Open the Atlas About
V0 Prototype · April 2026

An atlas of the human.

Answers

  • What do humans need? Foundations
  • How do those needs operate? Mechanisms
  • Where does mismatch occur? Diagnosis
  • What repairs it? Intervention

A literature synthesis grounded in empirical evidence. Everything downstream is grounded here.

Atlas now. Operational layer under construction. Evidence for every claim.

Open foundational infrastructure. Any team can build on it.

Why this exists

Aligned AI needs to know what it is aligning to. Environment design - social, economic, political, virtual - needs a target. Both currently proceed without a shared spec of the organism. Both produce predictable failures.

Cor is that spec. The atlas is its current form. The horizon is a world built to it: environments, institutions, and systems calibrated to what the human actually is, and machines aligned to that same ground truth.

Read

The Optimizer Without a Target

what alignment misses · working paper

Built on the work of
Start here

Where to begin.

I'm Maarten Rischen. I built Cor v0 over the past year. It's an atlas of the human motivational-emotional architecture - what each evolved need is, and what stops its signal once the need is met. v0 is the prototype. v1 is the academic rebuild. Where to start depends on what you came for.

For the specification itself

Open the Atlas

The full v0 atlas: foundations, convergences, mechanisms, empirical demonstrations, challenges, and gaps. The specification in its current form.

Open Cor →
For the framework in action

Read the worked example

M3, attachment-based co-regulation, specified end-to-end from foundations through resolution conditions. One mechanism at operational depth.

Open M3 →
For AI alignment

Read the bridge paper

How a specification of the human organism changes what alignment is aligning to.

Open the paper →
The Architecture

What Cor specifies.

Cor is structured in six layers, derived from evidence, not assumed.

  1. L0

    Two frames (OF1, OF2)

    The frame the specification operates inside. The organism does not perceive reality. It runs a fitness-tuned interface. Its outputs are read as information about state and input conditions, not as noise.

    • OF1Access to the world is mediated by evolved fitness interfaces, not guaranteed veridicality.
    • OF2Motivational and emotional outputs are treated as prima facie informative about the organism's regulated conditions.
  2. L1

    Three primitives (P1–P3)

    The minimum claims any account of the organism must satisfy.

    • P1Inclusive fitness, survival and reproduction, is the loss function.
    • P2The organism contains evolved, domain-sensitive, interacting functional adaptations.
    • P3Modern environments often push these adaptations outside their expected operating ranges.
  3. L2

    Nine design affordances (DA1–DA9)

    What the organism is built to do, and what follows from how it is built.

    • DA2Human regulation is constitutively socially scaffolded.
    • DA4Proxy cues can activate systems without meeting the conditions that normally regulate or terminate them.
    • DA7The architecture calibrates to developmental and ongoing environmental input within evolved ranges.
  4. L3

    Three design consequences (DC1–DC3)

    What falls out of the architecture under chronic mismatch.

    • DC1Chronic unresolved activation accumulates as allostatic load.
    • DC2Markets can industrialize proxy exploitation of unmet regulatory needs.
    • DC3The environment is a primary intervention layer, currently underweighted by major institutions.
  5. L4

    Fourteen convergences

    Evidence patterns where independent research lines arrive at the same operational structure.

    • C3Systematic EEA-modern environment mismatch (Eaton & Konner + Li/van Vugt + Boyd & Richerson + Henrich).
    • C5Socially scaffolded regulation via attachment (Coan + Bowlby + Hrdy + Dunbar + Holt-Lunstad).
    • C6Wanting-liking dissociation as proxy hijack (Berridge & Robinson + Tinbergen + Panksepp).
  6. L5

    Fifteen mechanisms

    The discrete operational units of the organism. Each mechanism has a resolution condition and a characteristic failure mode.

    • M3Social Bonding.
    • M5Status Monitoring.
    • M14Reproductive Motivation.

See the full architecture →

One mechanism, in full

M3 · Social Bonding.

What it is
An attachment and co-regulation system. Forms bonds with other humans. Produces pain-grade distress when they are gone. Two operating states: security, which enables broad engagement, and grief, which suppresses it.
Resolution condition
Reliable human co-regulation through physical presence, operating through nested social layers: roughly five intimate co-regulators for primary emotional and physical support, fifteen in the sympathy group, fifty close social partners, and a cognitive ceiling near one hundred fifty coherent face-to-face relationships (the Dunbar number). The innermost layer supplies the majority of regulation; the critical variable at that layer is reliability, not count.
Characteristic proxy
Nuclear family, isolated living, and mediated contact substituting for physical presence. The activation stays on while the resolution condition is never met.
Evidence base
189 evidence links drawn from the project's 573 extractions. Convergent across Bowlby, Panksepp, Coan, Hrdy, Dunbar, Holt-Lunstad.
Foundation links
P1 (inclusive fitness) and P2 (domain-sensitive interacting adaptations) as premises; DA2 (socially scaffolded regulation) as the design affordance M3 operationalizes.
Convergence membership
C5 · Socially Scaffolded Regulation via Attachment.

Open M3 in the atlas →

The mismatch is computable

An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.

Viktor Frankl

Once the spec is in place, the mismatch is no longer a feeling. It is a per-mechanism quantity: the gap between the resolution condition and the actual input the organism is receiving.

Category Expected Inputs Modern Default
Social Known people, layered bonds, daily co-presence, reciprocal dependence Strangers, mobility, parasocial feeds, mediated contact, fragile inner circles
Work Visible effort, tangible contribution, direct feedback, shared necessity Abstract labor, delayed feedback, metrics without meaning, replaceable output
Rhythm Dawn light, dark nights, shared timing, physical fatigue, communal evenings Indoor light, screen nights, asynchronous schedules, restless inactivity
Children Distributed care, observation, multiple trusted adults, alloparental backup Nuclear-family isolation, expert advice, solo vigilance, support on request
Feedback Bounded groups, closure, reputational consequences, repair after conflict Infinite audiences, algorithmic comparison, anonymous judgment, open loops

Every row is a measurement, not a metaphor. Every measurement traces to the mechanisms it engages and the convergences it rests on.

The work so far

As of 14 April 2026.

17
Foundations
2 frames · 3 premises · 9 affordances · 3 consequences
15
Mechanisms
14 plus R1 Touch
14
Convergences
101
Academic works
573
Extractions
14
Gaps
63
Researchers
22
Domains
10
Empirical demonstrations
8
Applications

Every claim traces to a primary source.

Full state →

Cases

The same operation at every scale.

One architecture. The same operation at every scale. Five recognizable situations, each read through mechanism, mismatch, and resolution condition.

Case 01

The AI companion trap

A chatbot becomes the most responsive relationship in a lonely life, and the loneliness alarm goes quiet for the wrong reason.

Read the case
Case 02

Instagram depression

Status circuitry built for bounded groups is forced to compare upward against millions of algorithmically selected lives.

Read the case
Case 03

Parenting guilt

A mother tries to do a five-person job alone, then mistakes accurate distress for personal failure.

Read the case
Case 04

Grief without ritual

Loss is compressed into a weekend, while the architecture still expects a communal program of months.

Read the case
Case 05

The synthetic childhood

Developmental windows close on a world designed to hold attention, not on a world calibrated to what those systems evolved to need.

Read the case