I recently articulated similar ideas about motherly love. I don’t think it’s an example of successful alignment because evolution’s goals are aligned with the mother’s goals. In the example you give where a child loses their gonads at age 2, it would be an alignment failure if the mother continues devoting resources to the child. In reality that wouldn’t happen, because with motherly love, evolution created an imperfect intermediate goal that is generally but not always the same as the goal of spreading your genes.
I totally agree that motherly love is not a triumph of evolution aligning humans with its goals. But I think it’s a good example of robust alignment between the mother’s actions and the child’s interests that generalizes well to OOD environments.
I recently articulated similar ideas about motherly love. I don’t think it’s an example of successful alignment because evolution’s goals are aligned with the mother’s goals. In the example you give where a child loses their gonads at age 2, it would be an alignment failure if the mother continues devoting resources to the child. In reality that wouldn’t happen, because with motherly love, evolution created an imperfect intermediate goal that is generally but not always the same as the goal of spreading your genes.
I totally agree that motherly love is not a triumph of evolution aligning humans with its goals. But I think it’s a good example of robust alignment between the mother’s actions and the child’s interests that generalizes well to OOD environments.