Last updated: July 2026
AffonsoHenriquesEssays.com exists to examine difficult questions without reducing them to slogans, fashionable formulas, or compulsory consensus.
1. ARGUMENT BEFORE ALLEGIANCE
An argument will not be accepted or rejected merely because it is associated with the political left, political right, academia, business, government, technology, or a particular intellectual tradition.
Ideas should be examined on their logic, evidence, explanatory power, and limitations.
2. INTELLECTUAL DISCOMFORT IS PERMITTED
The website may publish arguments that readers consider disturbing, unpopular, politically inconvenient, or culturally offensive.
The purpose of intellectual work is not always to reassure.
However, deliberate humiliation, dehumanisation, or harassment of individuals is not an editorial objective.
3. FACTS, INTERPRETATIONS, AND HYPOTHESES
Where reasonably possible, the website distinguishes among factual claims, interpretation, hypothesis, scenario, and personal judgment.
An interpretation should not be disguised as an uncontested fact.
A hypothesis should not be presented as proof merely because the author finds it persuasive.
4. UNCERTAINTY MUST REMAIN VISIBLE
Complex environments contain incomplete information, ambiguity, competing incentives, and unintended consequences.
The website rejects artificial certainty.
When uncertainty is material to an argument, it should not be hidden merely to make the text sound more authoritative.
5. SOURCES
Relevant sources should be cited when factual or academic claims materially depend on them.
Sources are not decorative.
A long bibliography does not automatically make an argument strong, and institutional prestige does not make a claim immune from criticism.
6. ACADEMIC WORK
Academic publications will be referenced accurately.
The website will not knowingly present unpublished work as peer-reviewed, incomplete academic training as a completed degree, or third-party research as the author’s original research.
Publisher and licensing restrictions concerning full academic texts will be respected.
7. CORRECTIONS
Material factual errors should be corrected when identified and reasonably verified.
A correction is not an intellectual defeat.
Changing a conclusion because stronger evidence has emerged is compatible with serious analytical work.
8. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Artificial intelligence may be used as a research, organisational, editorial, linguistic, and analytical support tool.
AI may assist with structure, language revision, comparison of arguments, identification of counterarguments, and exploration of sources.
The author remains responsible for the arguments published under his name.
AI-generated text will not be treated as an independent source of factual authority.
Substantive claims should be evaluated according to evidence and reasoning, regardless of whether AI assisted the writing process.
9. CONFLICTS AND INDEPENDENCE
Material commercial relationships that could reasonably affect the interpretation of published content should be disclosed where relevant.
Consultancy relationships do not purchase editorial conclusions.
No client is entitled to control the author’s independent essays merely because a professional relationship exists.
10. HUMAN DIGNITY
The website may criticise systems, ideologies, institutions, organisations, leaders, elites, cultures, historical processes, and patterns of human behaviour.
Intellectual severity does not require the denial of human dignity.