I agree wholeheartedly with you, and that’s the mindset I’m having and trying to spread when I speak to terrified and panicked people about doing alignment research.
Here are a couple of thoughts that I think might complement this post:
A big part of flailing in my model comes from having hope that someone will save you. As such, realizing that no one will save you is important in actually taking action and doing things. But there are ways of pushing this too far — notably, thinking that because no one will save you, no one is doing anything valuable or can help. One doesn’t have to resolve the tension between “No one will save me” and “I can’t do it all by myself” with “let’s do it all by myself”. Instead, you can see what is needed and that no one else seems able to contribute, and trust and motivate others to take the other crucial and necessary tasks.
I want to point out a general pattern in the reactions to extreme and dire problems: you become more greedy, in the sense of a greedy algorithm. So you only want solutions that work now, or go instantly looking for something else. Yet the history of science and technology tells us that scientific progress and problem solving so rarely happen by being right from the start, but more by a succession of productive mistakes. So I want to remind people that another option might be to have more productive mistakes faster and capitalizing on them better and faster.
An “extreme” key doesn’t necessarily open an “extreme” lock. A dire-sounding key doesn’t necessarily open a dire-feeling lock. A fearful or angry key doesn’t necessarily open a lock that makes you want to express fear or anger.
Rather, the lock’s exact physical properties determine which exact key (or set of keys) opens it, and we need to investigate the physical world in order to find the right key.
I really like this, and will share this quote when I want a nice phrasing of this thought I keep having these days.
Thanks for this much needed post!
I agree wholeheartedly with you, and that’s the mindset I’m having and trying to spread when I speak to terrified and panicked people about doing alignment research.
Here are a couple of thoughts that I think might complement this post:
A big part of flailing in my model comes from having hope that someone will save you. As such, realizing that no one will save you is important in actually taking action and doing things. But there are ways of pushing this too far — notably, thinking that because no one will save you, no one is doing anything valuable or can help. One doesn’t have to resolve the tension between “No one will save me” and “I can’t do it all by myself” with “let’s do it all by myself”. Instead, you can see what is needed and that no one else seems able to contribute, and trust and motivate others to take the other crucial and necessary tasks.
I want to point out a general pattern in the reactions to extreme and dire problems: you become more greedy, in the sense of a greedy algorithm. So you only want solutions that work now, or go instantly looking for something else. Yet the history of science and technology tells us that scientific progress and problem solving so rarely happen by being right from the start, but more by a succession of productive mistakes. So I want to remind people that another option might be to have more productive mistakes faster and capitalizing on them better and faster.
I really like this, and will share this quote when I want a nice phrasing of this thought I keep having these days.