I broadly agree with this. (And David was like .7 out of the 1.5 profs on the list who I guessed might genuinely want to grant the needed freedom.)
I do think that people might do good related work in math (specifically, probability/information theory, logic, etc.--stuff about formalized reasoning), philosophy (of mind), and possibly in other places such as theoretical linguistics. But this would require that the academic context is conducive to good novel work in the field, which lower bar is probably far from universally met; and would require the researcher to have good taste. And this is “related” in the sense of “might write a paper which leads to another paper which would be cited by [the alignment textbook from the future] for proofs/analogies/evidence about minds”.
I broadly agree with this. (And David was like .7 out of the 1.5 profs on the list who I guessed might genuinely want to grant the needed freedom.)
I do think that people might do good related work in math (specifically, probability/information theory, logic, etc.--stuff about formalized reasoning), philosophy (of mind), and possibly in other places such as theoretical linguistics. But this would require that the academic context is conducive to good novel work in the field, which lower bar is probably far from universally met; and would require the researcher to have good taste. And this is “related” in the sense of “might write a paper which leads to another paper which would be cited by [the alignment textbook from the future] for proofs/analogies/evidence about minds”.