Most people doing MIRI-style research think most other people doing MIRI-style research are going about it all wrong.
This has also been my experience, at least on this forum. Much less so in academic-style papers about alignment. This has certain consequences for the problem of breaking into preparadigmatic alignment research.
Here are two ways to do preparadigmatic research:
Find something that is all wrong with somebody else’s paradigm, then write about it.
Find a new useful paradigm and write about it.
MIRI-style preparadigmatic research, to the extent that it is published, read, and discussed on this forum, is almost all about the first of the above. Even on a forum as generally polite and thoughtful as this one, social media dynamics promote and reward the first activity much more than the second.
In science and engineering, people will usually try very hard to make progress by standing on the shoulders of others. The discourse on this forum, on the other hand, more often resembles that of a bunch of crabs in a bucket.
My conclusion is of course that if you want to break into preparadigmatic research, then you are going about it all wrong if your approach is to try to engage more with MIRI, or to maximise engagement scores on this forum.
In science and engineering, people will usually try very hard to make progress by standing on the shoulders of others. The discourse on this forum, on the other hand, more often resembles that of a bunch of crabs in a bucket.
Hmm… Yeah, I certainly don’t think that there’s enough collaboration or appreciation of the insights that other approaches may provide.
Any thoughts on how to encourage a healthier dynamic.
Any thoughts on how to encourage a healthier dynamic.
I have no easy solution to offer, except for the obvious comment that the world is bigger than this forum.
My own stance is to treat the over-production of posts of type 1 above as just one of these inevitable things that will happen in the modern media landscape. There is some value to these posts, but after you have read about 20 of them, you can be pretty sure about how the next one will go.
So I try to focus my energy, as a reader and writer, on work of type 2 instead. I treat arXiv as my main publication venue, but I do spend some energy cross-posting my work of type 2 here. I hope that it will inspire others, or at least counter-balance some of the type 1 work.
I like your summary of the situation:
This has also been my experience, at least on this forum. Much less so in academic-style papers about alignment. This has certain consequences for the problem of breaking into preparadigmatic alignment research.
Here are two ways to do preparadigmatic research:
Find something that is all wrong with somebody else’s paradigm, then write about it.
Find a new useful paradigm and write about it.
MIRI-style preparadigmatic research, to the extent that it is published, read, and discussed on this forum, is almost all about the first of the above. Even on a forum as generally polite and thoughtful as this one, social media dynamics promote and reward the first activity much more than the second.
In science and engineering, people will usually try very hard to make progress by standing on the shoulders of others. The discourse on this forum, on the other hand, more often resembles that of a bunch of crabs in a bucket.
My conclusion is of course that if you want to break into preparadigmatic research, then you are going about it all wrong if your approach is to try to engage more with MIRI, or to maximise engagement scores on this forum.
Hmm… Yeah, I certainly don’t think that there’s enough collaboration or appreciation of the insights that other approaches may provide.
Any thoughts on how to encourage a healthier dynamic.
I have no easy solution to offer, except for the obvious comment that the world is bigger than this forum.
My own stance is to treat the over-production of posts of type 1 above as just one of these inevitable things that will happen in the modern media landscape. There is some value to these posts, but after you have read about 20 of them, you can be pretty sure about how the next one will go.
So I try to focus my energy, as a reader and writer, on work of type 2 instead. I treat arXiv as my main publication venue, but I do spend some energy cross-posting my work of type 2 here. I hope that it will inspire others, or at least counter-balance some of the type 1 work.