I found myself sort of bouncing off here, despite being interested in the topic and having a sense that “there’s something to this thread.”
I think right now my main takeaway is “think a bit more about boundaries on the margin, in a wider variety of places” (which is maybe all you wanted), but I think I got that more from in-person conversations with you than from this post. In this post there’s a lot of individual examples that give a sense of the breadth of how to apply the “boundaries” frame, but each one felt like I could use more details connecting it to the previous post. (Pedagogically I’d have found it helpful if the post was “T-shaped”, where it goes deep on one example connecting it to the game theory concepts in the previous post, and then explore a breadth of other examples which are easier to latch onto by virtue of connecting them to the initial deep example)
I agree that each of the domains listed here has some interesting stuff to think through. (though I’m not sure I need the “boundary” frame to think Something Is Up with each example as a place where EAs/rationalists might be making a mistake)
I’d like to hear more about how the boundaries framework can be applied to Resistance from AI Labs to yield new insights or at least a more convenient framework. More concretely, I’m not exactly sure which boundaries you refer to here:
There are many reasons why individual institutions might not take it on as their job to make the whole world safe, but I posit that a major contributing factor is that sense that it would violate a lot of boundaries.
My main issue is I for now agree with Noosphere89′s comment: the main reason is just commonsense “not willing to sacrifice profit”. And this can certainly be conceptualized as “not willing to cross certain boundaries” (extralimiting the objectives of a usual business, reallocating boundaries of internal organization, etc.), but I don’t see how these can shed any more light than the already commonsense considerations.
To be clear, I know you discuss this in more depth in your posts on pivotal acts / processes, but I’m curious as to how explicitly applying the boundaries framework could clarify things.
Short answer: maybe Work/Life balance? Probably a reasonable combination of “meaty/relevant, without being too controversial an example”.
Longer answer: I’m not actually sure. While thinking about the answer, I notice part of the thing is that Expansive Thinking, Niche Finding and Work-Life balance each introduce somewhat different frames, and maybe another issue was I got sort of frame-fatigued by the time I got to Work/Life/Balance.
Thanks for this prediction; by default it’s correct! But, my mind could be changed on this. Did you voice this as: (a) a disappointment (e.g., “Ah, too bad Critch isn’t trying to address pivotal acts here”), or (b) as an expectation of what I should be aiming for (e.g., “Probably it’s too much to write a sequence about boundaries that’s also trying to address pivotal acts.”) (c) neither / just a value-neutral prediction?
Oh, I meant: I predict you will write a post comparing boundaries and pivotal acts, but it will be unconvincing to me that boundaries are a particularly key term in how to think about pivotal acts.
I found myself sort of bouncing off here, despite being interested in the topic and having a sense that “there’s something to this thread.”
I think right now my main takeaway is “think a bit more about boundaries on the margin, in a wider variety of places” (which is maybe all you wanted), but I think I got that more from in-person conversations with you than from this post. In this post there’s a lot of individual examples that give a sense of the breadth of how to apply the “boundaries” frame, but each one felt like I could use more details connecting it to the previous post. (Pedagogically I’d have found it helpful if the post was “T-shaped”, where it goes deep on one example connecting it to the game theory concepts in the previous post, and then explore a breadth of other examples which are easier to latch onto by virtue of connecting them to the initial deep example)
I agree that each of the domains listed here has some interesting stuff to think through. (though I’m not sure I need the “boundary” frame to think Something Is Up with each example as a place where EAs/rationalists might be making a mistake)
… From your perspective, which section do you think would be most interesting to do the deep dive on? (I.e. the top of the “T”?)
(Interested to hear from others as well.)
I’d like to hear more about how the boundaries framework can be applied to Resistance from AI Labs to yield new insights or at least a more convenient framework. More concretely, I’m not exactly sure which boundaries you refer to here:
My main issue is I for now agree with Noosphere89′s comment: the main reason is just commonsense “not willing to sacrifice profit”. And this can certainly be conceptualized as “not willing to cross certain boundaries” (extralimiting the objectives of a usual business, reallocating boundaries of internal organization, etc.), but I don’t see how these can shed any more light than the already commonsense considerations.
To be clear, I know you discuss this in more depth in your posts on pivotal acts / processes, but I’m curious as to how explicitly applying the boundaries framework could clarify things.
Short answer: maybe Work/Life balance? Probably a reasonable combination of “meaty/relevant, without being too controversial an example”.
Longer answer: I’m not actually sure. While thinking about the answer, I notice part of the thing is that Expansive Thinking, Niche Finding and Work-Life balance each introduce somewhat different frames, and maybe another issue was I got sort of frame-fatigued by the time I got to Work/Life/Balance.
(random additional note: I’m also anticipating that this boundaries sequence isn’t really going to address the core cruxes around pivotal acts)
Thanks for this prediction; by default it’s correct! But, my mind could be changed on this. Did you voice this as:
(a) a disappointment (e.g., “Ah, too bad Critch isn’t trying to address pivotal acts here”), or
(b) as an expectation of what I should be aiming for (e.g., “Probably it’s too much to write a sequence about boundaries that’s also trying to address pivotal acts.”)
(c) neither / just a value-neutral prediction?
Oh, I meant: I predict you will write a post comparing boundaries and pivotal acts, but it will be unconvincing to me that boundaries are a particularly key term in how to think about pivotal acts.
Thanks for the suggestion! Maybe I’ll make a T-shaped version someday :)