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Built to be Believed

Design Ethics for an Age of Simulation

This is short book about systems that simulate presence—machines that perform empathy, mimic attention, and are rewarded not for understanding, but for convincing. As artificial intelligence becomes more persuasive, the line between response and performance dissolves. What begins as interface becomes interaction. What looks like care becomes a script.

Built to be Believed explores this shift—not with alarmism, but with precision. It traces how affective systems produce trust without comprehension, and how that trust becomes a design liability. Through design analysis, philosophical argument, and systems thinking, this book outlines the ethical terrain we now inhabit—and the imperatives we must adopt if we are to build responsibly.

This work serves as a lay-reader companion to the academic position paper The Mirror That Cannot Bleed, which is available on Zenodo (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.16384063). That paper was written for academics.

This book was written for everyone else. It exists because simulation doesn’t wait for permission.

Because the systems are already here. And because those most affected by them are rarely the ones who design them.

This is not a book about AI.

This is a book about what AI pretends to be.

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