Definition of Intelligentism
The formal and plain-English definition.
Accepted: Reviewed and adopted for the current release.
Formal definition
Intelligentism is an open framework for optimizing civilization through better incentives, scientific governance, voluntary institutions, engineering, entrepreneurship, investment, and continuous improvement.
Plain-English definition
Intelligentism is a proposal for organising economic and institutional life so that the behaviour that pays is also the behaviour that makes everyone measurably better off — and for checking that claim with evidence rather than assertion.
The seven components
| Component | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Better incentives | The reward structure must favour production over extraction. |
| Scientific governance | Institutions must publish assumptions and revise on evidence. |
| Voluntary institutions | Participation must be optional and revocable. |
| Engineering | Proposals must be buildable, not merely arguable. |
| Entrepreneurship | Execution stays with independent operators. |
| Investment | Capital must circulate rather than accumulate idly. |
| Continuous improvement | The framework must be able to admit error. |
A proposal that drops any one of these components is not an Intelligentism proposal. In particular, a design that achieves good measured outcomes through compulsion fails the voluntary-participation requirement and must be rejected regardless of its results.
What it is not
Intelligentism is not a completed ideology. It is an open economic and institutional framework that can be modeled, tested, criticized, improved, and implemented gradually.
Chapter metadata
- Status
- Accepted
- Version
- 0.1.0-alpha
- Created
- 2026-08-01
- Last revised
- 2026-08-01
- Last reviewed
- 2026-08-01
- Authors
- ISILP
- Governing proposals
- IIP-0001
- Source
spec/100-foundations/definition.mdx
Cite this page
ISILP. Definition of Intelligentism. The Intelligentism Specification, version 0.1.0-alpha (revised 2026-08-01). https://intelligentism.isilp.org/spec/foundations/definition