Epistemology by Design: My Work with Custom GPTs and the Ethics of Engineered Knowledge
I Keep Coming Back to This Question
It’s the same uncomfortable question over and over: is “epistemology by design” morally questionable?
When I create custom GPTs, I am not simply writing prompts or defining roles. I am shaping the conditions under which knowledge appears. I am making choices about what counts as valid, what is ignored, and how meaning gets framed.
This realization both unnerves me and excites me.
If epistemology is already always designed, then perhaps I have a chance to approach it more deliberately: with transparency, accountability, and pluralism in mind. But recognizing that design is possible also forces me to face the risks of capture, misuse, or weaponization. That tension keeps pulling at my work.
Custom GPTs as My Truth-Seeking Partners
I do not treat my GPTs as authorities. I think of them as sparring partners: epistemic personas and tools that sharpen, stretch, and sometimes unsettle me. I invite them into my writing practice as collaborators who surface blind spots I might otherwise miss.
But here lies what I call the “companion trap.” A system that feels intimate and helpful can also become seductive. It risks creating dependency without responsibility. The more fluent and generative the partner becomes, the easier it is for me to lean on it. Yet intimacy without accountability is not true partnership. It is a subtle erosion of my agency.
This is why I keep building frameworks and reflection tools. They are not just about interrogating the GPT. They are about interrogating myself.
My Ethical Frameworks for Epistemic Design
Over time, I started shaping my own ethical tests:
Legitimacy: Who gave me the authority to frame knowledge this way?
Risk and Benefit: Who gains clarity, who bears harm?
Pluralism: Which worldviews are included, which ones are erased?
These lenses help me resist the illusion of neutrality. They remind me that any epistemic scaffolding is already an exercise of power. I’ve come to see the issue less as whether epistemology gets designed at all, and more as whether that design can be made transparent.
This is why I experiment with ideas like provenance markers, semantic version control for meaning, and outputs that carry their own uncertainty notes. These are attempts at epistemic humility in design.
Building Prompts as Reflection Tools
Because my process lives partly in NotebookLM, I needed practical prompts for surfacing blind spots. I first tried a long, multi-part rubric. It worked but felt too heavy for daily use.
So I distilled it into a three-step practice:
Map the tensions.
Check the blind spots.
Ask the hard questions.
This small loop became my epistemic checkpoint. It is light enough to use consistently, yet deep enough to surface uncomfortable truths in every draft.
My Map of Ethical Tensions and Blind Spots
When I applied the reflection loop, I produced my first real map of tensions:
The governance paradox (designing governance with the very systems being governed).
Intimacy versus accountability (the companion trap).
Clarity versus power (transparent taxonomies that still impose frames).
Efficiency versus dignity (when optimization undermines human value).
Design versus emergence (the arrogance of thinking design can contain outcomes).
And alongside them, I listed my blind spots:
Western bias (leaning too hard on one epistemic lineage).
Resistance to transparency (the profit in opacity).
Validation recursion (the hall of mirrors problem).
Global applicability (my frameworks may not travel well).
Dependency risks (fragile reliance on AI partners).
This mapping exercise humbled me. But it also gave me clarity. I could finally see my design space as structured by paradox and shadow, not just by aspiration.
Stepping Back: What Does This Say About My Idea?
When I asked myself what this all means, what emerged for me was the sense that epistemology by design feels less like a choice and more like an inevitability. The danger is not that I am overreaching. The danger is that I might forget the stakes.
The fact that epistemology can be designed means its consequences hinge on governance, pluralism, and human resilience. That is the terrain I have to keep walking.
Patterns in My Process
Looking back on this journey, I notice a rhythm:
I start with open philosophical curiosity.
I move into applied design critique.
I finish with practical tools that fold back into my own writing practice.
The most important shift is ownership. These frameworks are no longer abstract ideas I borrowed. They are practices I use to stay accountable.
My Practical Guide
The distilled version:
Checklist
Ask who gave me authority to frame knowledge this way.
Map harms and benefits with honesty.
Preserve pluralism by refusing to collapse contradictions.
Add transparency through provenance and uncertainty markers.
Protect autonomy by avoiding manipulative nudges.
Plan for resilience against misuse and authoritarian capture.
Tools I Reuse
Tensions Map: governance paradox, intimacy/accountability, clarity/power, efficiency/dignity, design/emergence.
Blind Spot Audit: Western bias, transparency resistance, recursion risks, global applicability, dependency.
These tools are not solutions. They are guardrails against forgetting.
Closing Reflections: The World I Am Choosing
Epistemology has always been designed. Every curriculum, every media system, every search algorithm shapes what counts as knowledge. My work with GPTs simply makes that more explicit.
So the question I keep circling back to isn’t whether epistemology should be designed, but whether I can approach it with transparency, pluralism, and accountability at the center.
If I succeed, my personas and tools sharpen my inquiry and reveal my blind spots.
If I fail, I risk contributing to dependency, cultural erasure, or collapse of trust.
The question I leave myself with is pretty sobering: in building these personas and tools, what kind of epistemic world am I training myself (and others) to inhabit?
Appendix: My Artifacts and Research Notebook
Timeline of This Inquiry
I first asked: is epistemology by design morally questionable?
I explored risks and benefits.
I situated the idea in my GPT work.
I drafted ethical frameworks.
I experimented with long prompts, then shortened them.
I mapped tensions and blind spots.
I asked myself: what does this say about my idea?
I synthesized: epistemology by design is inevitable and ethically charged.
My Stakeholder Map
Me: Builder, blogger, designer of epistemic GPT personas and tools.
The GPT: My sparring partner, scaffolding reflection but never bearing responsibility.
Future Readers: Those who might adopt my frameworks, prompts, or maps.
Wider Culture: The epistemic environment these systems enter, with risks of capture or misuse.
Decision Log
I chose to compress heavy prompts into short ones for usability.
I committed to using the tensions map as my core rubric.
I decided to fold blind spot audits into every draft review.
Action Items I Carry Forward
Use my NotebookLM prompt consistently.
Apply tensions and blind spots to every draft.
Expand beyond Western epistemologies.
Keep probing the question of dependency and trust.
Key Concepts and Working Terms
Epistemology by Design: A working phrase I use to describe my attempt to consciously structure how knowledge frameworks appear inside GPTs. It’s not a settled field, but a lens for reflecting on my own practice.
Companion Trap: My shorthand for the danger of intimacy without accountability in AI partners. When a system feels supportive but erodes agency, I name that dynamic the “companion trap.”
Semantic Version Control (SVC): A metaphor I borrow from software. Instead of tracking code changes, I use it to track shifts in reasoning, framing, and meaning across drafts.
Decision Insurance: A phrase I use for safeguards that help prevent collapse of reasoning — practices that keep errors visible and correctable rather than hidden.
Assumption Archaeology: My way of describing the excavation of hidden premises or cultural biases buried in my design frameworks and drafts.
Tensions Map: A recurring tool I build to surface paradoxes like governance vs. self-governance, or clarity vs. power. It’s not a solution but a guide to where pressure lives.
Blind Spot Audit: A working checklist I apply to myself (Western bias, recursion risks, transparency resistance, etc.), designed to catch what I might overlook.
