My ontology indeed has search and a narrow notion of optimization as approximately synonyms; they differ only somewhat in type signature and are easily interchangeable. Conceptually, both take in an objective, and return something which scores highly on the objective. (This is narrower than e.g. Flint’s notion of “optimization”; in that ontology it might be called a “general-purpose optimizer” instead.)
Anyway, insofar as any of this is relevant to the arguments for mesa-optimization, it’s the notion of search/optimization as general problem solving which applies there.
My ontology indeed has search and a narrow notion of optimization as approximately synonyms; they differ only somewhat in type signature and are easily interchangeable. Conceptually, both take in an objective, and return something which scores highly on the objective. (This is narrower than e.g. Flint’s notion of “optimization”; in that ontology it might be called a “general-purpose optimizer” instead.)
Anyway, insofar as any of this is relevant to the arguments for mesa-optimization, it’s the notion of search/optimization as general problem solving which applies there.