I guess in my takeaway from the post (haven’t reread since yesterday), the thrust was like: non-deception, corrigibility etc probably don’t have ‘true names’, because they’re concepts fundamentally attached to a fake ontology. In particular, non-causal vitalistic free will sort of things.
Not exactly … What I had in mind overall was more like: the discussion of human intuitions in §2 “sets the stage” by (A) providing some brainstorming aid and grounding as we embark on the Quest for a True Name For Manipulation in §3–§4; and §2 also “sets the stage” by (2) seeding the idea that we should at least be open to the possibility of such a True Name not existing at all, rather than it being an obvious thing, like how I know that a sock exists even if I don’t how to mathematically define it, because I have an intuitive notion of a sock and it’s all-but-certain that this intuitive notion can in principle be formalized into some real-world notion of sock-ness. Whereas for manipulation, maybe it can be construed as pointing to something real, or maybe it can’t, but I think it’s important to be in a mindset where this is not obvious, like it is for socks.
Then the alignment-relevant meat of the post is §3–§4, along with further discussion in §5.
Sorry if I wrote things up in a confusing way, but I’m not seeing an obvious way to improve it right now.
Not exactly … What I had in mind overall was more like: the discussion of human intuitions in §2 “sets the stage” by (A) providing some brainstorming aid and grounding as we embark on the Quest for a True Name For Manipulation in §3–§4; and §2 also “sets the stage” by (2) seeding the idea that we should at least be open to the possibility of such a True Name not existing at all, rather than it being an obvious thing, like how I know that a sock exists even if I don’t how to mathematically define it, because I have an intuitive notion of a sock and it’s all-but-certain that this intuitive notion can in principle be formalized into some real-world notion of sock-ness. Whereas for manipulation, maybe it can be construed as pointing to something real, or maybe it can’t, but I think it’s important to be in a mindset where this is not obvious, like it is for socks.
Then the alignment-relevant meat of the post is §3–§4, along with further discussion in §5.
Sorry if I wrote things up in a confusing way, but I’m not seeing an obvious way to improve it right now.
I think I see. That’s all good! I for one appreciate this clarification here.