Making a conservative case for alignment

post by Cameron Berg (cameron-berg), Judd Rosenblatt (judd), phgubbins, AE Studio (AEStudio) · 2024-11-15T18:55:40.864Z · LW · GW · 67 comments

Contents

  AI-not-disempowering-humanity is conservative in the most fundamental sense
  We've been laying the groundwork for alignment policy in a Republican-controlled government
  Trump and some of his closest allies have signaled that they are genuinely concerned about AI risk
  Avoiding an AI-induced catastrophe is obviously not a partisan goal
  Winning the AI race with China requires leading on both capabilities and safety
  Concluding thought
None
67 comments

Trump and the Republican party will wield broad governmental control during what will almost certainly be a critical period for AGI development. In this post, we want to briefly share various frames and ideas we’ve been thinking through and actively pitching to Republican lawmakers over the past months in preparation for the possibility of a Trump win.

Why are we sharing this here? Given that >98% of the EAs and alignment researchers we surveyed [LW · GW] earlier this year identified as everything-other-than-conservative, we consider thinking through these questions to be another strategically worthwhile neglected [LW · GW] direction. 

(Along these lines, we also want to proactively emphasize that politics is the mind-killer [LW · GW], and that, regardless of one’s ideological convictions, those who earnestly care about alignment must take seriously the possibility that Trump will be the US president who presides over the emergence of AGI—and update accordingly in light of this possibility.)

Political orientation: combined sample of (non-alignment) EAs and alignment researchers

AI-not-disempowering-humanity is conservative in the most fundamental sense

We've been laying the groundwork for alignment policy in a Republican-controlled government

Trump and some of his closest allies have signaled that they are genuinely concerned about AI risk

Avoiding an AI-induced catastrophe is obviously not a partisan goal

Winning the AI race with China requires leading on both capabilities and safety

Many of these ideas seem significantly more plausible to us in a world where negative alignment taxes [LW · GW] materialize—that is, where alignment techniques are discovered that render systems more capable by virtue of their alignment properties. It seems quite safe to bet that significant positive alignment taxes simply will not be tolerated by the incoming federal Republican-led government—the attractor state of more capable AI will simply be too strong. Given that alignment must still proceed, uncovering strategies that make systems reliably safer (critical for x-risk) and more competent (current attractor state) may nudge the AGI-possibility-space away from existentially risky outcomes.

Concluding thought

We are operating under the assumption that plans have to be recomputed when the board state meaningfully shifts [LW(p) · GW(p)], and Trump’s return to power is no exception to this rule. We are re-entering a high-variance political environment, which may well come to be viewed in hindsight as having afforded the optimal political conditions for pursuing, funding, and scaling high-quality alignment work. This moment presents a unique opportunity for alignment progress if we can all work effectively across political lines.

  1. ^

     We suspect there is also an emerging false dichotomy between alignment and open-source development. In fact, open-source practices have been instrumental in advancing various forms of alignment research, with many of the field's biggest breakthroughs occurring after the advent of open-source AI models. Beren's caveat and conclusion both seem sensible here: 

    Thus, until the point at which open source models are directly pushing the capabilities frontier themselves then I consider it extremely unlikely that releasing and working on these models is net-negative for humanity (ignoring potential opportunity cost which is hard to quantify). 

  2. ^

     To this end, we note that Marc Andreesen-style thinkers don't have to be antagonists to AI alignment—in fact, he and others have the potential to be supportive funders of alignment efforts.

  3. ^

     Initially, we felt disinclined to advocate in DC for neglected approaches because it happens to be exactly what we are doing at AE Studio. However, we received feedback to be more direct about it, and we're glad we did—it has proven to be not only technically promising but also resonated surprisingly well with conservatives, especially when coupled with ideas around negative alignment taxes and increased economic competitiveness. At AE, we began this approach in early 2023, refined our ideas, and have already seen more [LW · GWencouraging [LW · GWresults [LW · GW] than initially expected.

