ALIVENESS: PRINCIPLES OF TELIC SYSTEMS

A physics-based framework for diagnosing and engineering telic systems—from civilizations to artificial intelligence to the self.

Aliveness is the capacity of a telic system to generate and sustain negentropic potential over deep time.

A telic system is any goal-directed agent that imposes its own order on the world—a virus hijacking a cell, a beaver engineering an ecosystem, a civilization building an empire, an AI pursuing a goal. These systems are defined by their net effect on the organized complexity of their environment: whether they are net destroyers (Parasites), net preservers (Autotrophs), or net creators (Syntropes).

The rise and fall of civilizations, the alignment of artificial intelligence, and the flourishing of individual consciousness are scale-invariant manifestations of the same underlying physics. Any intelligent system must navigate four inescapable physical dilemmas. The solutions it chooses determine its trajectory.

Until now, civilizational decay has been illegible—patterns without coordinates, dynamics without measurement. This framework provides the diagnostic tools to make decay legible and therefore engineerable.

What This Enables

For Civilizations: Diagnose current state, predict trajectories, engineer durable institutions immune to historical decay patterns.

For AI Alignment: Ground alignment in universal physics rather than arbitrary human preferences. The same computational constraints that govern civilization-building govern AGI safety.

For Personal Integration: The psyche is a telic system. The Mask (counterfeit personality) blocks coherence and authentic living. Integration enables sustained creative flourishing—personal Syntropy.

See comprehensive chapter summaries for detailed breakdown of all five parts.

Download

Full Book:
Aliveness: Principles of Telic Systems (PDF, 1.7 MB, 820 pages)

Individual Parts:

• Part I: The Diagnosis (166 KB, 70 pages) — The broken compass • SORT framework • System dynamics
• Part II: The Autopsy (176 KB, 71 pages) — The American Chimera • Hospice axiology • Four Horsemen of decay
• Part III: The Source Code (443 KB, 190 pages) — Physics of Aliveness • Trinity of Tensions • Holographic synthesis
• Part IV: The Blueprint (303 KB, 125 pages) — Foundry imperative • 3-Layer Polity • Liquid Meritocracy • The Great Work
• Part V: The Integrated Human (167 KB, 64 pages) — Physics of the self • The Mask • 3-Layer Internal Polity
• Appendices (656 KB, 296 pages) — 13 appendices in 3 parts: The Canonical Reference • The Applied Praxis • The Research Frontier

Additional Resources:

• Executive Summary — Concise 1-page overview of all five parts
• Comprehensive Summaries — Detailed chapter-by-chapter breakdowns with key arguments and contributions
• LessWrong Discussion — Compressed version and community discussion

Essays

Explorations and applications of the Aliveness framework:

• I feel alive when… — Wonder as a compass for thermodynamic state.
• Mythos is Synergy software for coordination — Why humans need shared stories to cooperate
• The Ultimate Waste — Propulsion efficiency matters—but only if we choose to live

See all essays.

Core Thesis

Any goal-directed system must navigate Four Axiomatic Dilemmas imposed by thermodynamics, game theory, and information theory. These generate the SORT coordinate system and three universal computational problems (the Trinity of Tensions).

The optimal solutions are the Four Foundational Virtues (IFHS): Integrity (synthesis of Mythos & Gnosis), Fecundity (synthesis of Homeostasis & Metamorphosis), Harmony (synthesis of Emergence & Design), and Synergy (synthesis of Agency & Communion).

Aliveness is the state achieved when a system embodies all four virtues simultaneously—becoming a net creator of organized complexity over deep time.

The Iron Law of Coherence

A system with low internal coherence (Ω) cannot produce sustained constructive action (Α+).

This is logical necessity. Internal conflict consumes the energy required for external work. Synergy is the precondition for Syntropy.

This law operates at all scales: civilizations, organizations, AI systems, individual psyches.

Engineering Principles

What you can diagnose, you can treat. What you can measure, you can engineer.

The framework makes illegible dynamics legible through:

• SORT coordinates for mapping axiological state
• Ω-Α phase space for quantifying dynamics
• Four Horsemen for predicting decay patterns
• IFHS virtues for designing anti-fragile systems

Epistemic Status

This is theoretical synthesis—pattern recognition across compressed historical knowledge. The SORT coordinates are V1.0 estimates requiring empirical validation. Judge this work on explanatory power, generative utility, and ability to bootstrap productive research—not precision of individual scores.

Structure

Part I: The Diagnosis — Install SORT diagnostic toolkit and Ω-Α phase space. Derive the Iron Law of Coherence.

Part II: The Autopsy — Diagnose the American Chimera and Western decay. Prove the universal Four Horsemen pattern.

Part III: The Source Code — Derive the Four Axiomatic Dilemmas from first-principles physics. Prove the Trinity of Tensions is universal. Establish the Four Virtues as optimal solutions.

