The Multiverse School · Learning path📊 The AI CitizenLearning path
Next in this pathMonday 12 OctoberCritical Thinking and Creativity with AI, live
For people who want to know whether it is actually true
Somebody is going to hand you a number that is true and still wrong.
Four classes organized around one stubborn habit:
go and look at where the claim came from. You take somebody else's chart apart in
public without getting it wrong yourself — then build one of your own that survives
when somebody does the same to you.
Data Activism. Practical Propaganda. Critical Thinking with AI. Interactive Fiction.
Each one live, each one recorded, each one with tools you keep.
$250/mo for recordings and curriculum;
$500/mo with live seats.
Cancel any time. A class you finish stays yours.
What you walk out with
Find the primary source before you repeat the claim
Write an explanation that survives a hostile reading
Spot a blended voice by checking its sources
Measure whether your explanation actually changed anything
Every one of these runs live · all of them included
Monday12 OctCritical Thinking and Creativity with AI
Saturday24 OctThe Interactive Fiction Intensive
Friday6 NovPractical Propaganda
Friday13 NovData Activism: Turn Data Into Power
In betweenEvery weekMake & Do and Go To Market — the standing hours where
your own work gets read by people who will argue with it.
The data desk · interactive
How a true number gets spun
Press one of the three buttons. The table underneath does not move and nobody falsifies
anything — every headline it produces is arithmetically correct — and the story changes
completely anyway. Ten years, two districts, invented for teaching. It is a pocket-sized
version of the workbench you work in during Data Activism. Your answers stay in this browser; the desk
runs in this browser, and it keeps the true headlines you have pulled out of the one table, in
it, so it can tell you how many different ones you have found.
Start here — press one
Or make the choices yourself
District
Measure
Y axis
Years shown
Baseline (% only)
The illustrative gazette · district safety desk
Incidents in Northgate more than double since 2020
Every word of that is true.
The axis starts at 174, not zero. On screen the 2025 mark stands 17.7× as tall as the
2020 mark. In the data it is 2.4× as large. It also pins 2020 to the floor of the chart,
so 190 incidents reads as nothing at all. You are looking at 6 of the 10 years in the
table.
What the whole table contains: between 2016 and 2025 Northgate went from 412
incidents to 462, while its population went from 84,000 to 121,000. Per 1,000 residents
that is 4.90 → 3.82. The count went up. The rate went down.
Illustrative dataset — invented for teaching
Reported incidents and resident population, two neighboring districts, 2016–2025.
These are not real districts and not real figures. Every headline above is computed
from exactly these rows.
Year
Northgate incidents
Northgate residents
Riverside incidents
Riverside residents
2016
412
84,000
168
62,000
2017
398
88,200
175
62,300
2018
421
92,600
171
62,600
2019
405
97,300
190
62,900
2020
190
101,900
96
63,100
2021
268
106,400
128
63,400
2022
341
110,700
158
63,700
2023
402
114,600
176
64,000
2024
447
118,000
190
64,300
2025
462
121,000
214
64,500
The trick is not that somebody lied. The trick is that four defensible choices —
which years, which denominator, which baseline, where the axis starts — each licenses a
different true sentence, and only one of them is the one you would have written if you had
no stake in the answer.
Data Activism: Turn Data Into Power — live on
Friday 13 November — teaches you to run this in reverse
on somebody else's chart, and then to build one of your own that holds up when they run it on
you. It hands you the full campaign workbench — claim, to evidence, to the ask you make of
somebody — and a method picker that makes you choose the method before you choose the
picture. The capability behind all of it has a name:
locate a claim in its primary source.
Add on anytime — keeps your current path. One-time purchase, classes yours to keep.
The sequence · four classes, this order
What you take, and the software each one hands you
Four classes, and each one hands the next a sharper reader: you start on style and voice, you
build persuasion yourself so you can see it coming, you learn to check it against the source,
and you finish by building a machine that stress-tests your own logic. This is the order they
are best taken in, and you can walk into whichever one lands first.
01
Critical Thinking and Creativity with AI
$100 on its own
Where the reading habits get built. You work on style, voice and the gap between what an
institution says it values and what it actually optimizes for — then you make something and
have to say out loud which parts of it are defensibly yours.
