I think the meaning of “distillation” is used differently by different people, and this confuses me. Originally (based on John Wentworth’s post) I thought that “distillation” meant:
“Take existing ideas from a single existing work (or from a particular person) and present them in a way that is more understandable or more concise.”
But then you give these examples in your curriculum:
Bushwackers:
Explain how a sharp left turn would look like in current ML paradigms
Explain the connection between Agent Foundations and ELK
Rosetta Scribes
Interpretability research → Chaos Theory → Interpretability research
Content extrapolation → Causality theory (causal inference)
e.t.c - open-ended and lose format, what field to translate to is probably very dependent on the problem
Field Mapping
Map out the timelines to AGI and identify the intersections and state the arguments for why we will go one down one road vs the other at each intersection
Systematically investigate the field with a set of assumptions about the road ahead and look at what research methodologies past the test (like Nate Soares did for MIRIs arguments about a sharp left turn.)
Other research methodology that elucidates where we should be going
Do market research with AI policy people and rewrite alignment problems in ways that think tanks and government officials understand.
Created targeted outreach material for ML engineers.
Trailblazers
Explain every concept in AI alignment using QCD?
Come up with new ways of doing distillations here?
It seems like you mean something more like:
“Write something understandable that presents ideas in an intuitive way and possibly draws from many different works”
But in that case, I am not sure how this is different from “conceptual research where you try hard to present your work in an understandable way.” In which case, the meaning of “distillation” has become hopelessly stretched.
Could you include a clear definition of “distillation,” such that it includes clear examples of what is and isn’t considered a distillation? I would ask you to write a distillation of what a distillation is, but I don’t know if I’d be using the term distillation correctly.
First and foremost, my confidence in the descriptions of different distillation methods is pretty low. It is a framework I’ve thrown together from discussions on what an optimal science communication landscape would look like. It is in its initial phases and will most likely be imperfect for quite some time as finding the optimal communication landscape is a difficult problem.
Secondly, Great point! I think that my thinking of it, is as a “reinterpretation of existing research.” The basic way of doing this is rewriting a post for higher clarity which is the classical way that a distillation is viewed from.
I think there are more ways of doing this and that the space is underexplored. In terms of the terminology proposed in the course, a “classic” distillation is some combination of what I would describe as propagating and bushwacking.
Bushwacking would be more something like asking, “what the f*ck is going on here?” which might be relevant for things such as infra-bayesianism (I want to learn infra-bayesianism can someone please bushwack this).
Propagating would be more of what Rob Miles is doing.
So what is distillation? What is the superclass of all of these?
I would phrase it like the following “A distillation is a work that takes existing research and reinterprets it in a new light.”
Finally, a meta point in defence of the introduction of new jargon. I think the term distillation is confusing in itself as it can mean a lot of things, and therefore if you say, “I’m bushwhacking this post” you get the idea that “ah, this person is cutting down the weeds of what is a confusing post”. I hope to introduce new methodology so it is easier to understand what type of distillation someone is doing. (I don’t think this terminology is optimal, but it’s a start in the right direction IMO.)
I think the meaning of “distillation” is used differently by different people, and this confuses me. Originally (based on John Wentworth’s post) I thought that “distillation” meant:
“Take existing ideas from a single existing work (or from a particular person) and present them in a way that is more understandable or more concise.”
That’s also the definition seemingly used by the Distillation Contest.
But then you give these examples in your curriculum:
It seems like you mean something more like:
“Write something understandable that presents ideas in an intuitive way and possibly draws from many different works”
But in that case, I am not sure how this is different from “conceptual research where you try hard to present your work in an understandable way.” In which case, the meaning of “distillation” has become hopelessly stretched.
Could you include a clear definition of “distillation,” such that it includes clear examples of what is and isn’t considered a distillation? I would ask you to write a distillation of what a distillation is, but I don’t know if I’d be using the term distillation correctly.
First and foremost, my confidence in the descriptions of different distillation methods is pretty low. It is a framework I’ve thrown together from discussions on what an optimal science communication landscape would look like. It is in its initial phases and will most likely be imperfect for quite some time as finding the optimal communication landscape is a difficult problem.
Secondly, Great point! I think that my thinking of it, is as a “reinterpretation of existing research.” The basic way of doing this is rewriting a post for higher clarity which is the classical way that a distillation is viewed from.
I think there are more ways of doing this and that the space is underexplored. In terms of the terminology proposed in the course, a “classic” distillation is some combination of what I would describe as propagating and bushwacking.
Bushwacking would be more something like asking, “what the f*ck is going on here?” which might be relevant for things such as infra-bayesianism (I want to learn infra-bayesianism can someone please bushwack this).
Propagating would be more of what Rob Miles is doing.
So what is distillation? What is the superclass of all of these?
I would phrase it like the following “A distillation is a work that takes existing research and reinterprets it in a new light.”
Finally, a meta point in defence of the introduction of new jargon. I think the term distillation is confusing in itself as it can mean a lot of things, and therefore if you say, “I’m bushwhacking this post” you get the idea that “ah, this person is cutting down the weeds of what is a confusing post”. I hope to introduce new methodology so it is easier to understand what type of distillation someone is doing. (I don’t think this terminology is optimal, but it’s a start in the right direction IMO.)
You might be interested in this post.