Thanks for taking the time to highlight these. This is helpful, and shows that I hadn’t quite done my homework in the above characterisation of the difference.
I agree then that the review was at least significantly concerned with theory-building. I had originally read this basket of concerns as more about clarity of communication (which I think is a big issue with MIRI’s work), but I grant that there’s actually quite a lot of overlap between the issues. See also my recent reply to Anna elsewhere in the comment thread.
I like the thoughts of your own at the end. I do think that the value of definitions depends on what you can build on them (although I’m not sure whether “richness” is the right characterisation—it seems that sometimes the right definition makes the correct answer to a question you care about extremely clear, without necessarily any real sophistication in the middle).
I think that work of the type you link to is important, and roughly the type want the majority of work in the next decade to be (disclaimer: I haven’t yet read it carefully). I am still interested in work which tries to build ahead and get us a better theory for systems which are in important ways more powerful than current systems. I think it’s harder to ground this well (basically you’re paying a big nearsightedness penalty), but there’s time-criticality of doing it early if it’s needed to inform swathes of later work.
Here’s my current high-level take on the difference in our perspectives:
There is an ambiguity in whether MIRI’s work is actually useful theory-building that they are just doing a poor job of communicating clearly, or whether it’s not building something useful.
I tend towards giving them the benefit of the doubt / hedging that they are doing something valuable.
The Open Phil review takes a more sceptical position, that if they can’t clearly express the value of the work, maybe there is not so much to it.
Thanks for taking the time to highlight these. This is helpful, and shows that I hadn’t quite done my homework in the above characterisation of the difference.
I agree then that the review was at least significantly concerned with theory-building. I had originally read this basket of concerns as more about clarity of communication (which I think is a big issue with MIRI’s work), but I grant that there’s actually quite a lot of overlap between the issues. See also my recent reply to Anna elsewhere in the comment thread.
I like the thoughts of your own at the end. I do think that the value of definitions depends on what you can build on them (although I’m not sure whether “richness” is the right characterisation—it seems that sometimes the right definition makes the correct answer to a question you care about extremely clear, without necessarily any real sophistication in the middle).
I think that work of the type you link to is important, and roughly the type want the majority of work in the next decade to be (disclaimer: I haven’t yet read it carefully). I am still interested in work which tries to build ahead and get us a better theory for systems which are in important ways more powerful than current systems. I think it’s harder to ground this well (basically you’re paying a big nearsightedness penalty), but there’s time-criticality of doing it early if it’s needed to inform swathes of later work.
Here’s my current high-level take on the difference in our perspectives:
There is an ambiguity in whether MIRI’s work is actually useful theory-building that they are just doing a poor job of communicating clearly, or whether it’s not building something useful.
I tend towards giving them the benefit of the doubt / hedging that they are doing something valuable.
The Open Phil review takes a more sceptical position, that if they can’t clearly express the value of the work, maybe there is not so much to it.