Future of Being Human an Arizona State University initiative

The five community values

Last updated 2026-08-13 · build 20260814T0314Z-83bb462d · Markdown version · corpus index

Ask what holds a community together and institutions typically point to a mission statement; the Future of Being Human initiative points to five values it wrote for the purpose: obsessive curiosity, radical creativity, respectful inclusivity, grounded exuberance, and catalytic serendipity. Published with definitional clauses on the initiative’s site from its 2022 launch (Andrew Maynard, 2026), embedded verbatim as classroom norms, invoked as canon in the credits of the initiative’s own 2026 browser game, and each carrying antecedents in Andrew Maynard’s published books from years before the initiative existed (founded 2022; Andrew is Founding Director, Sean Leahy Executive Director since 2025), the five are less a statement about the community than a specification of it — a designed value system, placed where behavior actually happens, and documented in use. Andrew Maynard wrote the five — and, on his own account, as a conduit as much as an author: they emerged from years of formation, learning, and vision, a set that both captured that formation and gave the initiative a clear and audacious foundation (Andrew Maynard, 2026). The canonical corpus statement of the five sits in Philosophy; the five read as an artifact worth examining in its own right: the working answer to what kind of people, gathered how, can usefully explore what it means to be human in an age of transformative AI and other transformative technologies.

The argument

Many communities that gather around emerging technology inherit their values — from a discipline, an institution, a template. The Future of Being Human initiative wrote its own: five named values, each with a definitional clause, published on the initiative’s Guiding Principles page and introduced with a hedge that keeps the list honest — “Our guiding principles include:”. The page states what the system is for: keeping the initiative “distinct from, but complimentary to, other future-focused initiatives”, making it “field-defining rather than field-following”, and drawing in “creative and visionary thinkers irrespective of any subjective societal value placed on their worth” (captured 2026-08-05). For an initiative whose primary mode is convening (Philosophy), the values specify the community — and the community is the instrument.

The design shows in the definitions: each is stated so that what failure as well as success looks like stays legible (Andrew Maynard, 2026), each carrying a counterweight against its own failure mode. Obsessive curiosity is defined into humility: “always asking questions and assuming there is more to learn, that conventional wisdom is transitory, and that intellectual and ideological humility are necessary for socially beneficial progress.” Radical creativity licenses the “unconventional, fantastic, and whimsical” and asks for it “fearlessly”. Respectful inclusivity does precise work in a university setting: “Actively transcending conventional, implicit, and socialized perspectives of someone’s worth, value, and ability to make meaningful contributions to new ideas” — credentials pointedly unmentioned. Grounded exuberance compresses the system’s central tension into two words: free, joyful exploration of the fantastical “while remaining grounded in the constraints that the universe we inhabit places on possibilities.” Catalytic serendipity refuses to romanticize chance, prizing unplanned insight while “actively working to translate these into societally beneficial impacts” (Serendipity as method). The register — joy, awe, whimsy — fits a self-described community of “bold, audacious and visionary thinkers”; the homepage restates the five in short form (“Obsessive curiosity as we revel in the joy of discovery”) under “What brings us together?”

The design claim rests on where the values live. They are not wall art (Convening and community). The Fall 2025 syllabus for FIS 394, “Pizza and a Slice of Future” — the initiative’s one-credit conversation-over-pizza course, paused as of August 2026 — quotes all five, names and full definitions, as community norms: “Participants in meetups are expected to embrace the Future of Being Human Community Guiding Principles”. Andrew’s published account of that class treats the norms as causal machinery: when sixteen residents of the Mirabella retirement community asked to join a 25-slot undergraduate class, they came as drop-ins, and unplanned intergenerational learning followed — because, he wrote, “we set out to create an environment where anyone happy to abide by the class’ community norms was welcome”. His takeaway names the mechanism: “community, space, and expectations, are critical to fostering environments where learning is an inevitable outcome rather than a forced result” (2024-04-07) — the logic of Learning by not trying to learn, and the initiative practicing on itself what Andrew has argued about values in innovation generally: they count when hardwired into practice, not when proclaimed (Ethics aren’t enough).

By 2026 the five function as citable canon across the initiative’s own artifacts. Hyperbubble’s published self-audit — written by the Anthropic model that built the game, published by Andrew — credits “the Future of Being Human values (grounded exuberance, catalytic serendipity)” among “every framework the game runs on”, alongside risk innovation, orphan risks, and “from disruption to dignity” — a phrase from Andrew’s framing of advanced technology transitions (2026-07-10). His machine-readable index at andrewmaynard.net/llms.txt restates all five in a “Community values” section — the value system placed where AI systems will find it (capture of 2026-08-05). And they are worked, not only cited: Sean Leahy describes the initiative’s convening as a place the values get operationalized — obsessive curiosity, respectful inclusivity, and catalytic serendipity in particular — by deliberately creating opportunities for diverse perspectives to encounter one another while leaving room for the genuinely unexpected (Sean Leahy, 2026; Convening & community).