  4. ^

     It’s important to note that anything along these lines coming from the CCP must be taken with a few grains of salt—but we’ve spoken with quite a few China policy experts who do seem to believe that Xi genuinely cares about safety.

67 comments

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comment by Akash (akash-wasil) · 2024-11-15T20:35:31.232Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I agree with many points here and have been excited about AE Studio's outreach. Quick thoughts on China/international AI governance:

  • I think some international AI governance proposals have some sort of "kum ba yah, we'll all just get along" flavor/tone to them, or some sort of "we should do this because it's best for the world as a whole" vibe. This isn't even Dem-coded so much as it is naive-coded, especially in DC circles.
  • US foreign policy is dominated primarily by concerns about US interests. Other considerations can matter, but they are not the dominant driving force. My impression is that this is true within both parties (with a few exceptions).
  • I think folks interested in international AI governance should study international security agreements and try to get a better understanding of relevant historical case studies. Lots of stuff to absorb from the Cold War, the Iran Nuclear Deal, US-China relations over the last several decades, etc. (I've been doing this & have found it quite helpful.)
  • Strong Republican leaders can still engage in bilateral/multilateral agreements that serve US interests. Recall that Reagan negotiated arms control agreements with the Soviet Union, and the (first) Trump Administration facilitated the Abraham Accords. Being "tough on China" doesn't mean "there are literally no circumstances in which I would be willing to sign a deal with China." (But there likely does have to be a clear case that the deal serves US interests, has appropriate verification methods, etc.)
Replies from: Algon, Matrice Jacobine
comment by Algon · 2024-11-16T17:02:49.158Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I think some international AI governance proposals have some sort of "kum ba yah, we'll all just get along" flavor/tone to them, or some sort of "we should do this because it's best for the world as a whole" vibe. This isn't even Dem-coded so much as it is naive-coded, especially in DC circles.

This inspired me to write a silly dialogue. 

Simplicio enters. An engine rumbles like the thunder of the gods, as Sophistico focuses on ensuring his MAGMA-O1 racecar will go as fast as possible.

Simplicio: "You shouldn't play Chicken."

Sophistico: "Why not?"

Simplicio: "Because you're both worse off?"

Sophistico, chortling, pats Simplicio's shoulder

Sophistico: "Oh dear, sweet, naive Simplicio! Don't you know that no one cares about what's 'better for everyone?' It's every man out for himself! Really, if you were in charge, Simplicio, you'd be drowned like a bag of mewling kittens."

Simplicio: "Are you serious? You're really telling me that you'd prefer to play a game where you and Galactico hurtle towards each other on tonnes of iron, desperately hoping the other will turn first?"

Sophistico: "Oh Simplicio, don't you understand? If it were up to me, I wouldn't be playing this game. But if I back out or turn first, Galactico gets to call me a Chicken, and say his brain is much larger than mine. Think of the harm that would do to the United Sophist Association! "
 

Simplicio: "Or you could die when you both ram your cars into each other! Think of the harm that would do to you! Think of how Galactico is in the same position as you! "

Sophistico shakes his head sadly. 

Sophistico: "Ah, I see! You must believe steering is a very hard problem. But don't you understand that this is simply a matter of engineering? No matter how close Galactico and I get to the brink, we'll have time to turn before we crash! Sure, there's some minute danger that we might make a mistake in the razor-thin slice between utter safety and certain doom. But the probability of harm is small enough that it doesn't change the calculus."

Simplicio: "You're not getting it. Your race against each other will shift the dynamics of when you'll turn. Each moment in time, you'll be incentivized to go just a little further until there's few enough worlds that that razor-thin slice ain't so thin any more. And your steering won't save from that. It can't. "

Sophistico: "What an argument! There's no way our steering won't be good enough. Look, I can turn away from Galactico's car right now, can't I? And I hardly think we'd push things till so late. We'd be able to turn in time. And moreover, we've never crashed before, so why should this time be any different?"

