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.
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.