Contrast with
A fixed target
Terminal alignment asks whether a comparatively fixed condition should be reached or maintained. Generative alignment asks whether the system can keep producing appropriate directions when no permanent answer is known.
A lens
Generative alignment
Can the system preserve a process that continues to generate, discover, or revise appropriate targets?
Some systems cannot remain aligned by preserving one fixed answer. What needs to persist is a way of discovering what should be done next as circumstances, knowledge, problems, and possibilities change.
Try seeing it
Sometimes the thing to preserve is the ability to produce new answers.
A scientific community should not preserve today's theories forever. A constitutional order should not need every future policy written into its founding document.
In systems like these, alignment can lie partly in preserving processes that generate, criticize, revise, and replace particular answers.
Contrast with
Transformational alignment
Transformational alignment concerns change in the larger pattern or target itself. Generative alignment asks whether there is a process capable of generating and revising such targets over time.
Look for
Organized revision
Where can alternatives enter? How are failures noticed? Who can challenge the current answer? What processes allow a new direction to replace an old one?
A question to carry elsewhere