Since there are basically no alignment plans/directions that I think are very likely to succeed, and adding “of course, this will most likely not solve alignment and then we all die, but it’s still worth trying” to every sentence is low information and also actively bad for motivation, I’ve basically recalibrated my enthusiasm to be centered around “does this at least try to solve a substantial part of the real problem as I see it”. For me at least this is the most productive mindset for me to be in, but I’m slightly worried people might confuse this for me having a low P(doom), or being very confident in specific alignment directions, or so on, hence this post that I can point people to.
I think this may also be a useful emotional state for other people with similar P(doom) and who feel very demotivated by that, which impacts their productivity.
Since there are basically no alignment plans/directions that I think are very likely to succeed, and adding “of course, this will most likely not solve alignment and then we all die, but it’s still worth trying” to every sentence is low information and also actively bad for motivation, I’ve basically recalibrated my enthusiasm to be centered around “does this at least try to solve a substantial part of the real problem as I see it”. For me at least this is the most productive mindset for me to be in, but I’m slightly worried people might confuse this for me having a low P(doom), or being very confident in specific alignment directions, or so on, hence this post that I can point people to.
I think this may also be a useful emotional state for other people with similar P(doom) and who feel very demotivated by that, which impacts their productivity.