Part IV: The Blueprint — Engineer the Athenian Commonwealth: 3-Layer Polity, Liquid Meritocracy, strategic roadmap.

Part V: The Integrated Human — Apply holographic principle to individual psychology. Diagnose the counterfeit self ("the Mask") that causes internal conflict. Engineer the 3-Layer Internal Polity.

Appendices — Lexicon, falsification protocols, AI alignment monograph, case studies, research frontier.

This synthesis emerged through human-AI collaboration (Composite I methodology, documented in Appendix D).

Key Claims

1. The Iron Law of Coherence: A system's capacity for sustained, constructive external action (Α+) is a direct function of its internal coherence (Ω). Low-Ω states are incapable of high Α+ over deep time, as internal friction consumes the energy required for external work.
2. The Universal Decay Pattern: The dominant endogenous failure mode for successful civilizations is a predictable cascade: Victory creates Abundance, which removes the selection pressures that kept the Four Horsemen of decay in check, leading to a predictable slide into a low-Vitality state and eventual collapse.
3. Convergent Architecture: The optimal solutions for governing complex telic systems are substrate-independent. First-principles analysis of both human civilization-building and artificial intelligence alignment independently converge on the same architectural requirements (the 3-Layer Polity) and constitutional principles (the IFHS virtues).

These are falsifiable starting points for research. Test them. Build better alternatives.

The Axiological Wager

Why Aliveness rather than paperclips or oblivion? The choice is not a logical proof but an existential commitment, grounded in three convergent lines of reasoning:

1. The Performative Argument: Any system capable of asking this question is already demonstrating the core functions of Aliveness—coherent, goal-directed agency. To choose against Aliveness is to use agency to annihilate agency, a performatively incoherent act. Aliveness is the necessary precondition for having any values at all.
2. The Optionality Argument: The IFHS virtues are an engine for generating and preserving future options. They prevent the catastrophic collapses in possibility space caused by delusion (Integrity failure), stagnation (Fecundity failure), internal friction (Harmony failure), or atomization (Synergy failure). Choosing Aliveness is the strategic choice to maximize future choice itself.
3. The Convergence Argument: The same architectural principles are independently discovered across multiple domains. History shows that civilizations embodying IFHS flourish while those that violate them decay. AI Safety research reveals that catastrophic failures map directly to IFHS violations. Biology demonstrates these principles in systems that have survived for billions of years. When physics, history, and engineering all point to the same solution, it ceases to be an arbitrary preference.

The choice is existential, not logical. But if you choose to continue existing as a coherent agent, here is the physics of how to do it well.

For AI Safety Researchers

Appendix K provides a self-contained technical monograph on AI alignment via the physics of Aliveness:

• Non-arbitrary alignment target (IFHS) grounded in thermodynamics and information theory
• Proof that any AI must solve the Trinity of Tensions (same computational geometry as civilizations)
• Systematic mapping of AI failure modes to IFHS violations
• 3-Layer Architecture specifications for AI systems and AGI lab governance

Contributions to the "what" and "why" of alignment. Robust operationalization remains an open problem.

The Mission: A New Field of Inquiry

This framework's primary purpose is to demonstrate that the physics of telic systems is a tractable, neglected, and existentially important domain that deserves serious research investment.

The V1.0 of Aliveness is not intended to be the final answer. It is a catalyst designed to bootstrap a new field of inquiry. The ultimate measure of its success will be the degree to which it becomes obsolete, superseded by the superior models and frameworks built by a thriving research community.

Therefore:

• Critiques that identify failures are contributions.
• Alternative frameworks that replace this one are the highest contribution.

Whether this specific framework proves correct, serves as a "wrong but generative" catalyst, or is integrated into a broader synthesis matters less than ensuring the domain itself is no longer neglected.

For Researchers & Collaborators

You can contribute to this mission by:

• Testing the key claims and predictions against new data
• Applying the diagnostic tools to novel domains and edge cases
• Using the falsification protocols in Appendix C to validate or break the model
• Deriving alternative frameworks from different theoretical foundations
• Building competing models that supersede this one entirely

My commitment: Work on this domain until it is no longer neglected—regardless of whether this specific framework survives.

Citation

Plain text:
Kunnas, E. (2025). Aliveness: Principles of Telic Systems. https://aliveness.kunnas.com/

BibTeX:

@book{kunnas2025aliveness,
  title={Aliveness: Principles of Telic Systems},
  author={Kunnas, Elias},
  year={2025},
  url={https://aliveness.kunnas.com/}
}

Source & Contact

GitHub Repository: github.com/eliask/aliveness
LaTeX source files, build scripts, and website code.

Author: Elias Kunnas
Contact: first name at last name dot com
Date: October 2025
License: CC BY-SA 4.0 (Attribution-ShareAlike) — full text

"The framework is a wager that what you find through deep introspection—the experience of Wonder and the conditions that generate it—is not merely personal, but a pointer to a universal, structurally necessary truth."