I agree that your model of subagents in the two posts share a lot of commonalities with parts of Shard Theory, and I should’ve done a lit review of your subagent posts. (I based my understanding of subagent models on some of the AI Safety formalisms I’ve seen as well as John Wentworth’s Why Subagents?.) My bad.
That being said, I think it’s a bit weird to have “habitual subagents”, since the word “agent” seems to imply some amount of goal-directedness. I would’ve classified your work as closer to Shard Theory than the subagent models I normally think about.
That being said, I think it’s a bit weird to have “habitual subagents”, since the word “agent” seems to imply some amount of goal-directedness.
Yeah, I did drift towards more generic terms like “subsystems” or “parts” later in the series for this reason, and might have changed the name of the sequence if only I’d managed to think of something better. (Terms like “subagents” and “multi-agent models of mind” still gesture away from rational agent models in a way that more generic terms like “subsystems” don’t.)
Thanks for the clarification!
I agree that your model of subagents in the two posts share a lot of commonalities with parts of Shard Theory, and I should’ve done a lit review of your subagent posts. (I based my understanding of subagent models on some of the AI Safety formalisms I’ve seen as well as John Wentworth’s Why Subagents?.) My bad.
That being said, I think it’s a bit weird to have “habitual subagents”, since the word “agent” seems to imply some amount of goal-directedness. I would’ve classified your work as closer to Shard Theory than the subagent models I normally think about.
No worries!
Yeah, I did drift towards more generic terms like “subsystems” or “parts” later in the series for this reason, and might have changed the name of the sequence if only I’d managed to think of something better. (Terms like “subagents” and “multi-agent models of mind” still gesture away from rational agent models in a way that more generic terms like “subsystems” don’t.)