I agree that publishing results of the form “it turns out that X can be done, though we won’t say how we did it” is clearly better than publishing your full results, but I think it’s much more harmful than publishing nothing in a world where other people are still doing capabilities research.
This is because it seems to me that knowing something is possible is often a first step to understanding how. This is especially true if you have any understanding of where this researcher or organisation were looking before publishing this result.
I also think there are worlds where it’s importantly harmful to too openly critique capabilities research, but I lean towards not thinking we are in this world, and think the tone of this post is a pretty good model for how this should look going forwards. +1!
I agree that publishing results of the form “it turns out that X can be done, though we won’t say how we did it” is clearly better than publishing your full results, but I think it’s much more harmful than publishing nothing in a world where other people are still doing capabilities research.
This is because it seems to me that knowing something is possible is often a first step to understanding how. This is especially true if you have any understanding of where this researcher or organisation were looking before publishing this result.
I also think there are worlds where it’s importantly harmful to too openly critique capabilities research, but I lean towards not thinking we are in this world, and think the tone of this post is a pretty good model for how this should look going forwards. +1!
Thanks, Brook! I agree that “it turns out that X can be done” can accelerate others a lot.