The funny thing I feel when reading this post is that I’ve had thoughts about this sort of cycle before—I think not the exact mirror cycle you’re talking about, but similar fixed-points of ping-ponging taste-shaping—but they weren’t framed as “how do we avoid this as a trap” so much as “what if that class of system and its basins are the figure that ‘humanity’ (or some relevant subset?) effectively cares about, and the grounding in some other reality is mainly ‘useful’ for edge constraints and random perturbations”.
The funny thing I feel when reading this post is that I’ve had thoughts about this sort of cycle before—I think not the exact mirror cycle you’re talking about, but similar fixed-points of ping-ponging taste-shaping—but they weren’t framed as “how do we avoid this as a trap” so much as “what if that class of system and its basins are the figure that ‘humanity’ (or some relevant subset?) effectively cares about, and the grounding in some other reality is mainly ‘useful’ for edge constraints and random perturbations”.