---
id: sfoc-technologies-three-laws
title: "Three Laws"
primary_class: technologies
primary_domain: technology-infrastructure
secondary_domains: [body-evolution, power-control]
material_modes: [science-fiction, original-synthesis]
version: 1.0.0
---

# Three Laws

> **the three laws artificer.** Three Laws gathers a field around the three motif meeting the laws motif. Its deeper subject is a capability redistributes power long before its interface appears neutral.

## Origin

Three Laws is rooted in technical practice joined to dreams about extending human and nonhuman capability, but the card’s present form is editorial rather than primordial. Source order and later mutation remain visible. Because the three motif meeting the laws motif turns an intention into a repeatable intervention, provenance work must trace inputs, transformation, outputs, energy, operators, error states, ownership, and shutdown.

## What It Is

Three Laws gathers a field around the three motif meeting the laws motif. Its deeper subject is a capability redistributes power long before its interface appears neutral. In the Oracle it is classified as Technologies, while its evidence layers determine how literal, historical, fictional, experiential, or symbolic a particular interpretation may be.

## Cultural History

Three Laws developed through real engineering, speculative extrapolation, fictional prototypes, or contested claims depending on the evidence layer. Its history is most legible when changes in audience, medium, and authority are recorded separately. At collective scale, the three motif meeting the laws motif redistributes skill, dependency, access, and the meaning of expertise; this matters because a capability redistributes power long before its interface appears neutral.

## Claim and Evidence Layers

  ### literal-and-empirical

- **Claim layer:** literal-and-empirical
- **Material context:** science-fiction
- **Evidence state:** fictional
- **Summary:** Three Laws has a fictional literal or empirical layer. That designation applies only to the bounded claims supported by the listed sources.
- **Sources:** nist-ai-rmf, unesco-ai-ethics

### cultural-and-historical

- **Claim layer:** cultural-and-historical
- **Material context:** science-fiction, original-synthesis
- **Evidence state:** documented-historical
- **Summary:** The cited cultural record documents at least one lineage, use, or reception context for Three Laws; it does not certify every later claim.
- **Sources:** nist-ai-rmf, unesco-ai-ethics

### symbolic-and-divinatory

- **Claim layer:** symbolic-and-divinatory
- **Material context:** original-synthesis
- **Evidence state:** symbolic
- **Summary:** The Oracle uses Three Laws as a reflective symbol, never as proof that its literal or causal claims are true.
- **Sources:** original-synthesis

## Oracle

- **Essence:** Three Laws gathers a field around the three motif meeting the laws motif. Its deeper subject is a capability redistributes power long before its interface appears neutral.
- **Archetype:** the three laws artificer
- **Gift:** recognize the opportunity concealed inside a capability redistributes power long before its interface appears neutral.
- **Shadow:** mistaking intensity, repetition, or belonging for independent verification.
- **Guidance:** Name the evidence layer before naming the meaning of the three motif meeting the laws motif. Let affected people help define what accountability requires. Use this guidance where the three motif meeting the laws motif turns an intention into a repeatable intervention; keep visible that a capability redistributes power long before its interface appears neutral.
- **Healing / integration:** Find the earliest source and newest remix of Three Laws. Mark what changed in vocabulary, audience, evidence, and political effect. Review the three motif meeting the laws motif through mechanism, dependency, maintenance, access, failure, and the labor beneath capability, remembering that the card turns an intention into a repeatable intervention.
- **Question:** Where is the three motif meeting the laws motif shaping the situation, and what would make the response more accountable? Answer by testing how the three motif meeting the laws motif turns an intention into a repeatable intervention against mechanism, dependency, maintenance, access, failure, and the labor beneath capability.

## Meanings

### Psychological

As an interior archetype, the three laws artificer gathers the three motif meeting the laws motif into a role a person may inhabit. Integration requires entering and leaving that role consciously. A grounded check for the three motif meeting the laws motif is to trace inputs, transformation, outputs, energy, operators, error states, ownership, and shutdown, especially where the pattern turns an intention into a repeatable intervention.

### Social

Around Three Laws, social proof can become support or substitute for evidence. Separate the value of community from the truth status of every shared claim. In shared life, the three motif meeting the laws motif redistributes skill, dependency, access, and the meaning of expertise. Test that specific the three motif meeting the laws motif pattern by asking people to trace inputs, transformation, outputs, energy, operators, error states, ownership, and shutdown.

