Five Points of Human Sanctity

The Five Points were, historically, an essential tool of SolGov's foreign and technological policy. They are a set of principles forbidding research into certain technologies deemed to be damaging to humanity as a whole or capable of causing a mass extinction event. The Five Points are:

1. It is forbidden to create artificial intelligences capable of unlimited self-improvement, especially self-improvement of its self-improving features.
2. It is forbidden to create automated systems capable of automatic self-replication, especially self-replicating nanomachines.
3. It is forbidden to modify a non-sapient species in such a way as to make it sapient, or vice-versa.
4. It is forbidden to modify a human brain in such a way that it gains cognitive abilities beyond that of a natural human.
5. It is forbidden to modify a human body beyond giving every human the ability to live life as a natural human does.

While a foundational legal document and a cornerstone of Confederate law (a legacy of its origins in the Icarus Front), and while individually encoded into the constitution or legal code of all SolGov member states to one degree or another, the Five Points are not legally binding and in practice the enforcement of the 4th and especially 5th point remains in many places a polite fiction. SolGov also maintained the Five Points as a key element of foreign policy, using them as a justification to annex or police secessionist groups many times over the centuries.

The first major polity to reject Five Points compliance was the Almach Association, which existed between 2562 and 2564. The Association's disregard for the Five Points was the primary point of contention between them and SolGov, and despite diplomatic efforts from both sides, eventually devolved into the Almach War. As a result, the region was occupied by a fleet from the skrellian Far Kingdoms, which allowed them to continue some kinds of Five Points violations under "strict oversight" and subject to SCG inspections.

The Skathari Incursion put an end to the Five Points as foreign policy. The emergence of a potentially existential threat from technologies not banned under the Five Points, the continued survival of the Almach Protectorate, a rising interest in cosmetic and functional genetic modification among the Solar middle classes, and a general tendency towards isolationism saw the threat of a Solar invasion of noncompliant territory dwindle to nothing. The Five Points continue to be a major shaping factor in the technological policies of SolGov and the Five Arrows, though their domestic influence continues to be challenged daily.