Evidence / APsychology
Obedience & authority
Milgram’s experiments, the agentic-state account, subsequent critiques, and what his work can—and cannot—tell us about
AI-mediated authority.
A journal. A salon. A continuing inquiry.
For the
For the
incurably
human.
An intellectual home for those who believe that art, science, philosophy, literature, and technology belong in the same conversation.
The Interrogation exists in two places: on the page, where ideas are introduced and challenged, and in the room, where a quarterly salon brings them into contact with people, art, music, and rigorous disagreement.
PLATE I / AN OPENING
On perspective and the points we chooseEvery reference point
deserves examination.
deserves examination.
The Salon
A quarterly gathering of the incurably human
Not a panel.
Not a panel.
Not a lecture.
An encounter.
One difficult question. An intimate room. Artists, thinkers, builders, and thoughtful contrarians at the same table.
Each salon is part cultural evening, part intellectual investigation. Live music and visual art are not intermissions between speeches; they are ways of asking questions. The room is invited to think, challenge, create, and occasionally change its mind.
We begin with an invitation-led founding collective. The ambition is not exclusivity for its own sake, but a gathering where everyone arrives with something to contribute.
Before
The dossier arrives.
A concise collection of readings, research, cultural artifacts, and questions. Come prepared, not rehearsed.
In the room
The ideas are put on trial.
Artistic provocation, music, moderated conversation, competing interpretations, and genuinely uncomfortable questions.
After
The inquiry continues.
Findings, dissent, essays, and unresolved questions return to the journal and its archive.
Open Investigation
Our inaugural inquiry
The Agentic State
When machines act, who do humans believe is in charge?
We place Stanley Milgram’s work on obedience and the agentic state in conversation with modern autonomous AI, the psychology of perceived authority, delegated judgment, and the institutions that surround both.
Not to presume the mechanisms are identical, but to interrogate the point at which a system stops being understood as a tool and begins to be treated as an authority.
01 / The authority problemPsychology
02 / The delegation problemTechnology
03 / The accountability problemInstitutions
04 / InterventionsHuman agency
The question is open. Milgram’s findings do not establish how people respond to AI agents. They offer a historical theory to examine, test, and contest. Salon date and venue forthcoming.
The Case Files
Evidence / BSystems
Machines that act
Agent architectures, tools, memory, permissions, delegation boundaries, and the technical conditions that make human intervention possible.
Research / dossier in preparationEvidence / CHuman agency
The emerging cyberpsychology
Automation bias, authority attribution, responsibility displacement, epistemic vigilance, and contested claims about autonomy.
Questions / dossier in preparationEach investigation will distinguish core preparation from optional reading and creative provocations. The aim is a higher standard of conversation, not an entrance exam.
The Journal
The conversation should outlive the room.
The Interrogation is a publication as much as a gathering. Here, ideas can be developed before a salon, challenged during it, and revisited long after. We are interested in strong arguments, unexpected connections, beautiful disruptions, and work that refuses easy categorization.
The opening question
Short essays that start an investigation and expose the assumptions beneath the question.
First pieces in developmentOther ways of knowing
Visual work, performance, literary responses, and musical interpretations as arguments in their own right.
Contributors to be announcedFindings & dissent
What we think we know, what remains contested, and the questions that should follow us home.
An evolving archiveThe Reading Room
A good question deserves
dangerous company.
Books and other works that have unsettled our assumptions, sharpened our arguments, or complicated the questions we thought we knew how to ask. This is a living, interdisciplinary collection—not a canon, a test, or a list of approved conclusions.
Authority / Psychology
Obedience to Authority
When does following an instruction feel like surrendering responsibility?
Humans / Machines
Human–Machine Reconfigurations
Where does agency actually reside when people and machines work together?
Artificial Intelligence / Values
The Alignment Problem
Who decides which values intelligent systems should learn to pursue?
Systems / Consequences
Thinking in Systems
Which feedback loops make an apparently sensible decision harmful over time?
Cybernetics / Humanity
The Human Use of Human Beings
What must remain human when systems increasingly govern action?
Responsibility / Institutions
Eichmann in Jerusalem
How should we examine responsibility within bureaucracies and chains of authority?
Situational Power / Psychology
The Lucifer Effect
How do roles, institutions, and circumstances change what people believe they are willing to do?
AI / Power · Forthcoming 2027
Deep Unlearning
Who defines technological progress—and whose interests become invisible when that definition goes unquestioned?
Expected February 16, 2027 · Publisher details ↗
Poetry / Aesthetics · Essay
The Poetic Principle
If beauty is poetry's central purpose, what can an artistic work reveal that an argument cannot?
Bounded Rationality / Organizations
Administrative Behavior
When decisions are made under limited information and attention, how do institutions—and AI agents—shape what we accept as rational?
The first selections draw from Investigation 001: The Agentic State. Future selections will range across art, literature, philosophy, science, and culture. Reading invites disagreement. Inclusion is not endorsement.
On the nature of poetry
“I would define, in brief, the poetry of words asEdgar Allan Poe · The Poetic Principle (1850)
The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty.”
Who We Are
An independent community of inquiry
The
Our guiding principle:
The
Collective.
The Collective brings people together around The Interrogation: an independent journal, quarterly salon, and continuing inquiry.
We bring together people who work across art, music, science, technology, literature, philosophy, and public life. Not to defend a shared doctrine, but to make serious inquiry a shared practice.
Our guiding principle:
The Prime Meridian
Every inquiry needs a reference point. Ours begins with remembering that reference points are chosen and remain open to examination. We are not against reference points. We are against forgetting who drew them—and that they can be redrawn.
Every reference point deserves examination.
01
Curiosity over credentials.
Authority alone is not an argument. Insight can come from any discipline.
02
Art is a form of inquiry.
Creative expression is not decoration around the serious work. It is part of the serious work and necessary.
03
Disagreement is a contribution.
Come ready to defend an idea...and to let new evidence change it.
04
No protected assumptions.
Including the ones held by The Collective itself.
“The invitation isn’t to come learn what to think. It’s to arrive prepared to share how you think
...and why.”
The Invitation
Bring your curiosity.
Keep your doubts.
The Collective welcomes artists, musicians, writers, researchers, technologists, philosophers, and thoughtful contrarians who want to help shape something worth belonging to.
Our first salon will be invitation-led. Details of the date, venue, and participation process will be announced here.
Continue the conversation between salons on our Discord server: THE INTERROGATION. Follow the invitation to apply. Joining remains subject to the server application process.