rate things on a more fine-grained scale from (say) 1 − 10
Something that jumps out at me here is, BCI could enable more than one scale—e.g. this scores 4⁄10 on approval, 6⁄10 on cringiness, 1⁄10 on grossness, 7⁄10 on funny, 2⁄10 on exciting, …. Those are definitely there in the brain, but hard to get out without BCI, because who can introspect along 15 (or whatever) different axes simultaneously?
(Might be hard to get that information with BCIs too, because things like insula & cingulate cortex & amygdala are kinda deep in the brain. Hmm, actually maybe this is an area where we want to use skin conductance, microexpressions, etc.? Dunno.)
No opinion on whether it actually helps for alignment to have 15 (or whatever) different axes instead of just “approval”.
Even if we were able to get good readings from insula & cingulate cortex & amygdala et alia, do you have thoughts on how and whether we could “ground” these readings? Would we calibrate on someone’s cringe signal, then their gross signal, then their funny signal—matching various readings to various stimuli and subjective reports?
In principle, I think different reactions should project to different subcortical structures (e.g. the hypothalamus has lots of little cell groups that look different and do different things, I think). In practice, I dunno, I guess what you said sounds about right.
Thanks for writing this, it’s a helpful post!
Something that jumps out at me here is, BCI could enable more than one scale—e.g. this scores 4⁄10 on approval, 6⁄10 on cringiness, 1⁄10 on grossness, 7⁄10 on funny, 2⁄10 on exciting, …. Those are definitely there in the brain, but hard to get out without BCI, because who can introspect along 15 (or whatever) different axes simultaneously?
(Might be hard to get that information with BCIs too, because things like insula & cingulate cortex & amygdala are kinda deep in the brain. Hmm, actually maybe this is an area where we want to use skin conductance, microexpressions, etc.? Dunno.)
No opinion on whether it actually helps for alignment to have 15 (or whatever) different axes instead of just “approval”.
Even if we were able to get good readings from insula & cingulate cortex & amygdala et alia, do you have thoughts on how and whether we could “ground” these readings? Would we calibrate on someone’s cringe signal, then their gross signal, then their funny signal—matching various readings to various stimuli and subjective reports?
In principle, I think different reactions should project to different subcortical structures (e.g. the hypothalamus has lots of little cell groups that look different and do different things, I think). In practice, I dunno, I guess what you said sounds about right.