Exactly. This is a detailed metaphor built up of several parts for the same thing as the shoggoth and its mask is a unitary metaphor for. Our aim was, by breaking the metaphor into individual parts (along simulator theory lines), to better illuminate what’s going on. Especially the fact that an LLM (even an instruct trained one) is not just a single mentality/agent with a single fixed set of motivations – something that in the shoggoth metaphor was implicit only in it having a lot of eyes – and which a number of people on LW often seem to forget.
Exactly. This is a detailed metaphor built up of several parts for the same thing as the shoggoth and its mask is a unitary metaphor for. Our aim was, by breaking the metaphor into individual parts (along simulator theory lines), to better illuminate what’s going on. Especially the fact that an LLM (even an instruct trained one) is not just a single mentality/agent with a single fixed set of motivations – something that in the shoggoth metaphor was implicit only in it having a lot of eyes – and which a number of people on LW often seem to forget.