wentworth+lorell’s work is interesting, but so much more has been understood about concepts in even other existing literature than in wentworth+lorell’s work (i’d probably say there are at least 10000 contributions to our understanding of concepts in at least the same tier), with imo most of the work remaining!
Btw if you mean there are 10k contributions already that are on the level of John’s contributions, I strongly disagree with this. I’m not sure whether John’s math is significantly useful, and I don’t think it’s been that much progress relative to “almost on track to maybe solve alignment”, but in terms of (alignment) philosophy John’s work is pretty great compared to academic philosophy.
In terms of general alignment philosophy (not just work on concepts but also other insights), I’d probably put John’s collective works in 3rd place after Eliezer Yudkowsky and Douglas Hofstadter. The latter is on the list mainly because of Surfaces and Essences, which I can recommend (@johnswentworth).
Aka I’d probably put John above people like Wittgenstein, although I admit I don’t know that much about the works of philosophers like Wittgenstein. Could be that there are more insights in the collective works of Wittgenstein, but if I’d need to read through 20x the volume because he doesn’t write clearly enough that’s still a point against him. Even if a lot of John’s insights have been said before somewhere, writing insights clearly provides a lot of value.
Although John’s work on concepts play a smaller role in what I think makes John a good alignment philosopher than it does in his alignment research. Partially I think John just has some great individual posts like science in a high dimensional world, you’re not measuring what you think you’re measuring, why agent foundations (coining the word true names), and probably a couple more less known older ones that I haven’t processed fully yet. And generally his philosophy that you need to figure out the right ontology is good.
But also tbc, this is just alignment philosophy. In terms of alignment research, he’s a bit further down my list, e.g. also behind Paul Christiano and Steven Byrnes.
to clarify a bit: my claim was that there are 10k individuals in history who have contributed at least at the same order of magnitude to our understanding of concepts — like, in terms of pushing human understanding further compared to the state of understanding before their work. we can be interested in understanding what this number is for this reason: it can help us understand whether it’s plausible that this line of inquiry is just about to find some sort of definitive theory of concepts.
(i expect you will still have a meaningfully lower number. i could be convinced it’s more like 1000 but i think it’s very unlikely to be like 100.) i think wentworth is obviously much higher eg if you rank people on publicly displayed alignment understanding, very likely in the top 10
Btw if you mean there are 10k contributions already that are on the level of John’s contributions, I strongly disagree with this. I’m not sure whether John’s math is significantly useful, and I don’t think it’s been that much progress relative to “almost on track to maybe solve alignment”, but in terms of (alignment) philosophy John’s work is pretty great compared to academic philosophy.
In terms of general alignment philosophy (not just work on concepts but also other insights), I’d probably put John’s collective works in 3rd place after Eliezer Yudkowsky and Douglas Hofstadter. The latter is on the list mainly because of Surfaces and Essences, which I can recommend (@johnswentworth).
Aka I’d probably put John above people like Wittgenstein, although I admit I don’t know that much about the works of philosophers like Wittgenstein. Could be that there are more insights in the collective works of Wittgenstein, but if I’d need to read through 20x the volume because he doesn’t write clearly enough that’s still a point against him. Even if a lot of John’s insights have been said before somewhere, writing insights clearly provides a lot of value.
Although John’s work on concepts play a smaller role in what I think makes John a good alignment philosopher than it does in his alignment research. Partially I think John just has some great individual posts like science in a high dimensional world, you’re not measuring what you think you’re measuring, why agent foundations (coining the word true names), and probably a couple more less known older ones that I haven’t processed fully yet. And generally his philosophy that you need to figure out the right ontology is good.
But also tbc, this is just alignment philosophy. In terms of alignment research, he’s a bit further down my list, e.g. also behind Paul Christiano and Steven Byrnes.
to clarify a bit: my claim was that there are 10k individuals in history who have contributed at least at the same order of magnitude to our understanding of concepts — like, in terms of pushing human understanding further compared to the state of understanding before their work. we can be interested in understanding what this number is for this reason: it can help us understand whether it’s plausible that this line of inquiry is just about to find some sort of definitive theory of concepts. (i expect you will still have a meaningfully lower number. i could be convinced it’s more like 1000 but i think it’s very unlikely to be like 100.) i think wentworth is obviously much higher eg if you rank people on publicly displayed alignment understanding, very likely in the top 10