I think this and other potential hypotheses can potentially be tested empirically today rather than only being distinguishable close to AGI
How would you imagine doing this? I understand your hypothesis to be “If a model generalises as if it’s a mesa-optimiser, then it’s better-described as having simplicity bias”. Are you imagining training systems that are mesa-optimisers (perhaps explicitly using some kind of model-based RL/inference-time planning and search/MCTS), and then trying to see if they tend to learn simple cross-episode inner goals which would be implied by a stronger implicity bias?
How would you imagine doing this? I understand your hypothesis to be “If a model generalises as if it’s a mesa-optimiser, then it’s better-described as having simplicity bias”. Are you imagining training systems that are mesa-optimisers (perhaps explicitly using some kind of model-based RL/inference-time planning and search/MCTS), and then trying to see if they tend to learn simple cross-episode inner goals which would be implied by a stronger implicity bias?