None of the five appeared from nowhere, and the claim is genealogical rather than proprietary: the virtues are old; the articulation and the system are the initiative’s. Each has published antecedents in Andrew’s pre-initiative books. Grounded exuberance has its direct ancestor in Films from the Future’s 2018 argument that collective imagining of good futures works “as long as that imagination is grounded in reality where it matters” (p. 25). Catalytic serendipity: Future Rising promised “a journey of twists and turns, of unexpected insights, and serendipitous delights” (2020, p. 19), after the 2018 book’s reflections took “unexpected and serendipitous turns” (p. 18). Respectful inclusivity: the 2018 insistence that the movies could be “appreciated as much by someone who flunked high school as by a Nobel Prize winner” (p. 18), and Future Rising’s “we” made “as big and inclusive as possible” (p. 192). Obsessive curiosity and radical creativity hold consecutive reflections in Future Rising (Curiosity, pp. 90–91; Creativity, pp. 92–94 — “our creativity is hardwired into our future”), and the 2018 book called for “thinking more creatively and innovatively about where we’re going as a species” (p. 21). The names came later, with the community they were written to shape; what they name was already on the record.

Lineage

In the initiative’s own words

The five, with their full definitional clauses, as embedded in the Fall 2025 syllabus for FIS 394 (“Pizza and a Slice of Future”) — identical to the versions published on the initiative’s Guiding Principles page:

“Participants in meetups are expected to embrace the Future of Being Human Community Guiding Principles:”

Obsessive Curiosity — “Reveling in the joy of discovery; finding awe and wonder in new knowledge; always asking questions and assuming there is more to learn, that conventional wisdom is transitory, and that intellectual and ideological humility are necessary for socially beneficial progress.”

Radical Creativity — “Enthusiastically embracing unconventional, fantastic, and whimsical possibilities; imaginatively pushing the boundaries of how the future is envisioned; being excited by new ideas and visions—especially where they challenge established thinking; and fearlessly exploring where we are heading to and where we might end up as individuals and as a species.”

Respectful Inclusivity — “Actively transcending conventional, implicit, and socialized perspectives of someone’s worth, value, and ability to make meaningful contributions to new ideas; recognizing that everyone has the potential to bring valuable insights to exploring the future of being human; having the humility to respectfully listen to and engage with people who look, think, believe, and behave differently; and embracing and celebrating difference.”

Grounded exuberance — “Freely and joyfully exploring the fantastical and pushing at the boundaries of conventional thinking, while remaining grounded in the constraints that the universe we inhabit places on possibilities.”

Catalytic Serendipity — “Deeply valuing the transformative nature of serendipitous insights and discoveries that arise from casual and unexpected situations, conversations, and interactions, and actively working to translate these into societally beneficial impacts.”

From Futures Past and Present: How a Multigenerational Class Is Changing Perspectives on Technology and Society (AI-readable mirror), Andrew Maynard, 2024-04-07:

“We didn’t sit down and intentionally engineer a curriculum and activities that would foster education that spanned generations. Rather, we set out to create an environment where anyone happy to abide by the class’ community norms was welcome — norms that include obsessive curiosity, radical creativity, respectful inclusivity, grounded exuberance, and catalytic serendipity.

From this, intergenerational learning that has led to participants thinking differently about technology and society was an unexpected — but a very welcome — outcome.”

The direct published ancestor of grounded exuberance, from Films from the Future (Andrew Maynard, 2018, p. 25):

“Art, in all its forms, is a medium that can mitigate our tendency to close down our imagination (together with our humility and empathy), and it’s one that opens us up to seeing the world in new and interesting ways. In this context, science fiction movies are, without a doubt, a legitimate form of art, and one that has the power to bring people together in imagining how to collectively create a future that is good for society, rather than a dystopian mess—as long as that imagination is grounded in reality where it matters.”

Engagement and reception

The documented life of the five is adoption inside the initiative’s own work, and the record is stated as exactly that. On the record: verbatim embedding as community norms in a for-credit syllabus (FIS 394, Fall 2025); Andrew’s published account of the class those norms governed — sixteen Mirabella residents asking to join a 25-slot undergraduate course, with a student’s reflection and a resident’s response quoted in the essay (2024-04-07; his account, and the numbers are texture, not metrics); the credit line in Hyperbubble’s self-audit (2026-07-10), which was written by the AI that built the game and published by Andrew — self-description twice over, and labeled as such; and the “Community values” section of andrewmaynard.net/llms.txt (captured 2026-08-05). As of 2026-08-13, our reception record documents no independent published engagement with the value system as a value system — an absence of record, stated plainly as absence, not a verdict; the initiative does not typically solicit reception (Philosophy). Value statements are in any case cited less than arguments: where these five leave traces, it is in rooms, syllabi, and credit lines rather than in literatures — and every trace on record so far is the initiative’s own.

Where to go deeper

The published statements

The essay, the class, and the game

Related ideas-ring pages

Related corpus pages