I validate this as a nonfake alignment research direction that seems important.
If he viewed almost all alignment work as nonfake, it wouldn’t be worth noting in his praise of RR. I bring this up because “EY thinks most alignment work is fake” seems to me to be a non-crazy takeaway from the post, even if it’s not true.
(I also think that “totally unpromising” is the normal way to express “approaches that are being taken mostly have epsilon probability of creating meaningful progress”, not “fake.”)
It’s not like this is the first time Eliezer has said “fake”, either:
If he viewed almost all alignment work as nonfake, it wouldn’t be worth noting in his praise of RR. I bring this up because “EY thinks most alignment work is fake” seems to me to be a non-crazy takeaway from the post, even if it’s not true.
(I also think that “totally unpromising” is the normal way to express “approaches that are being taken mostly have epsilon probability of creating meaningful progress”, not “fake.”)