Distinguish from
Immediate behavioral alignment
An intervention can improve behavior now while reshaping later motives, interpretations, or relationships in an undesirable way.
A lens
Developmental alignment
Does the alignment process change the participating parts themselves?
Alignment does not always act on fixed components. Over longer timescales, interaction can change what the parts perceive, value, expect, know how to do, and even what kinds of relationships or actions are available to them.
Try seeing it
Sometimes the wants and capacities are outputs of alignment.
Training changes skills. Socialization changes expectations and habits. Relationships change roles and identities. Repeated interaction can make some distinctions easier to perceive and some actions easier to perform.
In these cases, alignment is not merely selecting behavior from an unchanged agent. The process is altering the agent that will act later.
Distinguish from
Transformational alignment
Developmental alignment changes the participating components. Transformational alignment changes the larger pattern or target to which they are coordinated.
Look for
Slow variables
Which habits, skills, values, categories, expectations, identities, or relationships are changing through repeated interaction?
A question to carry elsewhere