That is a surprising reading to me. I always assumed it was named for the veryRoadrunner & Coyote looking hills with steep escarpments. It seems like it’s real meaning is closer to the Greek adverb for things which are “in” (i.e. Mesangium, Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica). Thus an optimizer within the range of the base model.
Mesa- is a Greek prefix which means the opposite of meta-. To “go meta” is to go one level up; to “go mesa” is to go one level down (nobody has ever actually used this expression, sorry). So a mesa-optimizer is an optimizer one level down from you. (c.) Scott Alexander
But I first encountered this reading in a Rob Miles’ video. However, Rob’s slides actually show that it’s not valid Greek and the prefix literal meaning is different. (Though there’s also some non-AI paper which conceptualizes meta/mesa as opposites.) But I forgot/didn’t notice. And the original post does point out the prefix’ literal meaning too.
When I googled around before making the shortform, I found this stackexchange post where people argue what should be the opposite of meta and this reddit post.
That is a surprising reading to me. I always assumed it was named for the very Roadrunner & Coyote looking hills with steep escarpments. It seems like it’s real meaning is closer to the Greek adverb for things which are “in” (i.e. Mesangium, Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica). Thus an optimizer within the range of the base model.
Oops! Sorry, I ended up rediscovering America.
But I first encountered this reading in a Rob Miles’ video. However, Rob’s slides actually show that it’s not valid Greek and the prefix literal meaning is different. (Though there’s also some non-AI paper which conceptualizes meta/mesa as opposites.) But I forgot/didn’t notice. And the original post does point out the prefix’ literal meaning too.
When I googled around before making the shortform, I found this stackexchange post where people argue what should be the opposite of meta and this reddit post.