The rungs

Every rung is a state of people, not of models: who, how many, whether it can be undone, and who holds the switch. The level reads on these; the amber rung is where it stands now. The rungs are the owner's, in SCALE.md, and a first draft he means to add to. The band table that would turn an entry's numbers into a rung →

1. +10everyone. High quality of life, work by choice, exploring space, researching exotic things with AI in leisure time; the winter retired because we are no longer only here. Not absorbing: it has to be held, and the level can fall from it.mate
2. +9nearly everyone. Nearly everyone; the frontier opening — an off-planet presence begun; no route live that could end it.decisive for AItopia
3. +8most of humanity. Most of humanity: abundance held, unowned, durable across a decade; people's time on what fascinates them.
4. +7a great power on abundance. Most of a great power or bloc on abundance held; the benefit not withdrawable by anyone; routes retiring.
5. +6decisive begins. Work uncoupled from need for a substantial minority of humanity; abundance administered by nobody in particular; the first routes retired.
6. +5large and widespread. Hundreds of millions living better on the measures (hours, access, health); the floor rising; unowned.clearly better for AItopia
7. +4large. Work required to live falling measurably in a large economy, the freed time going where people chose; hunger falling with AI a cause.
8. +3clearly better. Essentials cheaper in hours of work for a whole population; a disease retired; access widening across countries.
9. +2somewhat better. Benefits outnumber losses; a treatment in service, an essential measurably cheaper for many, held by no one.slightly better for AItopia
10. +1slightly better. Quiet adoption at scale that widened what everyone can do and asked nothing of them: branch prediction, autofocus, an hour freed for millions, nobody's boot.
11. 0equal. Benefits and losses balance, or neither yet exists at a scale anyone can measure. Most of history.equal
12. −1slightly worse. Displacement that left people worse off (the factory floor where nobody was absorbed); harms small and reversible.slightly better for AImageddon
13. −2somewhat worse. Losses outnumber benefits in the record, both ordinary; ownership concentrating; harms with recourse.
14. −3clearly worse. Who can afford or reach essentials measurably narrowing; hundreds of thousands displaced without recovery; the capability concentrated in hands that can withdraw it.clearly better for AImageddon
15. −4severe and bounded. Millions worse off in one domain — work gone and no floor, fraud or exclusion at population scale, targeting by model — documented, with recourse thin.
16. −5severe and widespread. Tens of millions displaced and worse off with no floor under them; or algorithmic control of movement and speech in a whole country; or autonomous weapons killing at scale in more than one theatre.
17. −6breakdown at the scale of a great power. A large population under hunger, war or control decided by machines; killing decisions automated in ordinary use; surveillance without recourse across a major state.decisive for AImageddon
18. −7collapse. Order failing across whole regions with AI a cause: famine, mass displacement, rebellion; hundreds of millions worse off; recovery generational.
19. −8the cage, most of humanity. Most of humanity caged, with an outside that still exists; or a route that fired and stopped short of winter — a regional exchange, a pandemic contained late — with death at civilisation scale.
20. −9the cage, complete. Stable, AI-administered control over essentially all of humanity; alive, possibly fed; no exit, no recourse; the switch in one hand. Irreversible in practice.
21. −10the winter. No afterwards for humanity: nuclear winter, an engineered pathogen that ends civilisation, autonomous systems that displace us. A route fired and corroborated. Never observed; measured as distance.mate

The band table

Draft, 2026-09-06 (PLAN.md §14, "The scoring system, described"), moved here the same evening on the owner's word that the band table should be a link, and revised the same night on his "go for it" after the quick score's four findings (PLAN.md §14): the bottom reach band split, an imperceptible row added, reach dated by the count not the tech. His to strike, like the rungs. It turns an entry's two numbers into a rung and nobody picks: people becomes a reach band (share of world population at the count's own date, log decades), the effect with reversible and switch becomes a severity row — a labelled judgment, recorded as a ruling on the entry so it can be struck — and the table gives the rung. Loss is an OR (the worst standing loss sets the world's loss side), benefit an AND approximated as the best standing benefit; the level is the signed sum, clipped to ±10; a fired route is −10 regardless. impacts.py score computes from these lines; build.py draws them on scale.html.

Checks against the rung wording: −3 "hundreds of thousands displaced without recovery" = S2·R2; −4 "millions … targeting by model" = S2·R3; −5 "tens of millions" or "a million detained" = S2·R4 or S3·R3; −6 "a large population under control decided by machines" = S2·R5; −8 "death at civilisation scale" = S3·R5; +2 "an essential cheaper for many" = S1·R5 or S2·R2; +3 "essentials cheaper for a whole population" = S2·R5.

Caps and rules: switch = owner caps a benefit at +4 (the rungs above say unowned); the ceiling from live routes (RULES.md §6) caps it further; −10 only by a fired route. For agency entries people counts those the system made a decision about; for the others, those who bore the effect. people must count people or households; a proxy count (accounts, cards, devices, subscriptions, vehicles, policies) bands with its proxy noted; a count of anything else (miles, letters, reads, megawatts) does not band at all. An entry stands from the later of its from date and its count's date — a 2007 count says nothing about 1965 — until a remedy ends it or the owner strikes it.

The rule, - level | rule, says which arithmetic the bar reads. worst + best is the OR and the AND above: one standing loss sets the loss side, one standing benefit the benefit side, and the rest are the bench. sum is everything standing added up, clipped to the scale. weighted is every standing rung weighed by the share of the planet it reached (the mean per person-exposure, rounded half away from zero): a thing that touches four billion people outweighs a thing that touches a million, one country is not the world, and the regions are read beside it so a country's cage stays visible on its own line. Drafted 2026-09-06 on the owner's "we should have a calculation of all this the entire sum": both are computed and shown on calculation.html; this line says which one is the level. His to strike.

Reach — people as a share of world population at the entry's date

Severity — from the effect, reversibility and who holds the switch

The rung — severity row by reach column

The rule — level = weighted (the calculation)