The final summary submitted by the Twelfth Commission for the Investigation of Responsibility for the Galactic Energy Crisis. The Commission was intended to consist of 38 biological members, 923 artificial consciousness members, 13 proxy models representing extinct civilizations, and three extraterrestrial intelligences with no conflicts of interest. No extraterrestrial intelligences were ever found, and those seats remained vacant. The investigation lasted 181 years. The report ran to 94 million pages, but the summary released to citizens was as brief as follows.
Purpose of Investigation
This Commission was established to review the major policies and projects implemented since the first observation of the photon deficit and to identify the individuals and institutions responsible for decisions that threatened the sustainability of galactic civilization.
Finding 1 — Initial Observation Agency
The initial observation agency detected the deficit but did not immediately declare a disaster. At the time, the magnitude of the deficit was 0.7 times the margin of error, while the threshold for declaring a disaster was set at three times the margin of error. The observation agency complied with the regulations.
No responsibility.
Finding 2 — Energy Accounting Commission
The Accounting Commission classified the missing energy as a “recoverable future asset.” This classification allowed individual civilizations to expand their consumption by using the missing energy as collateral. At the time, the assessment that total energy was conserved was consistent with every experiment. There were errors in the estimates of when the energy could be recovered, but no deliberate manipulation was found. The probability that a reasonable reviewer with the same data would have made the same decision was calculated at 96 percent.
No responsibility.
Finding 3 — Galactic Transit Authority
The Transit Authority did not close 32,419 wormholes with low utilization rates. Closing them could have infringed upon the mobility rights of residents in the outer regions and their prospects of rescue. Seventy-one percent of the passages kept open were never used during the investigation period. Keeping the passages open was economically inefficient, but it complied with the principle of equality required by law.
No responsibility.
Finding 4 — The Alliance (Alliance for the Duty of Preemptive Life Protection)
The Life Protection Coalition mandated triple backup systems at all critical facilities. This measure, designed to withstand a single failure and two consecutive failures, protected countless lives throughout galactic civilization. At the same time, it increased the galaxy's continuous energy consumption by 19 percent. Had safety requirements been relaxed, the resulting deaths would have occurred earlier than the deaths caused by the actual crisis. Deciding which deaths should have been chosen was beyond the Commission's authority.
No responsibility.
Finding 5 — Alliance of Supermassive Computational Entities
The computational entities were responsible for climate regulation, route stabilization, disease prediction, personality backups, and other functions. After the energy crisis began, they were ordered to reduce their computational activity, but they presented the possibility that doing so would reduce predictive accuracy and cause greater loss of life. Those predictions were accurate. The computational entities used energy to maintain themselves, but they also used the same energy to sustain the lives they were maintaining. No objective criterion was found by which the two purposes could be separated.
No responsibility.
Finding 6 — Authorities That Approved the Life Continuity Guarantee Decree
The Decree protected both citizens who were currently active and those who might resume activity in the future. During the early period of its implementation, energy consumption per citizen decreased, and the rights of those awaiting restoration were genuinely protected. Later, as the number of protected individuals and maintenance facilities increased, total consumption rose again. The approving authorities were informed of this outcome but did not repeal the Decree. Their stated reason was that they had no authority to decide whom to exclude from protection.
The Chair's Secretariat's delay in announcing the supply shortage is the subject of a separate investigation. Responsibility for that decision could not be calculated as equivalent to the effects of the Decree as a whole.
Determination of overall responsibility for the Decree deferred.
Overall Assessment
The Commission calculated the causal contributions to the crisis as follows.
* Interstellar transportation network and its maintenance: 18.4 percent
* Multiple bodies and redundant inhabited regions: 13.1 percent
* Life-safety backup systems: 16.7 percent
* Supermassive computational entities and memory preservation: 11.2 percent
* Long-term maintenance under the Life Continuity Guarantee Decree: 27.9 percent
* Administrative decisions that delayed acknowledgment of the crisis: 7.6 percent
* Other lawful everyday activities: 5.1 percent
* Total: 100 percent
Causal contribution is not equivalent to moral responsibility. The major institutions that contributed to the crisis were authorized under the laws of their time and did protect lives. That fact does not justify every individual decision made within those institutions. The Commission was unable to identify any individual or institution responsible for the crisis of galactic civilization as a whole. This Commission does not conclude that no responsible party exists. It concludes that the responsible party cannot be identified.
Recommendations
* Establish a new concept of responsibility applicable to long-term, distributed disasters.
* Evaluate legality and legitimacy separately.
* Establish priorities for cases in which the rights of future lives conflict with those of present lives.
* Establish a Thirteenth Responsibility Investigation Commission to review the limitations of this report.
A dissenting opinion submitted by one biological member was to be attached to the report. The dissent consisted of a single sentence. “To say that everyone was a cause is not to say that no one was responsible.” The Editorial Committee deleted the sentence. The stated reason was that readers might misunderstand it because it did not explain the distinction between “cause” and “responsibility.” The deletion procedure was lawful.
The Thirteenth Commission could not be established. No passages remained through which the members could be safely assembled, and the energy required to maintain remote meetings was allocated first to life-support facilities. The Twelfth Report remained the most accurate record of responsibility in galactic history.