Thanks for these points! I like the rephrasing of it as ‘levers’ or pathways, thosea re also good.
A downside of the term ‘strategic perspective’ is certainly that it implies that you need to ‘pick one’, that a categorical choice needs to be made amongst them. However:
-it is clearly possible to combine and work across a number of these perspectives simultaneously, so they’re not mutually exclusive in terms of interventions;
-in fact, under existing uncertainty over TAI timelines and governance conditions (i.e. parameters), it is probably preferable to pursue such a portfolio approach, rather than adopt any one perspective as the ‘consensus one’.
still, as tamgent notes, this mostly owes to our current uncertainty: once you start to take stronger positions on (or assign certain probabilities to) particular scenarios, not all of these pathways are an equally good investment of resources
-indeed, some of these approaches will likely entail actions that will stand in tension to one another’s interventions (e.g. Anticipatory perspectives would recommend talking explicitly about AGI to policymakers; some versions of Path-setting, Network-building, or Pivotal Engineering would prefer to avoid that (for different reasons). A partisan perspective would prefer actions that might align the community with one actor; that might stand in tension to actions taken by a Coalitional (or multilateral Path-setting) perspectives; etc.).
I do agree that the ‘Perspectives’ framing may be too suggestive of an exclusive, coherent position that people in this space must take, when what I mean is more a loosely coherent cluster of views.
--
@tamgent “it seems hard to span more than two beliefs next to each other on any axis as an individual to me” could you clarify what you meant by this?
Sorry more like a finite budget and proportions, not probabilities.
Sure, of course. I just don’t think that looks like adopting a particular perspective.
Thanks for these points! I like the rephrasing of it as ‘levers’ or pathways, thosea re also good.
A downside of the term ‘strategic perspective’ is certainly that it implies that you need to ‘pick one’, that a categorical choice needs to be made amongst them. However:
-it is clearly possible to combine and work across a number of these perspectives simultaneously, so they’re not mutually exclusive in terms of interventions; -in fact, under existing uncertainty over TAI timelines and governance conditions (i.e. parameters), it is probably preferable to pursue such a portfolio approach, rather than adopt any one perspective as the ‘consensus one’.
still, as tamgent notes, this mostly owes to our current uncertainty: once you start to take stronger positions on (or assign certain probabilities to) particular scenarios, not all of these pathways are an equally good investment of resources -indeed, some of these approaches will likely entail actions that will stand in tension to one another’s interventions (e.g. Anticipatory perspectives would recommend talking explicitly about AGI to policymakers; some versions of Path-setting, Network-building, or Pivotal Engineering would prefer to avoid that (for different reasons). A partisan perspective would prefer actions that might align the community with one actor; that might stand in tension to actions taken by a Coalitional (or multilateral Path-setting) perspectives; etc.).
I do agree that the ‘Perspectives’ framing may be too suggestive of an exclusive, coherent position that people in this space must take, when what I mean is more a loosely coherent cluster of views.
--
@tamgent “it seems hard to span more than two beliefs next to each other on any axis as an individual to me” could you clarify what you meant by this?