In a sense, I think all math papers with focus on definitions (as opposed to proofs) feel like this.
I suspect one of the reasons OP feels dissatisfied about the corrigibility paper is that it is not the equivalent of Shannon’s seminal results, which generally gave the correct definition of terms, but instead merely gesturing at a problem (“we have no idea how to formalize corrigibility!”).
That being said, I resonate a lot with this part of the reply:
Proofs [in conceptual/definition papers] are correct but trivial, so definitions are the real contribution, but applicability of definitions to the real world seems questionable. Proof-focused papers feel different because they are about accepted definitions whose applicability to the real world is not in question.
I suspect one of the reasons OP feels dissatisfied about the corrigibility paper is that it is not the equivalent of Shannon’s seminal results, which generally gave the correct definition of terms, but instead merely gesturing at a problem (“we have no idea how to formalize corrigibility!”).
That being said, I resonate a lot with this part of the reply: