Can there be an indescribable hellworld?

A hellworld is ultimately a world that is against our values. However, our values are underdefined and changeable [LW · GW]. So to have any chance of saying what these values are, we need to either extract key invariant values, synthesise our contradictory values [LW · GW] into some complete whole, or use some extrapolation procedure (eg CEV). In any case, there is a procedure for establishing our values (or else the very concept of "hellworld" makes no sense).

It feels worth distinguishing between two cases of "hellworld":

1. A world which is not aligned with the values of that world's inhabitants themselves. One could argue that in order to merit the designation "hellworld", the world has to be out of alignment with the values of its inhabitants in such a way as to cause suffering. Assuming that we can come up with a reasonable definition of suffering, then detecting these kinds of worlds seems relatively straightforward: we can check whether they contain immense amounts of suffering.

2. A world whose inhabitants do not suffer, but which we might consider hellish according to our values. For example, something like a Brave New World scenario, where people generally consider themselves happy but where that happiness comes at the cost of suppressing individuality and promoting superficial pleasures.

It's for detecting an instance of the second case that we need to understand our values better. But it's not clear to me that such a world should qualify as a "hellworld", which to me sounds like a world with negative value. While I don't find the notion of being the inhabitant of a Brave New World particularly appealing, a world where most people are happy but only in a superficial way sounds more like "overall low positive value" than "negative value" to me. Assuming that you've internalized its values and norms, existing in a BNW doesn't seem like a fate worse than death, it just sounds like a future that could have gone better.

Of course, there is an argument that even if a BNW would be okay to its inhabitants once we got there, getting there might cause a lot of suffering: for instance, if there were lots of people who were forced against their will to adapt to the system. Since many of us might find the BNW to be a fate worse than death, then conditional on us surviving to live in the BNW, it's a hellworld (at least to us). But again this doesn't seem like it requires a thorough understanding of our values to detect: it just requires detecting the fact that if we survive to live in the BNW, we will experience a lot of suffering due to being in a world which is contrary to our values.

the set of things that can be described to us without fundamentally changing our values is much smaller still

What's the evidence for this set being "much smaller"?

I think a little more formal definition of "describable" and "summarizable" would help me understand. I start with a belief that any world is it's own best model, so I don't think worlds are describable in full I may be wrong - world-descriptions may compress incredibly well, and it's possible to describe a world IN ANOTHER WORLD. but fully describing a world inside a subset of that world itself cannot be done.

"summarizable" is more interesting. If it just means "a trustworthy valuation", then fine - it's possible, and devolves to "is there any such thing as a trustworthy summarizer". If it means some other subset of a description, then it may or may not be possible.

Maybe the right question here is: is it possible to create more and more strong qualia of pain, or the level of pain is limited.

If maximum level of pain is limited, by, say, 10 of 10, when evil AI have to create complex worlds, like in the story "I have not mouth but I must scream", trying to affect many our values in most unpleasant combination, that is playing anti-music by pressing different values.

If there is no limits to the possible intensity of pain, the evil AI will invest more in upgrading human brain so it will be able to feel more and more pain. In that case there will be no complexity but just growing intensity. One could see this type of hell in the ending of the last Trier movie "The house that Jack built". This type of hell is more disturbing to me.

In the Middle Ages the art of torture existed, and this distinction also existed: some tortures were sophisticated, but other were simple but infinitely intense, like the testicle torture.

Do you think you'd agree with a claim of this form applied to corrigibility of plans/policies/actions?

That is: If some plan/policy/action is uncorrigible, then A can provide some description of how the action is incorrigible.