Conversely, a high school student who wants to be the CEO of a major company is so far away from their goal that it’s hard to think of them as controlling their path towards it. Instead, they first need to select between plans for becoming such a CEO based on how likely each plan is to succeed.
I think this (and your dancer example) still qualifies as control in @abramdemski’s framework, since the student only gets to choose one possible career to actually do.
The selection—control axis is about the size of the generalization gap you have to cross with a world model. An example of something more selection-ish would be a dancer learning half a dozen dances, running through them in front of his coach, and having the coach say which one she liked best. In this case we’re only crossing a gap between the coach’s preferences and a competition judge’s preferences.
Choosing in advance which dance to learn still counts as control because you have to model things like your own skill level in advance.
I think this (and your dancer example) still qualifies as control in @abramdemski’s framework, since the student only gets to choose one possible career to actually do.
The selection—control axis is about the size of the generalization gap you have to cross with a world model. An example of something more selection-ish would be a dancer learning half a dozen dances, running through them in front of his coach, and having the coach say which one she liked best. In this case we’re only crossing a gap between the coach’s preferences and a competition judge’s preferences.
Choosing in advance which dance to learn still counts as control because you have to model things like your own skill level in advance.