Synthesis and roadmap: an honest ledger of the ARC/Eden programme
=================================================================

Eleven empirical studies, one positive result, two nulls, one inconclusive, twelve documented errors and a phased roadmap. Paper IX in plain English.

Canonical path: /research/papers/paper-ix-synthesis-and-roadmap.html
Author: Michael Darius Eastwood
Research programme: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/6C5XB

Synthesis and roadmap: an honest ledger of the ARC/Eden programme Michael Darius Eastwood · Independent AI alignment researcher Published 3 July 2026 Michael Darius Eastwood · Overview · 3 July 2026 Michael Darius Eastwood, independent researcher, London: author of the ARC/Eden research programme; the embedded-correction alignment thesis is recorded in a source record dated 8 December 2024 (sent-side SHA-256 f0d1f38f). Paper IX is the programme's report card. Eleven empirical studies produced one clear positive result, two nulls and one inconclusive result, alongside several strong statistical findings and twelve documented errors. It is written as the paper a reviewer should read first, precisely because it does not try to smooth over the parts that failed. Paper IX · Consolidates all 18 programme documents into a single evidence hierarchy, catalogues 12 programme-level errors and their corrections, and proposes a four-phase roadmap ordered by cost and expected evidential value. OSF DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/6C5XB. The question it asks What has this research programme actually shown, what has it failed to show, and what would resolve the open questions? The paper's stance is that a framework built on iterative self-correction has no business hiding its corrections. Every result is sorted into an explicit tier: proven (p less than 0.05 and replicated), positive (single experiment), null, inconclusive, methodological, or theoretical. The stated ambition is not to claim that everything works. It is to make the ledger legible enough that outside reviewers can pick a claim, find its tier, and act on it. What it found In Paper IX's proven tier: blinded evaluation across six models yielded a three-tier alignment hierarchy; Cauchy families match 19 of 25 domains (18 of 25 in the rerun of 11 August 2026 that added the logarithmic candidate); and the d over (d+1) geometric scaling bound corresponds, in structure, to observed scaling across 50 domains. In its supported tier: Paper V's stakeholder care improved in all five analysable runs, reported model by model and scored across models rather than under the four-layer blind; the Fisher-combined figure has been withdrawn (AQ-017). A simulation result, given no grade as evidence: the gated simulation of Paper VIII. Methodological: the ARC-Align benchmark, and the v4 and v5 comparison, which Paper IV.a reads as a reason to distrust unblinded AI-on-AI evaluation, not a demonstration that unblinding produced false positives.

---
Machine-readable companion. Cite: Eastwood, M. D. (2026). "Synthesis and roadmap: an honest ledger of the ARC/Eden programme". /research/papers/paper-ix-synthesis-and-roadmap.html