More generally, in the very early phase of discovery in any field, when nobody has any idea what is going to turn out to be true or fruitful, insiders of a field tend to get bogged down because they have an overly correlated set of ideas. Not only the main ideas (like hypotheses, in science) but also concepts, tools, approaches, analogies, aesthetic preferences, and background knowledge. So a vast effort gets allocated to a tiny corner of the potential search space. This is why cross disciplinary transplants can make outsized contributions.
This is in tension with expertise. Amateurs and beginners by definition lack a lot of existing knowledge. This is a blessing, because they don’t “know” things all the experts “know” incorrectly, and a curse because they also don’t “know” things all the experts know correctly. In a decently rigorous and otherwise productive field, most of what experts know is in the latter category[1].
This leads me to a speculation: the optimal way to tap the potential contributions of field-outsiders is to pair them up with experts, or integrate them into teams of experts. That is a big investment and commitment on both parts, so a prior vetting / recruitment step is needed.
As a first step you can invite such people to participate in high level, big picture conversations on a one time or short term basis. The interaction group has to be big enough that it can accommodate a couple of wild cards, but small enough that it won’t be a huge drag on the experts to have to constantly explain basic things. That said, asking experts to explain things in plain language which they all take for granted as obvious, is often the value added.
The outsider has to be the right sort, though. Smart enough to pick up new ideas quickly; confident enough to ask “dumb” questions or speak up in general; articulate enough to explain their ideas to people outside their own domain of expertise; enough social intelligence to notice when it’s a good time to pipe up vs be quiet, and capacity to self-regulate accordingly. And it takes a certain kind of creativity to be good at recognizing unseen connections or implications.
It isn’t necessarily obvious which other disciplines have the sauce that is missing. Physics and Philosophy are often good bets. But here’s a speculation: anyone who is a seasoned expert in any completely different but rigorous and successful domain is a good bet. (Young folks with a few years in another strong discipline also make great trainees. People who are long-established in a field that is mostly bankrupt are less likely to help than any random person on the street).
So if you are running a workshop or conference or symposium that is not too big, where many of the participants are high-level experts within Alignment, and most others are coming up from within the field, consider allocating a significant budget (in terms of limited attendee slots) to inviting relatively senior people from other disciplines. Worst case, they are lost or bored or contribute useless ideas, and one slot was wasted for a few days. But if they engage well, you have a lot of information about their potential to contribute as a member of a team (hire them, collaborate, invite them to more things), and they have a lot of information about how exciting and important that might be.
Here’s the rub: people who are that senior and that good are busy and get a lot if invitations, and are selective about which to accept. So you may need to make a strong pitch explaining why alignment is an important problem and why you think their particular expertise would be valuable. The low hanging fruit is therefore to invite ones who have already expressed an interest, however tentatively. Invite pretty much all of those.
Disclosure 1: these observations are supported by my reading of history of science, my own experience switching fields, and experience in a leadership role promoting interdisciplinary collaboration in another fledgling research area.
Disclosure 2: these comments are potentially self-serving, speaking as a relatively senior member of an outside discipline who is interested in engaging with the alignment community, but not finding opportunities to engage at this sort of level, despite the widely professed value placed on diverse perspectives.
By the same token, the outsider brings with them a lot of other background knowledge, in quantity proportional to their maturity in the previous field, which is correct in proportion of the rigor of the previous field, and non-overlapping in proportion to the distance of the previous field.
More generally, in the very early phase of discovery in any field, when nobody has any idea what is going to turn out to be true or fruitful, insiders of a field tend to get bogged down because they have an overly correlated set of ideas. Not only the main ideas (like hypotheses, in science) but also concepts, tools, approaches, analogies, aesthetic preferences, and background knowledge. So a vast effort gets allocated to a tiny corner of the potential search space. This is why cross disciplinary transplants can make outsized contributions.
This is in tension with expertise. Amateurs and beginners by definition lack a lot of existing knowledge. This is a blessing, because they don’t “know” things all the experts “know” incorrectly, and a curse because they also don’t “know” things all the experts know correctly. In a decently rigorous and otherwise productive field, most of what experts know is in the latter category[1].
This leads me to a speculation: the optimal way to tap the potential contributions of field-outsiders is to pair them up with experts, or integrate them into teams of experts. That is a big investment and commitment on both parts, so a prior vetting / recruitment step is needed.
As a first step you can invite such people to participate in high level, big picture conversations on a one time or short term basis. The interaction group has to be big enough that it can accommodate a couple of wild cards, but small enough that it won’t be a huge drag on the experts to have to constantly explain basic things. That said, asking experts to explain things in plain language which they all take for granted as obvious, is often the value added.
The outsider has to be the right sort, though. Smart enough to pick up new ideas quickly; confident enough to ask “dumb” questions or speak up in general; articulate enough to explain their ideas to people outside their own domain of expertise; enough social intelligence to notice when it’s a good time to pipe up vs be quiet, and capacity to self-regulate accordingly. And it takes a certain kind of creativity to be good at recognizing unseen connections or implications.
It isn’t necessarily obvious which other disciplines have the sauce that is missing. Physics and Philosophy are often good bets. But here’s a speculation: anyone who is a seasoned expert in any completely different but rigorous and successful domain is a good bet. (Young folks with a few years in another strong discipline also make great trainees. People who are long-established in a field that is mostly bankrupt are less likely to help than any random person on the street).
So if you are running a workshop or conference or symposium that is not too big, where many of the participants are high-level experts within Alignment, and most others are coming up from within the field, consider allocating a significant budget (in terms of limited attendee slots) to inviting relatively senior people from other disciplines. Worst case, they are lost or bored or contribute useless ideas, and one slot was wasted for a few days. But if they engage well, you have a lot of information about their potential to contribute as a member of a team (hire them, collaborate, invite them to more things), and they have a lot of information about how exciting and important that might be.
Here’s the rub: people who are that senior and that good are busy and get a lot if invitations, and are selective about which to accept. So you may need to make a strong pitch explaining why alignment is an important problem and why you think their particular expertise would be valuable. The low hanging fruit is therefore to invite ones who have already expressed an interest, however tentatively. Invite pretty much all of those.
Disclosure 1: these observations are supported by my reading of history of science, my own experience switching fields, and experience in a leadership role promoting interdisciplinary collaboration in another fledgling research area.
Disclosure 2: these comments are potentially self-serving, speaking as a relatively senior member of an outside discipline who is interested in engaging with the alignment community, but not finding opportunities to engage at this sort of level, despite the widely professed value placed on diverse perspectives.
By the same token, the outsider brings with them a lot of other background knowledge, in quantity proportional to their maturity in the previous field, which is correct in proportion of the rigor of the previous field, and non-overlapping in proportion to the distance of the previous field.