2 tools come with it
CompanionThe critical thinking companion — sits beside the class and keeps you working on your own piece rather than the example
ReferenceStory arc braids — the shapes a long piece can take, so you can name the one you are writing
02
Practical Propaganda
$100 on its own
How persuasion is engineered, taught by making you engineer some. Name an audience and what
would count as success for it, build the campaign, then watch the claim degrade as it gets
retold by people who did not read it. You come out able to spot the same machinery running
on you.
3 tools come with it
Guided appThe propaganda bench — walks a whole campaign end to end: audience, claim, fuel, channel, measurement
ReferenceActivist security — what to lock down before you put your name on a campaign
DecksThe fuel hierarchy, the persona stack, the platform ecosystem, cross-aisle reframing, octalysis, campaign flow — the mechanics of a campaign, one idea per deck, in English and in Spanish
03
Data Activism: Turn Data Into Power
$300 on its own
The class this whole path leans on. A dataset and a grievance go in; something that moves
people comes out. You run a model's analysis against a hand check, write an explanation
built to survive a hostile reading, and — the habit that outlives the class — go and find
the primary source before you repeat the claim.
4 tools come with it
Guided appThe campaign workbench — takes you from a claim, to the evidence for it, to the ask you make of somebody
ToolThe method picker — makes you choose the method before you choose the picture
CompanionThe data activism companion — the class in your hands while you work your own dataset
DecksThe numbers game, the rule of one, the scoping funnel, the three paths, the coalition map, the escalation ladder, the analysis workflow, the method selection map — each one a single move you can run on a real campaign
04
The Interactive Fiction Intensive
$200 on its own
A critical-thinking class wearing a craft class's clothes. Branching stories are a machine
for stress-testing your own logic: you find out what your program does on the paths you did
not plan for, and you have to decide, shape by shape, where a model may fill something in
and where it must not be the one choosing.
4 tools come with it
WorkbookThe intensive workbook — the studio day in written form, so the work survives the day
CompanionThe interactive fiction companion — holds your state, your branches and your open questions while you build
ReferenceThe Ink shape catalog and the shape composition guide — the branching shapes, and what happens when you stack them
ToolsThe vibe authoring toolkit, the story reflection journal, the story structure atlas — drafting, reviewing and mapping what you made
Editor's note
The day you spend writing a story is the hardest thinking on this path
A branching story is a formal system you have to hold in your head, and the Interactive
Fiction Intensive exists to break yours on purpose: what does your logic do on the paths you
did not plan for, what happens when two strands surface at once, where does a decision you
recorded an hour ago stop mattering.
It is also the one place on this path where you answer the AI question by hand instead of
arguing about it. You decide, shape by shape,
where AI can fill something in and where it must not
be the one choosing. Then you play the result and see
what your call did to a reader.
It runs as one all-day studio, and you leave with the workbook, the shape catalog and a
story other people can play.
The climb · rung by rung
From tracing one claim to holding a platform to account
The bottom rung is finding out where a number came from. The top one is making
an institution answer for one. Everything in between is a thing you can go and do, written the
way you would say it out loud. Put in the hours you actually have and see how far up the page
they carry you.
5points to spend50 hours · 0 still unspent
Spend it. Each class costs what it really takes.
