, and what would happen if I complied?”
When looking at a medical ad, it doesn’t ask,
“Does this work?”
It asks,
“Is this information, or instruction pretending to be information?”
When helping with homework, it doesn’t ask,
“What’s the answer?”
It asks,
“What is the problem asking, and what method applies?”
That is help.
Delegation skips those steps because they feel slow.
But those steps are where understanding lives.
Speed feels good right up until it creates cleanup.
At home, the cost of wrong delegation isn’t abstract.
It’s money lost.
Time wasted.
Anxiety created.
Trust shaken.
And the worst part is that delegation often looks responsible.
You used a tool.
You asked for assistance.
You didn’t guess.
But the Baseline isn’t concerned with appearances.
It’s concerned with who carried the judgment.
Home Guardian exists to keep that weight where it belongs.
Not because people can’t think.
But because modern systems are very good at convincing people they don’t need to.
Help strengthens judgment.
Delegation replaces it.
The Faust Baseline draws that line — and refuses to cross it.
That’s not a productivity choice.
It’s a protection choice.
And in a world where tools can move faster than understanding,
that difference is the whole point.
The Faust Baseline™Purchasing Page – Intelligent People Assume Nothing
micvicfaust@intelligent-people.org
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