Part of the Cognitive Utility Theory model. Actively being developed.
If CUT says human behavior is driven by a hierarchy of intrinsic drives, the natural next question is: whose hierarchy?
The hierarchy isn't universal. Two people can share all the same drives and have them in completely different orders of intensity. One person might have their dopamine (achievement) drive near the top; another might have it near the bottom, with oxytocin (connection) taking precedence. These differences in ordering produce meaningfully different personalities, priorities, and stress responses.
I built IDSN as the notation system for representing these individual hierarchies. It's primarily a thinking tool — a way to get more precise about what's actually driving a given pattern of behavior or feeling. The more I use it to think about myself and the people around me, the more traction it gives me.
While there are many intrinsic drives, six vary significantly enough in their intensity between individuals to form the basis of what I'm calling a "typology" — a system for categorizing meaningfully different motivational architectures.
| Symbol | Drive | Core Need |
|---|---|---|
| C | Cortisol | Security, threat elimination, stability |
| D | Dopamine | Achievement, goal pursuit, acquisition |
| E | Endorphins | Sensory stimulation |
| O | Oxytocin | Bonding, trust, belonging |
| S | Serotonin | Contentment, self-esteem, internal order |
| V | Vasopressin | Protection, fidelity, boundaries |
Each symbol is the first letter of the associated chemical. When there's ambiguity (glutamate and ghrelin both start with G), disambiguation uses the first two letters: Gh for ghrelin, G for glutamate, and so on.
My current working hypothesis is that C, D, O, and S are the four drives that most usefully distinguish personality in modern, relatively stable societies — specifically, societies where survival drives like ghrelin and adenosine are largely met for most people and therefore don't dominate the picture day-to-day.
E (endorphins / sensory stimulation) is now part of the primary six, and vasopressin (V) might overlap enough with cortisol in certain contexts that its independent contribution is still something I'm working through. The version of this that I use personally focuses on C, D, E, O, and S, with V noted when it seems clearly significant.
This is an area of active development.
An Intrinsic Drive Sequence (IDS) is a list of drives ordered by intrinsic intensity, from greatest to least.
A person whose dopamine drive is more intense than their oxytocin drive would have a pIDS of DO. That's it — the notation is just the symbols in order.
An IDSN string has two parts: the signature (the drives) and the stage (current state).
The signature is the ordered list of drive symbols.
Defined order (explicit or implied):
DO — dopamine precedes oxytocin(DO) — explicitly stated; same meaningUndefined order:
[DO] — both are present but we don't know which comes first; could be DO or OD[(DO)(CV)] — the group DO and the group CV are internally fixed, but their order relative to each other is unknownGaps:
D.O — zero or more drives exist between D and O in the full sequenceD..O — at least one drive exists between D and O (i.e., they're not adjacent)The stage describes which drive is currently looping — which need is currently loudest.
| Notation | Meaning |
|---|---|
1DO | Looping in the 1st drive listed (dopamine) |
2DO | Looping in the 2nd drive listed (oxytocin) |
<DO | Looping in a drive higher (more intense) than anything listed |
>DO | Looping in a drive lower (less intense) than anything listed |
- | Transition state — between loops |
u | Unnoeia — no active loop |
So uDO means: a person whose top typology drives are D > O, currently in Unnoeia. 2CDOS means: a person whose typology drives run C > D > O > S, currently looping in dopamine.
A few things I've found it useful for:
Diagnosing vague dissatisfaction. When I feel generally off but can't pinpoint why, thinking through my IDSN gives me hypotheses. If I've been productive lately (dopamine mostly met) but haven't had much deep conversation with someone I trust (oxytocin potentially looping), that's something concrete I can address rather than just feeling bad about feeling bad.
Understanding conflicting wants. Sometimes I want two incompatible things and can't figure out why both feel important. IDSN gives a vocabulary for what each want is actually serving — and sometimes reveals that the conflict is between two different drives, which means it's a real tension rather than one option being obviously right.
Understanding other people. Someone who keeps prioritizing relationship maintenance over task completion isn't irrational or unproductive — they might just have a higher-O typology than I do. That reframe helps a lot, practically speaking.
Direction. My own IDSN is something like D..O for the typology drives — achievement is relatively high for me, connection comes later in the sequence. That helps explain why I default to solo deep work and have to deliberately build in the kind of connection that keeps the O drive satisfied.
IDSN is a descriptive tool, not a deterministic one. Your IDSN isn't a script you're running — it's more like a center of gravity. People deviate from their sequences all the time based on context, learned behavior, and conscious choice.
The notation is also considerably more precise than my ability to actually determine someone's sequence. Without rigorous testing (which I haven't built yet), any IDSN you assign yourself is an educated self-hypothesis, not a verified fact. Treat it accordingly — as a useful model to test against your own experience, not a diagnosis to accept uncritically.
The value is in the process of trying to figure it out, not in having a definitive answer.