It’s encouraging to see more emphasis recently on the political and public-facing aspects of alignment. We are living in a far-better-than-worst-case world where people, including powerful ones, are open to being convinced. They just need to be taught—to have it explained to them intuitively.
It seems cached beliefs produced by works like you get about five words have led to a passive, unspoken attitude among many informed people that attempting to explain anything complicated is futile. It isn’t futile. It’s just difficult.
I think “you get about five words” is mostly right… It’s just that it’s “five words per message”, not “five words on the issue, total”. You have to explain in short bursts, but you can keep building on your previous explanations.
It’s encouraging to see more emphasis recently on the political and public-facing aspects of alignment. We are living in a far-better-than-worst-case world where people, including powerful ones, are open to being convinced. They just need to be taught—to have it explained to them intuitively.
It seems cached beliefs produced by works like you get about five words have led to a passive, unspoken attitude among many informed people that attempting to explain anything complicated is futile. It isn’t futile. It’s just difficult.
I think “you get about five words” is mostly right… It’s just that it’s “five words per message”, not “five words on the issue, total”. You have to explain in short bursts, but you can keep building on your previous explanations.