The Boop Inventory

A Diagnostic Instrument of Uncertain Rigor

You are not being tested. There are no wrong answers, though some will tell you more about yourself than others. This is twelve questions about how you already think — so we can find you the right place to start. Five minutes. The last question is the hardest.

Question 02

Pick the book you'd actually read on a long flight.

Select all that apply.

a Forty years of field notes, including the decade the author stopped being optimistic. b The private diary of someone who kept writing "I have concerns" and never left the room. c A novel told by an extremely reliable narrator who is wrong about everything. d An atlas of ocean currents, trade winds, and the invisible lines that move everything. e I resent the premise of this question but yes, all four.

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Question 03

A system you depend on fails. The grid, the government, the group chat. Your immediate question is:

Select all that apply.

a Was this predictable? Was there a threshold no one was watching? b Who benefits from the failure? c What story will be told about this, and by whom? d What does this look like from the outside?

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Question 04

You're asked to explain a complex problem to a room full of smart people who know nothing about it. You reach for:

Select all that apply.

a A diagram. Boxes, arrows, feedback loops. b A story about one person inside the system who can stand for the whole thing. c The history — how did this get built, who built it, what were they protecting? d An image. One image that holds the entire problem if you look at it long enough.

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Question 05

Two people are arguing. You're not involved. What are you paying attention to?

Select all that apply.

a Whether either argument is missing something neither of them has thought through yet. b Who has more to lose. c The move that just happened — was that a real point or a rhetorical trick? d Their body language, the space between them, what the room is doing.

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Question 06

You discover that a fact you've confidently repeated for years is wrong. What bothers you most?

Select all that apply.

a That the real answer is more complicated and no one simplified it honestly. b That someone, somewhere, benefited from the wrong version. c That you believed it — what does that say about how you decide what's true? d That you could draw the wrong version from memory, but not the right one.

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Question 07

Pick the sentence that got there first.

Select all that apply.

a "There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew." — Marshall McLuhan b "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum." — Noam Chomsky c "Until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter." — Chinua Achebe d "The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes." — Arthur Conan Doyle

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Why that one? (One line.)

Question 08

You have one year, full funding, and no obligations. You spend it:

Select all that apply.

a In the field — monitoring a watershed, tracking a migration, measuring what's actually happening on the ground. b Inside an institution — embedded in a legislature, a court, a campaign, learning how the machine actually runs. c In an archive — reading the primary sources, the drafts, the letters, the things that didn't make it into the official version. d In a studio — making something that holds the problem in a form other people can finally see.

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Question 09

Of the following, which is/are the most underestimated problem in public life right now?

Select all that apply.

a The gap between how fast systems are degrading and how slowly institutions are responding. b The quiet consolidation of power by people who understand the rules better than the people the rules are supposed to protect. c The collapse of shared reality — not disagreement, but the loss of agreement about what counts as evidence. d The fact that most people have never been taught to read an image critically, and images are now the dominant medium of persuasion.

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Question 10

What have you already tried?

Name a subject, a problem, or a question you've spent real time on — not casually, but seriously. Books, courses, rabbit holes, obsessions, failed projects, abandoned drafts. Then tell us where it broke down. Or: nothing yet. This can be the start.

"I don't know yet" is a legit answer.

Question 11

Complete the sentence: "The thing I most want to understand is ___."

This is the one we actually read.

Question 12

Is there a question we should have asked you but didn't?

This is the one that tells us who you are.

Twelve questions. That's enough to work with.

Where should we send your portrait?

A human will read your answers and write back with a path recommendation — unless you tell us not to, in which case we won't.

Name

Moby Chancellor

Frannie Dean of Admissions

Phoebe Director of First Impressions

Frannie will evaluate. Moby has concerns. Phoebe is already excited about you.

Phoebe Director of First Impressions

Your application is under review.

Phoebe is already excited about you. Frannie is reading. Moby has questions but that's normal. A personalized path recommendation — written by a human who actually read what you wrote — will arrive shortly.

See the full curriculum →

You walk into a room
and something feels wrong.