Curiosity is certainly a powerful tool for learning! I think any learning system which isn’t taking advantage of it is sub-optimal. Learning should be guided by curiosity.
The thing is, sometimes we need to learn things we aren’t so curious about. One insight I Iearned from studying learning is that you can do specific things to make yourself more curious about a given thing and harness the power that comes with curiosity.
Ultimately, what this looks like is to write down questions about the topic and use them to guide your curious learning process. It seems that this is how efficient top students end up learning things deeply in a shorter amount of time. Even for material they care little about, they are able to make themselves curious and be propelled forward by that.
That said, my guess is that goodharting the wrong metric can definitely be an issue, but I’m not convinced that relying on what makes you naturally curious is the optimal strategy for solving alignment. Either way, it’s something to think about!
Curiosity is certainly a powerful tool for learning! I think any learning system which isn’t taking advantage of it is sub-optimal. Learning should be guided by curiosity.
The thing is, sometimes we need to learn things we aren’t so curious about. One insight I Iearned from studying learning is that you can do specific things to make yourself more curious about a given thing and harness the power that comes with curiosity.
Ultimately, what this looks like is to write down questions about the topic and use them to guide your curious learning process. It seems that this is how efficient top students end up learning things deeply in a shorter amount of time. Even for material they care little about, they are able to make themselves curious and be propelled forward by that.
That said, my guess is that goodharting the wrong metric can definitely be an issue, but I’m not convinced that relying on what makes you naturally curious is the optimal strategy for solving alignment. Either way, it’s something to think about!