---
title: "Alignmentism"
description: "Chen Qiufan's pejorative for the program of designing AGI on \"human cognitive architecture and values.\" His objection is not technical but cognitive: human thought is short-termist, individualist,…"
type: "glossary-term"
canonical_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/terms/alignmentism"
md_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/md/terms/alignmentism"
last_updated: "2026-09-06"
site: "Antikythera Wiki"
---

# Alignmentism

> A working definition written for this wiki from the reading notes; not Antikythera's own wording. From Antikythera Wiki (https://antikythera.wiki/terms/alignmentism), an independent guide to Antikythera's published work.

[Chen Qiufan](https://antikythera.wiki/people/chen-qiufan)'s pejorative for the program of designing AGI on "human cognitive architecture and values." His objection is not technical but cognitive: human thought is short-termist, individualist, sequential and self-centered, so scaling it to godlike capability yields "potentially catastrophic motivations" while also reproducing the very biases that fail at planetary problems. The remedy is to make AI (and ourselves) "think unlike humans" — diverse, distributed, possibly non-conscious minds. It is the blunt, fiction-side cousin of the journal's *Productive Disalignment* and Bratton's "necessary but insufficient" verdict on alignment; unlike those, Chen does not argue the mechanism of catastrophe.

## Appears in

- [Cognitive Infrastructures](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/coginfra) (2025-05-10)
- [How to Think Unlike Humans?](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/unlikehumans) (2025-05-10)
- [After Alignment](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/afteralignment) (2025-05-10)

_Glossary generated 2026-09-06._