Truth-orientedness is critical, but so is momentum and energy. Dropping this kind of conclusion helps a lot less than giving gears-level clarity on the dynamics that make this very hard, which people need to navigate if they’re trying to make pause work.
My model is that without top-down support from a superpower whose leadership actually gets the reasons why if anyone builds it everyone dies, the dynamic system of civilization does just push onwards to the most economically and strategically important technology in history and opposition gets outmaneuvered, outspent, or crushed. But! Attempts to plant seeds and strategically get ideas into the right places have some slim chance of actually getting someone with the power to halt this race to get the shape of the situation, which is not a “we build it first, ~80% dominance, they build it first ~100% us dying because they won or blew the world up”, but actually “we build it first, we die because we don’t have the alignment tech, same if they do, no we actually have to stop”.
The difference between the ‘seriously understands the gears of what alignment would take and how far current attempts are from succeeding and gets the technical details’ models and the vague washy “well even 10% risk is too high” is absolutely critical for the relevant people to see the EV of the bet they’re taking correctly.
Truth-orientedness is critical, but so is momentum and energy. Dropping this kind of conclusion helps a lot less than giving gears-level clarity on the dynamics that make this very hard, which people need to navigate if they’re trying to make pause work.
My model is that without top-down support from a superpower whose leadership actually gets the reasons why if anyone builds it everyone dies, the dynamic system of civilization does just push onwards to the most economically and strategically important technology in history and opposition gets outmaneuvered, outspent, or crushed. But! Attempts to plant seeds and strategically get ideas into the right places have some slim chance of actually getting someone with the power to halt this race to get the shape of the situation, which is not a “we build it first, ~80% dominance, they build it first ~100% us dying because they won or blew the world up”, but actually “we build it first, we die because we don’t have the alignment tech, same if they do, no we actually have to stop”.
The difference between the ‘seriously understands the gears of what alignment would take and how far current attempts are from succeeding and gets the technical details’ models and the vague washy “well even 10% risk is too high” is absolutely critical for the relevant people to see the EV of the bet they’re taking correctly.