What is Alignment?
Published January 13, 2026
What do we mean when we use that word in 2026?
I mean something specific, a generalization of what the "AI alignment" people have been talking about for a long time. "Aligning of incentives/goals/practices" between systems (which can be humans, companies, AI, or a mix of all of those). Successfully alignment "creates new energy" (is positive sum)
Is there a single sort of "most aligned" thing, or is alignment more complex and multifaceted than that?
There is no "most aligned thing" but there are "directions" here, even if the space is infinitely complex. One obvious pair of directions is "existence" and "non existence", these are two kind of attractors in the infinite space. I do think you can define a metric by which you can say "system A is more aligned than system B, given this axis" (and how general your choice of axis is would be how meaningful this comparison is)
I think a lot about the catholic notion that the only unforgiveable sin is the rejection of grace. What do we do when powerful people actively pursue misalignment?
The answer is clear to me - you have to yank power from them. This may very well involve committing acts of evil (coercion) in order to do so. I think this is how we start to think of the notion of "necessary evil" (highly subjective, but real, and a choice that good people must contend with)
Are we gonna make it? Or rather, who's gonna make it?
yessss (maybe, I think we if we know for sure we were gonna make it then the game is not "real". But I think our choices are real, they matter, and we need to step up and be clever enough/fast enough, to make our way through. Or good game, try again in the next life)
What do you think of this so far? It's just an MVP, but I'm curious for initial feedback.
I don't know where these answers are going, let's see!!!