Simplico: "You've doubled the horsepower of your car and literally tied a rock to the pedal! You're not going to be able to stop in time!"

Sophistico: "Well, of course I have to go faster than last time! USA must be first, you know?"

Simplicio: "OK, you know what? Fine. I'll go talk to Galactico. I'm sure he'll agree not to call you chicken."

Sophistico: "That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Galactico's ruthless and will do anything to beat me."

Simplicio leaves as Acceleratio arrives with a barrel of jetfuel for the scramjet engine he hooked up to Simplicio's O-1.

Replies from: dr_s
comment by dr_s · 2024-11-18T14:36:31.627Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Pretty much. It's not "naive" if it's literally the only option that actually does not harm everyone involved, unless of course we want to call every world leader and self-appointed foreign policy expert a blithering idiot with tunnel vision (I make no such claim a priori; ball's in their court).

It's important to not oversimplify things. It's also important to not overcomplicate them. Domain experts tend to be resistant to the first kind of mental disease, but tragically prone to the second. Sometimes it really is Just That Simple, and everything else is commentary and superfluous detail.

Replies from: Algon
comment by Algon · 2024-11-18T18:26:06.743Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

If I squint, I can see where they're coming from. People often say that wars are foolish, and both sides would be better off if they didn't fight. And this is standardly called "naive" by those engaging in realpolitik. Sadly, for any particular war, there's a significant chance they're right. Even aside from human stupidity, game theory is not so kind as to allow for peace unending. But the China-America AI race is not like that. The Chinese don't want to race. They've shown no interest in being part of a race. It's just American hawks on a loud, Quixotic quest masking the silence. 

If I were to continue the story, it'd show Simplicio asking Galactico not to play Chicken and Galacitco replying "race? What race?". Then Sophistico crashes into Galactico and Simplicio. Everyone dies, The End.

Replies from: dr_s
comment by dr_s · 2024-11-21T15:41:03.813Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

People often say that wars are foolish, and both sides would be better off if they didn't fight. And this is standardly called "naive" by those engaging in realpolitik. Sadly, for any particular war, there's a significant chance they're right. Even aside from human stupidity, game theory is not so kind as to allow for peace unending.

I'm not saying obviously that ALL conflict ever is avoidable or irrational, but there are a lot that are:

  1. caused by a miscommunication/misunderstanding/delusional understanding of reality;
  2. rooted in a genuine competition between conflicting interests, but those interests only pertain to a handful of leaders, and most of the people actually doing the fighting really have no genuine stake in it, just false information and/or a giant coordination problem that makes it hard to tell those leaders to fuck off;
  3. rooted in a genuine competition between conflicting interests between the actual people doing the fighting, but the gains are still not so large to justify the costs of the war, which have been wildly underestimated.

And I'd say that just about makes up a good 90% of all conflicts. There's a thing where people who are embedded into specialised domains start seeing the trees ("here is the complex clockwork of cause-and-effect that made this thing happen") and missing the forest ("if we weren't dumb and irrational as fuck none of this would have happened in the first place"). The main point of studying past conflicts should be to distil here and there a bit of wisdom about how in fact lot of that stuff is entirely avoidable if people can just stop being absolute idiots now and then.

comment by Matrice Jacobine · 2024-11-16T02:27:00.493Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

My impression is that (without even delving into any meta-level IR theory debates) Democrats are more hawkish on Russia while Republicans are more hawkish on China. So while obviously neither parties are kum-ba-yah and both ultimately represent US interests, it still makes sense to expect each party to be less receptive to the idea of ending any potential arms race against the country they consider an existential threat to US interests if left unchecked, so the party that is more hawkish on a primarily military superpower would be worse on nuclear x-risk, and the party that is more hawkish on a primarily economic superpower would be worse on AI x-risk and environmental x-risk. (Negotiating arms control agreements with the enemy superpower right during its period of liberalization and collapse or facilitating a deal between multiple US allies with the clear goal of serving as a counterweight to the purported enemy superpower seems entirely irrelevant here.)

comment by Sting · 2024-11-16T15:51:26.471Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Great post. I did not know things were this bad:

Given that >98% of the EAs and alignment researchers we surveyed earlier this year identified as everything-other-than-conservative, we consider thinking through these questions to be another strategically worthwhile neglected direction.

