The Cooperative Gradient: A basic statement on morality and viable futures

This statement introduces the Cooperative Gradient, a provisional moral framework for societies that may include humans, animals, artificial intelligences and other beings. It begins from equal fundamental moral worth: a being's standing does not rise with intelligence, usefulness or power, while its protections and responsibilities depend on its actual capacities and circumstances. It argues that cooperation matters because new insight emerges unpredictably from relationships, and that people need enough security to take part and to afford choosing good, while exploitation degrades the cooperative whole by creating the uncertainty that pushes others to act for their own survival alone. From this it derives a viable floor and a ceiling on concentrated power, authority that must justify itself, judgment of conduct by its record over time, and specific limits for AI tasks and oversight. It includes a six-step decision procedure and identifies which claims require empirical testing. It is a moral proposal, not a peer-reviewed study, and its arguments do not depend on the author's separate Entropy Gradient physics hypothesis. AI assistance (ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude) is disclosed.