It does seem like you’re likely to be more careful in the future
Yes, I am more selective now in what I put out on the forums.
In part, because I am having more one-on-one calls with (established) researchers. I find there is much more space to clarify and paraphrase that way.
On the forums, certain write-ups seem to draw dismissive comments. Some combination of: (a) is not written by a friend or big name researcher. (b) requires some new counterintuitive reasoning steps. (c) leads to some unfavoured conclusion.
For any two of those, writing can be hard but still doable.
big name writes up counterintuitive reasoning toward an unfavoured conclusion.
unfamiliar person writes up counterintuitive reasoning toward a favoured conclusion.
unfamiliar person writes up obvious reasoning toward an unfavoured conclusion.
In my case, for most readers it looks like:
unfamiliar person writes up counterintuitive reasoning toward an unfavoured conclusion.
There are just so many ways that can go wrong. The ways I tried to pre-empt it failed.
clarifying why alternatives to alignment make sense
Looking back: I should have just held off until I managed to write one explainer (this one) that folks in my circles did not find extremely unintuitive.
Good that you raised this concern.
Yes, I am more selective now in what I put out on the forums.
In part, because I am having more one-on-one calls with (established) researchers.
I find there is much more space to clarify and paraphrase that way.
On the forums, certain write-ups seem to draw dismissive comments.
Some combination of:
(a) is not written by a friend or big name researcher.
(b) requires some new counterintuitive reasoning steps.
(c) leads to some unfavoured conclusion.
For any two of those, writing can be hard but still doable.
big name writes up counterintuitive reasoning toward an unfavoured conclusion.
unfamiliar person writes up counterintuitive reasoning toward a favoured conclusion.
unfamiliar person writes up obvious reasoning toward an unfavoured conclusion.
In my case, for most readers it looks like:
unfamiliar person writes up counterintuitive reasoning toward an unfavoured conclusion.
There are just so many ways that can go wrong. The ways I tried to pre-empt it failed.
Ie.
posting a sequence with familiar concepts to make the outside researcher more known to the community
cautioning against jumping to judgements
clarifying why alternatives to alignment make sense
Looking back: I should have just held off until I managed to write one explainer (this one) that folks in my circles did not find extremely unintuitive.