Broadly, I think there are two cases of problems with coordination:
Two people/groups genuinely agree to honest, rigorous exchange of information, but can’t effectively coordinate.
Someone is withholding information or doesn’t really want to coordinate in the first place.
This does not comprehensively cover all coordination problems. I wouldn’t actually call “doesn’t want to coordinate in the first place” a coordination problem, but given that you have called it that, you would probably also call a coordination problem a situation where two people are communicating in a very incompetent/non-reflective/non-self-conscious manner, constantly getting annoyed/retaliating that the other is not doing what they think they should be doing but they’ve never taken time to communicate it clearly. They want to coordinate, they’re not (intentionally[1]) withholding information, but there is no mutual agreement to “honest, rigorous exchange of information”, because they have a skill issue.
¿Did you mean to partition it into something like: (1) coordination-relevant information flows properly between the parties, but the parties cannot properly act upon that information (for whatever reason: skill issues, intelligence issues, [the situation sucks and we realistically can’t do much] issues); (2) coordination-relevant information doesn’t flow properly, so even if they are in a position to coordinate if informed, they can’t, because they’re not informed.
I should note that the post was somewhat hastily written – I agree that my categorization was not comprehensive, and yours is probably better.
I was mainly trying to point at a dynamic I see often online where influential voices present arguments regarding AI risk that completely ignore years of back-and-forth discussion on similar topics, but whose positions are interpreted as the “forefront” of the debate – leading to offshoot discussions that again, miss years of relevant literature and discourse. I think this leads to, among other things, Eliezer frequently “losing it” on X/Twitter over people apparently misunderstanding something he wrote about in detail 20 years ago.
Community Notes on X/Twitter are sometimes regarded as a major improvement to collective epistemics, but I think there is a lot of room for improvement with tools that “situate” current discussions within previous ones.
But yes, I am describing a somewhat vague and imprecise problem here, so it may be difficult to categorize or pin it down with certainty.
This does not comprehensively cover all coordination problems. I wouldn’t actually call “doesn’t want to coordinate in the first place” a coordination problem, but given that you have called it that, you would probably also call a coordination problem a situation where two people are communicating in a very incompetent/non-reflective/non-self-conscious manner, constantly getting annoyed/retaliating that the other is not doing what they think they should be doing but they’ve never taken time to communicate it clearly. They want to coordinate, they’re not (intentionally[1]) withholding information, but there is no mutual agreement to “honest, rigorous exchange of information”, because they have a skill issue.
¿Did you mean to partition it into something like: (1) coordination-relevant information flows properly between the parties, but the parties cannot properly act upon that information (for whatever reason: skill issues, intelligence issues, [the situation sucks and we realistically can’t do much] issues); (2) coordination-relevant information doesn’t flow properly, so even if they are in a position to coordinate if informed, they can’t, because they’re not informed.
but I think the word “withhold” connotes some significant amount of intention regardless
Apologies for the delayed response.
I should note that the post was somewhat hastily written – I agree that my categorization was not comprehensive, and yours is probably better.
I was mainly trying to point at a dynamic I see often online where influential voices present arguments regarding AI risk that completely ignore years of back-and-forth discussion on similar topics, but whose positions are interpreted as the “forefront” of the debate – leading to offshoot discussions that again, miss years of relevant literature and discourse. I think this leads to, among other things, Eliezer frequently “losing it” on X/Twitter over people apparently misunderstanding something he wrote about in detail 20 years ago.
Community Notes on X/Twitter are sometimes regarded as a major improvement to collective epistemics, but I think there is a lot of room for improvement with tools that “situate” current discussions within previous ones.
But yes, I am describing a somewhat vague and imprecise problem here, so it may be difficult to categorize or pin it down with certainty.