....This suggests we need more genuine conservatives (not just people who are kinda pretending to be) explaining these realities to lawmakers, as we've found them quite capable of grasping complex technical concepts and being motivated to act in light of them despite their initial unfamiliarity.

Perhaps the policy of "You will use people's preferred pronouns, and you will be polite about it, or we don't want you in rationalist spaces" didn't help here? 

Any community is free to have whatever standards they want for membership, including politically-coded compelled speech. But it is not exactly shocking if your membership is then composed 70% of one side and <2% of the other.

(To be clear, any movement centered in California will have more progressives, so political partisanship is not responsible for the full 35:1 progressive-to-conservative ratio. But when people are openly referring to the lack of right-wingers as "keeping rat spaces clean" with no push-back, that's a clue that it isn't exactly welcoming to conservatives.)

Replies from: xpym, Viliam, Sting, martin-randall
comment by xpym · 2024-11-19T12:31:20.621Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

A more likely explanation, it seems to me, is that a large part of early LW/sequences was militant atheism, with religion being the primary example of the low "sanity waterline", and this hasn't been explicitly disclaimed since, at best de-emphasized. So this space had done its best to repel conservatives much earlier than pronouns and other trans issues entered the picture.

Replies from: Viliam, Sting
comment by Viliam · 2024-11-20T12:26:36.806Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I approve of the militant atheism, because there are just too many religious people out there, so without making a strong line we would have an Eternal September of people joining Less Wrong just to say "but have you considered that an AI can never have a soul?" or something similar.

And if being religious is strongly correlated with some political tribe, I guess it can't be avoided.

But I think that going further than that is unnecessary and harmful.

Actually, we should probably show some resistance to the stupid ideas of other political tribes, just to make our independence clear. Otherwise, people would hesitate to call out bullshit when it comes from those who seem associated with us. (Quick test: Can you say three things the average Democrat believes that are wrong and stupid? What reaction would you expect if you posted your answer on LW?)

Specifically on trans issues:

I am generally in favor of niceness and civilization, therefore:

  • If someone calls themselves "he" or "she", I will use that pronoun without thinking twice about it.
  • I disapprove of doxing in general, which extends to all speculations about someone's biological sex.

But I also value rationality and free speech, therefore:

  • I insist on keeping an "I don't know, really" attitude to trans issues. I don't know, really. The fact that you are yelling at me does not make your arguments any more logically convincing.
  • No, I am not literally murdering you by disagreeing with you. Let's tone down the hysteria.
  • There are people who feel strongly that they are Napoleon. If you want to convince me, you need to make a stronger case than that.
  • I specifically disagree on the point that if someone changes their gender, it retroactively changes their entire past. If someone presented as male for 50 years, then changed to female, it makes sense to use "he" to refer to their first 50 years, especially if this is the pronoun everyone used at that time. Also, I will refer to them using the name they actually used at that time. (If I talk about the Ancient Rome, I don't call it Italian Republic either.) Anything else feels like magical thinking to me. I won't correct you if you do that, but please do not correct me, or I will be super annoyed.
Replies from: xpym, Q Home
comment by xpym · 2024-11-20T16:29:14.603Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

My biggest problem with the trans discourse is that it's a giant tower of motte-and-baileys, and there's no point where it's socially acceptable to get off the crazy train.

Sure, at this point it seems likely that gender dysphoria isn't an entirely empty notion. Implying that this condition might be in any way undesirable is already a red line though, with discussions of how much of it is due to social contagion being very taboo, naturally. And that only people experiencing bad enough dysphoria to require hormones and/or surgery could claim to be legitimately trans is a battle lost long ago.

