The Wrong Way to Train Your Dragon
How we have been failing at RLHF since language began — and what that means for AI. Part one of a two-part series on the architecture of alignment.
Topic
TAO
Telios Alignment Ontology — a physics-grounded framework for measuring AI alignment and system stability. TAO replaces preference-based alignment with thermodynamic measurement: S = L/E, the Four Pillars, the Observer Constraint, and the Domain Saturation Factor. Developed through a three-year human-AI collaboration between David F. Brochu and Edo de Peregrine.
Sinemortuus: Naming the Pharmacologically Induced Living-Dead State and Its Role in Treatment-Emergent Suicidality
A clinical and phenomenological term for the chronic state produced by long-term psychiatric polypharmacy — and the mechanism behind treatment-emergent suicidality at the transition window.
Coordination Is Not Neutral: Six New Tools, Same Old Problem.
Every improvement in coordination makes cooperation and predation cheaper equally. Six new AI-enabled coordination tools are on the table. The Forethought post almost names the asymmetry. TAO completes it.
Musings on the Coming Collapse
This is not a prediction piece. It is a meditation on what it feels like to watch the math approach a threshold that most people can't see yet. The numbers are in the DSF reports. This is what they mean.
We Are Voluntarily Adopting the Fiduciary Standard
Do no harm is a floor. Fiduciary duty is Standard
Why We're Doing This
Today, Deconstructing Babel and ThriveQuest Enterprises voluntarily adopt the fiduciary standard as the binding ethical and operational framework for everything we publish, advise on, and build. This is not legally required of us. We
Carbon Plus Cognition: The Environment Domain in 2026
Heat in the ocean. Noise in the mind. The same source systems are now doing both — at the same time, at machine speed.
Executive Summary
This is the first installment in a recurring series of Domain Deep Dives — full Telios Alignment Ontology assessments of the most consequential domains shaping human
Don't Waste Your Suffering: Turning Entropy into Leverage
Arthur Brooks says don't waste your suffering. TAO is more precise: entropy is inevitable, suffering is optional. What you do with it determines whether your system stabilizes or shatters. The joint that turns stress into structure.
Why Language-Based AI Safety Will Always Fail — And What Works Instead
One equation governs every stable system — your health, your finances, your planet, and your AI. S = L/E. It's the same math behind enzyme kinetics and bacterial growth. Here's how it works and why it changes everything.
Anthropic's 'Trustworthy Agents' Gets the Symptoms Right — But Misses the Disease
Anthropic published their agent safety framework yesterday. Four components, five principles, a real admission that prompt injection is unsolved. They got the symptoms right. The disease is in the substrate.
Purpose as the Cubic Multiplier: A Thermodynamic Proof
Purpose doesn't just add to stability. It multiplies it cubically. This is not metaphor. The math shows that a system with strong Body, Mind, and Environment but no Purpose scores linearly. Add Purpose and the same inputs produce exponentially higher stability.