Where to Start
A simple entry point into Alignment Theory
Core Line
Capacity decays when function is preserved without participation.
Brief Intro
Alignment Theory is a framework for understanding how adaptive systems remain robust or become fragile depending on how their load-bearing functions are carried. The central claim is that systems can appear to function well while their own capacity to carry the functions they depend on is quietly eroding — because a support relation is carrying those functions in their place.
The Three Core Definitions
Load-Bearing Function
A function whose ongoing exercise materially contributes to the maintenance, calibration, or development of the system that carries it.
Participatory Capacity
The system’s living ability to remain an active bearer of its own load-bearing functions rather than a passive beneficiary of them.
Support Relation
The relation through which a function is carried, stabilized, shared, trained, or replaced over time.
The Four Modes of Support
Constitutive Co-Regulation
Support that belongs to healthy functioning itself and preserves participation through shared regulation.
Developmental Scaffolding
Temporary support ordered toward stronger future participation by the learner or system.
Stable Distributed Competence
Durable shared competence across persons, tools, or environments that does not hollow out the system’s role in carrying the function.
Substitutive Dependence
Support that preserves function while reducing the system’s own participation in carrying it over time.
The Five Diagnostic Questions
- What is the load-bearing function?
- What is carrying it?
- Is the system still participating in it?
- Is participation increasing, stable, or shrinking?
- What happens under perturbation?
Two Simple Examples
Education
Good teaching helps a student carry more of the interpretive and problem-solving burden over time. A system that preserves grades while shrinking that participation is not strengthening capacity.
AI
An AI system can preserve output while reducing the user’s share in memory, judgment, articulation, or moral deliberation. Functional success alone does not tell us whether human capacity is being preserved.