Are there any particular lessons/ideas from Refine that you expect (or hope) SERI MATS to incorporate?
I have shared some of my models related to epistemology and key questions to MATS organizers, and I think they’re supposed to be integrated in one of the future programs. Mostly things regarding realizing the importance of productive mistakes in science (which naturally pushes back a bit from the mentoring aspect of MATS) and understanding how less “clean” most scientific progress actually look like historically (with a basic reading list from the history of science).
From the impression I have, they are also now trying to give participants some broader perspective about the field, in addition to the specific frame of the mentor, and a bunch of the lessons from Refine about how to build a good model of the alignment problem apply.
On a more general level, I expect that I had enough discussions with them that they would naturally ask me for feedback if they thought of something that seemed Refine shaped or similar.
2. Do you think there’s now a hole in the space that someone should consider filling (by making Refine 2.0), or do you expect that much of the value of Refine will be covered by SERI MATS [and other programs]?
Hum, intuitively the main value from Refine that I don’t expect to be covered by future MATS would come from reaching out to very different profiles. There’s a non-negligeable chance that PIBBSS manages to make that work though, so not clear that it’s a problem.
Note that this is also part of why Refine feels less useful: when I conceived of it, most of these programs either didn’t exist or were not well-established. Part of the frustration came from having nothing IRL for non-american to join, and just no program spending a significant amount of time on conceptual alignment, which both MATS and PIBBSS (in addition to other programs like ARENA) are now fixing. Which I think is great!
Thanks for the kind words!
I have shared some of my models related to epistemology and key questions to MATS organizers, and I think they’re supposed to be integrated in one of the future programs. Mostly things regarding realizing the importance of productive mistakes in science (which naturally pushes back a bit from the mentoring aspect of MATS) and understanding how less “clean” most scientific progress actually look like historically (with a basic reading list from the history of science).
From the impression I have, they are also now trying to give participants some broader perspective about the field, in addition to the specific frame of the mentor, and a bunch of the lessons from Refine about how to build a good model of the alignment problem apply.
On a more general level, I expect that I had enough discussions with them that they would naturally ask me for feedback if they thought of something that seemed Refine shaped or similar.
Hum, intuitively the main value from Refine that I don’t expect to be covered by future MATS would come from reaching out to very different profiles. There’s a non-negligeable chance that PIBBSS manages to make that work though, so not clear that it’s a problem.
Note that this is also part of why Refine feels less useful: when I conceived of it, most of these programs either didn’t exist or were not well-established. Part of the frustration came from having nothing IRL for non-american to join, and just no program spending a significant amount of time on conceptual alignment, which both MATS and PIBBSS (in addition to other programs like ARENA) are now fixing. Which I think is great!