I’d like to understand what it is that has held you back from speed reading external work for hunch seeding for so long.
Well currently I’m not really doing alignment research. My plans / goals / orientation / thinking style have changed over the years, so I’ve read stuff or tried to read stuff more or less during different periods. When I’m doing my best thinking, yes, I read things for idea seeding / as provocations, but it’s only that—I most certainly am not speed reading, the opposite really: read one paragraph, think for an hour and then maybe write stuff. And I’m obviously not reading some random ML paper, jesus christ. Philosophy, metamathematics, theoretical biology, linguistics, psychology, ethology, … much more interesting and useful.
To me, it seems like solving from scratch is best done not from scratch, if that makes sense.
Absolutely, I 100% agree, IIUC. I also think:
A great majority of the time, when people talk about reading stuff (to “get up to speed”, to “see what other people have done on the subject”, to “get inspiration”, to “become more informed”, to “see what approaches/questions there are”...), they are not doing this “from scratch not from scratch” thing.
“the typical EA / rationalist, especially in AI safety research (most often relatively young and junior in terms of research experience / taste)” is absolutely and pretty extremely erring on the side of failing to ever even try to solve the actual problem at all.
Don’t defer to what you read.
Yeah, I generally agree (https://tsvibt.blogspot.com/2022/09/dangers-of-deferrence.html), though you probably should defer about some stuff at least provisionally (for example, you should probably try out, for a while, the stance of deferring to well-respected philosophers about what questions are interesting).
I think it’s just not appreciated how much people defer to what they read. Specifically, there’s a lot of frame deference. This is usually fine and good in lots of contexts (you don’t need to, like, question epistemology super hard to become a good engineer, or question whether we should actually be basing our buildings off of liquid material rather than solid material or something). It’s catastrophic in AGI alignment, because our frames are bad.
Well currently I’m not really doing alignment research. My plans / goals / orientation / thinking style have changed over the years, so I’ve read stuff or tried to read stuff more or less during different periods. When I’m doing my best thinking, yes, I read things for idea seeding / as provocations, but it’s only that—I most certainly am not speed reading, the opposite really: read one paragraph, think for an hour and then maybe write stuff. And I’m obviously not reading some random ML paper, jesus christ. Philosophy, metamathematics, theoretical biology, linguistics, psychology, ethology, … much more interesting and useful.
Absolutely, I 100% agree, IIUC. I also think:
A great majority of the time, when people talk about reading stuff (to “get up to speed”, to “see what other people have done on the subject”, to “get inspiration”, to “become more informed”, to “see what approaches/questions there are”...), they are not doing this “from scratch not from scratch” thing.
“the typical EA / rationalist, especially in AI safety research (most often relatively young and junior in terms of research experience / taste)” is absolutely and pretty extremely erring on the side of failing to ever even try to solve the actual problem at all.
Yeah, I generally agree (https://tsvibt.blogspot.com/2022/09/dangers-of-deferrence.html), though you probably should defer about some stuff at least provisionally (for example, you should probably try out, for a while, the stance of deferring to well-respected philosophers about what questions are interesting).
I think it’s just not appreciated how much people defer to what they read. Specifically, there’s a lot of frame deference. This is usually fine and good in lots of contexts (you don’t need to, like, question epistemology super hard to become a good engineer, or question whether we should actually be basing our buildings off of liquid material rather than solid material or something). It’s catastrophic in AGI alignment, because our frames are bad.
Not sure I answered your question.