To add on my thinking in particular: my view for at least a couple of years was that alignment would go mainstream at some point and discourse quality would then fall. I didn’t really see a good way for me to make the public discourse much better—I am not as gifted at persuasive writing as (say) Eliezer, nor are my views as memetically fit. As a result, my plan has been to have more detailed / nuanced conversations with individuals and/or small groups, and especially to advise people making important decisions (and/or make those decisions myself), and that was a major reason I chose to work at an industry lab. I think that plan has fared pretty well, but you’re not going to see much evidence of that publicly.
I was, however, surprised by the suddenness with which things changed; had I concretely expected that I would have wanted the community to have more “huge asks” ready in advance. (I was instead implicitly thinking that the strength of the community’s asks would ratchet upwards gradually as more and more people were convinced.)
To add on my thinking in particular: my view for at least a couple of years was that alignment would go mainstream at some point and discourse quality would then fall. I didn’t really see a good way for me to make the public discourse much better—I am not as gifted at persuasive writing as (say) Eliezer, nor are my views as memetically fit. As a result, my plan has been to have more detailed / nuanced conversations with individuals and/or small groups, and especially to advise people making important decisions (and/or make those decisions myself), and that was a major reason I chose to work at an industry lab. I think that plan has fared pretty well, but you’re not going to see much evidence of that publicly.
I was, however, surprised by the suddenness with which things changed; had I concretely expected that I would have wanted the community to have more “huge asks” ready in advance. (I was instead implicitly thinking that the strength of the community’s asks would ratchet upwards gradually as more and more people were convinced.)