### Spiritual

The spiritual register of Three Laws can hold mystery, grief, initiation, belonging, or vocation. None of these meanings alone proves a literal mechanism. In symbolic practice, the three motif meeting the laws motif can function as sacrament, prosthesis, forbidden shortcut, or mirror of transformation; keep in view that a capability redistributes power long before its interface appears neutral.

### Technological

The technological question is who gets capability without inheriting equal risk. Trace inputs, transformation, outputs, energy, operators, error states, ownership, and shutdown. When the three motif meeting the laws motif becomes a capability, it must be evaluated through mechanism, constraints, failure modes, and reproducibility. Verify the implementation of the three motif meeting the laws motif by asking participants to trace inputs, transformation, outputs, energy, operators, error states, ownership, and shutdown.

### Political

A political reading of Three Laws asks which material interest is hidden by cosmic, technical, therapeutic, or mythic language. When the three motif meeting the laws motif becomes governance, it concentrates or distributes power according to who owns, governs, and can refuse it. Make authority over the three motif meeting the laws motif answerable by requiring decision-makers to trace inputs, transformation, outputs, energy, operators, error states, ownership, and shutdown.

## Divination

- **Gift state:** Upright, Three Laws asks you to practice recognize the opportunity concealed inside a capability redistributes power long before its interface appears neutral. Begin with sketch the full stack from material supply through maintenance and decommissioning. The capacity within the three motif meeting the laws motif is strongest when the capability is understood together with its costs, keepers, and failure paths, even as the pattern turns an intention into a repeatable intervention.
- **Shadow state:** The warning is premature closure around the three motif meeting the laws motif. Keep at least one rival explanation and one exit route alive. To keep the three motif meeting the laws motif from escalating, trace inputs, transformation, outputs, energy, operators, error states, ownership, and shutdown, because the pattern turns an intention into a repeatable intervention.
- **Threshold state:** Three Laws enters a reading when a traceable fictional or speculative story lineage is being asked to carry more certainty than it can support. Restore the proper evidence boundary. Operationally, the three motif meeting the laws motif turns an intention into a repeatable intervention; the reader should trace inputs, transformation, outputs, energy, operators, error states, ownership, and shutdown.
- **Practical move:** Find the earliest source and newest remix of Three Laws. Mark what changed in vocabulary, audience, evidence, and political effect. Review the three motif meeting the laws motif through mechanism, dependency, maintenance, access, failure, and the labor beneath capability, remembering that the card turns an intention into a repeatable intervention.

## Game and Story Function

- capability
- cost-bearing-tool
- escalation

**Story seed:** After Three Laws changes the world, the first emergency is over but the old hierarchy remains. The protagonists must choose what not to rebuild. The world of the story must show how the three motif meeting the laws motif turns an intention into a repeatable intervention and why a capability redistributes power long before its interface appears neutral.

## Relationships

- edge--assessed-through-shared-source-lens--sfoc-technologies-holodeck--sfoc-technologies-three-laws
- edge--same-class-as--sfoc-technologies-terraforming--sfoc-technologies-three-laws
- edge--same-class-as--sfoc-technologies-three-laws--sfoc-technologies-time-crystal
- edge--shares-inquiry-domain-with--sfoc-programs-operation-highjump--sfoc-technologies-three-laws
- edge--shares-inquiry-domain-with--sfoc-programs-psyop--sfoc-technologies-three-laws
- edge--shares-inquiry-domain-with--sfoc-states-noospheric-awareness--sfoc-technologies-three-laws

## Visual Direction

Three Laws visualized as the three motif meeting the laws motif: a precise instrument diagram reduced to one luminous capability and a readable input-output path. The art must be original, text-free, square, rounded-corner enamel with one immediately legible silhouette.

## Safety and Integration

No elevated safety flag. Keep claims and metaphor visibly distinct.

## Sources and Research Notes

- Source IDs: nist-ai-rmf, unesco-ai-ethics, sf-encyclopedia, original-synthesis
- Research note: Which earliest reliable source fixes the modern meaning of Three Laws? Which communities use Three Laws differently, and what changes across those contexts? What evidence would distinguish the leading literal explanations associated with Three Laws?