1trace the claim5 of 5 open
execute a first touch outbound sequence on schedule
locate a claim in its primary source
locate the devices a passage uses on you
name an audience and its success criterion
run a model analysis against a hand check
2check the source13 of 20 open
configure an assistants memory and outside connections
elicit output from a model
operate a model as a first pass editor
operate a no code automation that calls a model
operate a recorded decision so a later branch depends on it
operate concurrent strands that surface at the right time
operate named states instead of magic numbers
operate state so a branching story neither explodes nor rails
produce a budget for work whose timeline you have observed
11 more on this rung
produce a handoff that survives the author leaving
produce a playable story from a running skeleton
produce a reusable system prompt
produce a rubric a model can apply
produce an account of the gap between ideals and operating values
produce an account of who can grant what you are asking for
produce an explanation that survives a hostile reading
produce combinations that clash on purpose
publish a story to a public shelf and get it played
segment text into tokens and cost it
transform a linear story into chained diamonds
3spot the pattern12 of 13 open
characterise a plans weaknesses with adversarial review
characterise how a claim degrades as it is retold
characterise how a style works on a reader
characterise what of a generated artifact you can defend as yours
classify visitors into segments by observed behaviour
classify where AI can fill a shape and where it must not choose one
classify which statistical method answers the question you asked
generalise a reasoning prompt pattern
generalise a tool interface for model use
4 more on this rung
generalise a worked example into something you reuse
parameterise a finding into one page a stranger acts on
parameterise a prompt template
parameterise an agent persona
4test the story5 of 5 open
falsify a blended voice by looking for its sources
hold several audience models on one surface
justify a story structure that fits what you want to say
measure whether an explanation changed what people did
verify separate identities do not leak into each other
5build the case3 of 3 open
construct a multi agent conversation with turn taking
design a channel that reaches people who are not looking for you
design a turnout that converts agreement into attendance
6hold the platform accountable4 of 4 open
govern a swarm by information hierarchy
reconcile agents from different toolchains into one run
synthesise a long work that stays consistent across many generations
synthesise an agent that carries notes across its own runs
3 of these 4 classes fit
in 45 hours, and they open
42 of the 50 things above, as far up as hold the platform accountable.
That opens the recordings, the exercises and the written curriculum on this path, and
the standups every week. $500 a month
adds a seat in every class on it that runs this month.
What a point is. Ten hours of your time — the recordings you watch, the exercises
you work through, and the session itself. Move either slider, or pick the classes
yourself and see what the hours come to.
The ledger
Everything that comes with it
Every figure here is measured off the curriculum rather than estimated. Four classes carry all
of this between them, which is what makes the path dense rather than long.
4Live classes, every one dated
22.4Hours of recorded sessions
2Ways in — recordings or recordings plus the room
The room
Included with Live classes: every class on this path that runs in
the month you are paying for, and the four are open again the next time they come round.
The recordings and the written curriculum come either way.
Software you keep
Tools across the four classes — the campaign workbench, the
propaganda bench, the coalition map, the numbers game, the scoping funnel, the
analysis workflow, the escalation ladder, the method picker, and more. Each one
is guided from a blank page to a finished thing you keep.
The live hours
Make & Do while you are building a campaign —
bring the data, the draft, the thing that is not working yet.
Go To Market when it is ready to launch — bring the finished piece
and the audience you are trying to reach.
Exercises
Across the path — the biggest single block being Data Activism's.
Recorded class
22.4 hours of Critical
Thinking and Creativity with AI, yours to work through on your own schedule and to go back
to when a piece of your own stalls.
Two languages
The Practical Propaganda decks — the fuel hierarchy, the persona stack, the
platform ecosystem, cross-aisle reframing — run in English and in Spanish, so a
campaign you build here can be handed to people who work in either.
The hardest of it
The two things this path asks that nothing else on it prepares you for:
design a channel that reaches people who are not looking for you, and
construct a multi-agent conversation with turn taking. Both are taught by name, and
both are worked in a room where somebody will argue with what you produce.
Two ways in
On your own time, or in the room while it happens
Both cover this path and nothing but this path: the same four classes, the same
tools. What separates them is whether you are in the room on the day.
Both renew monthly and can be cancelled any time. A class you complete stays yours after the
subscription stops.
Single classes here run from $100 to
$300 on their own.
Two doors down the hall
Two people want the path next to this one
Both of them are in this school. Here is how to tell which one is yours.
You want to build the systems
If the interesting part of the chart above was "how would I write the thing that draws
it", you want the engineering sequence. This path teaches you to interrogate a system;
that one teaches you to ship one — and it goes thirteen classes deep.
You want to run the campaign, not check the numbers
There is real overlap — Practical Propaganda and the weekly Make & Do hours serve
both — but if your instinct is to launch the thing and see what it does to people rather
than to go and verify what it claims, the Weird Internet Wizard path is built for that
instinct. Same school, and you can come back for this one.
Critical Thinking and Creativity with AI is the one that comes round first. Then
The Interactive Fiction Intensive on 24 October, Practical Propaganda on 6 November and Data Activism: Turn Data Into Power on 13 November.
$250/mo gets you the recordings, the written curriculum, and the tools. $500/mo
gets you all of that plus a live seat in every class on this path.
