# Introduction

*This wiki represents a perpetual, indefatigable work in progress. Expect blank pages, question marks, and gaps. It is a growing and evolving codex of information. It is the knowledge base for how we organize and cooperate. It is about decision-making, political sensemaking, and the bounds of reason in human coordination. We started this work because we are in a governance crisis. To alleviate this crisis, **Polis Laboratories is a nonprofit research institute formed to expand our epistemological foothold and enable collective survivability** as we move into a world more populated by megalomaniacs, warmongers, deepfakes, autonomous weapons, and mass media hysteria. We intend to expand this knowledge base to give all peoples a lexicon for understanding how our organizational implementations improve or degrade based on rigorous experimentation in governance across the landscape of emergent independent societies and network states.* > "When it was announced that the Library contained all books, the first reaction was unbounded joy. All men felt themselves to be the masters of an intact and secret treasure." > > -Jorge Luis Borges, > > [The Library of Babel](https://sites.evergreen.edu/politicalshakespeares/wp-content/uploads/sites/226/2015/12/Borges-The-Library-of-Babel.pdf) > “We must build a strong intellectual fabric that inoculates us and fosters resilience, as well as equipping us with the means to be effective in our work.” > > -[The Dark Fi Book](https://darkrenaissance.github.io/darkfi/)