How Ethotechnics works

Ethotechnics governs the delegation of consequential agency, not the model. Every consequential decision is one link in a governed chain, and the method keeps the states of that chain coupled.

No system may accumulate consequential agency faster than the institution accumulates the capacity to inspect, challenge, revise, and survive its decisions.

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The chain

Seven stages, in order. Each has a question the institution must be able to answer. The method page lists the assets that answer each one.

  1. Evidence. State the propositions that justify letting the system act, and keep them current.
  2. Authority. Record which actions the system may take, for whom, and until when.
  3. Decision. Log what was decided, on what record, and with what dissent.
  4. Consequence. Account for who carries the burden of the decision and for how long.
  5. Challenge. Give exposed parties a channel to contest the decision with procedural force.
  6. Reconsideration. Reopen the delegation when it is challenged or when the facts change.
  7. Correction. Keep stop, reversal, and repair feasible at a cost the institution can bear.

The three lenses

The lenses are instruments applied at the Consequence stage: they make the burden a decision places on people visible before the chain moves on to Challenge. Apply one lens at a time to a single workflow. Each has a question and an example.

Burden accounting

Track hidden labor: triage, rework, apology loops, policy exceptions.

A health plan's AI triage tool misroutes 12% of prior auths. Nurses spend 90 minutes per shift re-routing them. That's 7.5 hours of unpaid care-time per week per nurse. Burden accounting surfaces that cost.

Infrastructure dignity

Does the system preserve operator agency and user recourse under pressure?

A clinical chatbot gives a wrong dosing recommendation. The nurse cannot override it without calling a supervisor who is in a meeting. Infrastructure dignity asks: where is the override, and can the operator reach it in 30 seconds?

Care-time economics

What is the tradeoff between shipping velocity and long-term maintenance extraction?

Engineering ships a model update that cuts false positives by 3% but adds 45 minutes of daily review work for the care management team. Care-time economics asks whether that tradeoff was visible before the deploy.

Application sequence

  1. Select a workflow. Choose a process where system decisions affect people (triage, prior authorization, customer escalation).
  2. Map burden by role. Follow one decision from initiation to resolution. Document each instance where a person compensates for or overrides the system.
  3. Apply one lens. Choose the lens that best fits the pressure point in the workflow. Adapt the example pattern to the context.
  4. Share the analysis. Present the lens analysis to a decision-maker. The pattern is designed to communicate in a single conversation.

Repeat for a different workflow or lens each week. Three weeks produces a cross-section of burden distribution across the system.