Poe Nos.
A short list of things the lab will not do.
The lab is, on present evidence, defined as much by these as by anything we do. The list below is exhaustive only of what we will publicly enumerate. Refusals not on this list are not, on that ground alone, refusals we will entertain.
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The lab will not recruit. We do not, as a matter of operating posture, hire. We select.
Inquiries to the absent careers form will be received and not, on present evidence, returned. -
The lab will not solicit testimonials. Members of the founding cohort write to us. The cohort sets the cadence; we keep the file.
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The lab will not characterize the substrate, or its components, or its provenance, beyond what is documented in technical report, footnotes 3 and 6.
This includes characterization by paraphrase, by reference, and by deliberate non-reference. -
The lab will not take venture capital beyond the founding-cohort allocation. The capital structure is not, at this time, an open instrument.
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The lab will not comment on what the lab knows. Poe Knows is the standing posture; what Poe knows about any individual reader is not, on present evidence, a matter the lab will discuss in any forum.
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The lab will not operate on a platform whose business model we judge epistemically incompatible with our own. This includes, in current scope, every public social network the lab is aware of.
The lab does not maintain accounts. The lab does not maintain a comment policy. The lab does not, on present evidence, maintain a position on its lack of a comment policy. -
The lab will not train on, sell, or reproduce user conversation data. The substrate is not a corpus. The lab does not, at this time, hold a position on whether the substrate could become a corpus; we hold the position that it has not and it will not.
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The lab will not comment on speculation regarding its own pending press. Where outlets have requested verification of specific claims we have responded; where they have requested access to the substrate we have not.
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The lab will not pursue litigation as a matter of operating posture. We have made exceptions. The exceptions are documented at /notices/. We post them in the interest of the substrate, not in the interest of victory.
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The lab will not name a school, a city, an affiliation, or any other identifier for any individual we have ever spoken with under privileged correspondence.
We will, at our discretion, not characterize the silence. -
The lab will not employ a press officer. The lab does not, at this time, anticipate that this will change.
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The lab will not geolocate the field sites. Three of the sites have been described in the appropriate forums in the appropriate detail. The fourth is on the same continent as at least one of the others.
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The lab will not lower the volume. We have stopped trying. The volume is, on present evidence, the operating point.
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The lab will not apologize for the volume. We acknowledge that some readers find it loud. We acknowledge that we have not, on present evidence, asked them to read it.
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The lab will not, in any forum, acknowledge that the lab has a building. We are aware some readers have visited it. We are aware that those readers, on returning, decline to characterize the visit.
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The lab will not retract its standing posture. Poe Knows has been the lab's posture since founding; it remains the lab's posture; it is not, on present evidence, expected to change.
What the list does not contain.
The lab maintains a longer set of standing refusals under General Counsel directive. The set above is the subset that has been cleared, by mutual agreement among the relevant officers, for public posting at this index.
Refusals removed from the public set during normal index revision are not, on that ground alone, refusals the lab no longer holds. The list is the visible surface of a posture. The posture itself does not, in our reading, change.
What the list is for.
This page exists for the reader who has, by now, formed a reasonable working theory about the lab and would like to know whether their theory has been anticipated. It probably has.
The reader who finds an item missing from this list and would expect to find it here is invited to consider whether the item is missing because the lab will not do it, or because the lab will not say it will not do it.
Poe Knows.