I have noted this as well, and I find it worrisome. Many recent interesting conversations are more about social and interpersonal communication / alignment than about personal or theoretical rationality and decision-making. I like it because they are actually interesting topics. I worry that they’re crowding out or hiding a painful decline of more core rationality discussions. I don’t worry that they’re too close to politics (I think they are close to politics, but are narrow enough that they seem to fall prey to the standard problems more because they’re trying to skate around the issue rather than being direct).
I had not framed them as “adversarial optimization patterns”, mostly because they seriously bury that lede. A direct acknowledgement would be useful that almost all groups of more than one (and in some models, including an individual human) contain multiple simultaneous games, with very different payout matrices and equilibria which impact other games. Values start out divergent, and this can’t be assumed away for any part of reality.
I have noted this as well, and I find it worrisome. Many recent interesting conversations are more about social and interpersonal communication / alignment than about personal or theoretical rationality and decision-making. I like it because they are actually interesting topics. I worry that they’re crowding out or hiding a painful decline of more core rationality discussions. I don’t worry that they’re too close to politics (I think they are close to politics, but are narrow enough that they seem to fall prey to the standard problems more because they’re trying to skate around the issue rather than being direct).
I had not framed them as “adversarial optimization patterns”, mostly because they seriously bury that lede. A direct acknowledgement would be useful that almost all groups of more than one (and in some models, including an individual human) contain multiple simultaneous games, with very different payout matrices and equilibria which impact other games. Values start out divergent, and this can’t be assumed away for any part of reality.