This article talks about multi-level models, where you somehow switch between cheaper models and more-accurate models depending on your needs. Would it be useful to generalize this idea to switching between multiple “same-level” models that are differentiated by something other than cheap vs. accurate?
For example, one might have one model that groups individual people together into “families”, another that groups them into “organizations”, and a third that groups them into “ideologies”. None of those models seems to be strictly “higher” than another (e.g. neither families nor ideologies are composed of each other), and different models might be useful for different problems.
One could also imagine combining all of those into one unified model, of course. But it might be wasteful to model all of them for problems where you only really care about one.
I feel like humans do something like this.
If multiple “same-level” models can coexist, then one strategy for holding onto your values while inventing new models might be to always hold onto whichever model the values were originally defined in, even if you add more models alongside it.
This article talks about multi-level models, where you somehow switch between cheaper models and more-accurate models depending on your needs. Would it be useful to generalize this idea to switching between multiple “same-level” models that are differentiated by something other than cheap vs. accurate?
For example, one might have one model that groups individual people together into “families”, another that groups them into “organizations”, and a third that groups them into “ideologies”. None of those models seems to be strictly “higher” than another (e.g. neither families nor ideologies are composed of each other), and different models might be useful for different problems.
One could also imagine combining all of those into one unified model, of course. But it might be wasteful to model all of them for problems where you only really care about one.
I feel like humans do something like this.
If multiple “same-level” models can coexist, then one strategy for holding onto your values while inventing new models might be to always hold onto whichever model the values were originally defined in, even if you add more models alongside it.