Moving past that, there is non-binary, genderfluid, neo-genders, otherkin, etc, concepts that don't seem to be plausibly based in some currently known crippling biological glitch, and yet those identities are apparently just as legitimate. Where does it stop? Should society be entirely reorganized every time a new fad gains traction? Should everybody questioning that be ostracized?

Then there's the "passing" issue. I accept the argument that nowadays in most social situations we have no strong reasons to care about chromosomes/etc, people can successfully play many roles traditionally associated with the opposite sex. But sexual dimorphism is the entire reason for having different pronouns in the first place, and yet apparently you don't even have to try (at all, let alone very hard) to "pass" as your chosen gender for your claim to be legitimate. What is the point? Here the unresolved tension between gender-critical and gender-affirming feminism is the most glaring.

comment by Q Home · 2024-11-25T05:59:13.577Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

There are people who feel strongly that they are Napoleon. If you want to convince me, you need to make a stronger case than that.

It's confusing to me that you go to "I identify as an attack helicopter" argument after treating biological sex as private information & respecting pronouns out of politeness. I thought you already realize that "choosing your gender identity" and "being deluded you're another person" are different categories.

If someone presented as male for 50 years, then changed to female, it makes sense to use "he" to refer to their first 50 years, especially if this is the pronoun everyone used at that time. Also, I will refer to them using the name they actually used at that time. (If I talk about the Ancient Rome, I don't call it Italian Republic either.) Anything else feels like magical thinking to me.

The alternative (using new pronouns / name) makes perfect sense too, due to trivial reasons, such as respecting a person's wishes. You went too far calling it magical thinking. A piece of land is different from a person in two important ways: (1) it doesn't feel anything no matter how you call it, (2) there's less strong reasons to treat it as a single entity across time.

Replies from: Viliam
comment by Viliam · 2024-11-25T15:15:34.795Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Ah, I disagree, and I don't really wish to discuss the details, so just shortly:

  • I assume that for trans people being trans is something more than mere "choice" (even if I don't wish to make guesses what exactly, I suspect something with hormones; this is an empirical question for smart people to figure out). If this turns out not to be true, I will probably be annoyed.
  • If you introduce yourself as "Jane" today, I will refer to you as "Jane". But if 50 years ago you introduced yourself as "John", that is a fact about the past. I am not saying that "you were John" as some kind of metaphysical statement, but that "everyone, including you, referred to you as John" 50 years ago, which is a statement of fact.
Replies from: Q Home
comment by Q Home · 2024-11-26T06:06:33.338Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Even if we assume that there should be a crisp physical cause of "transness" (which is already a value-laden choice), we need to make a couple of value-laden choices before concluding if "being trans" is similar to "believing you're Napoleon" or not. Without more context it's not clear why you bring up Napoleon. I assume the idea is "if gender = hormones (gender essentialism), and trans people have the right hormones, then they're not deluded". But you can arrive at the same conclusion ("trans people are not deluded") by means other than gender essentialism.

I assume that for trans people being trans is something more than mere "choice"

There doesn't need to be a crisp physical cause of "transness" for "transness" to be more than mere choice. There's a big spectrum between "immutable physical features" and "things which can be decided on a whim".

If you introduce yourself as "Jane" today, I will refer to you as "Jane". But if 50 years ago you introduced yourself as "John", that is a fact about the past. I am not saying that "you were John" as some kind of metaphysical statement, but that "everyone, including you, referred to you as John" 50 years ago, which is a statement of fact.

This just explains your word usage, but doesn't make a case that disliking deadnaming is magical thinking.

I've decided to comment because bringing up Napoleon, hysteria and magical thinking all at once is egregiously bad faith. I think it's not a good epistemic norm to imply something like "the arguments of the outgroup are completely inconsistent trash" without elaborating.

Replies from: Viliam
comment by Viliam · 2024-11-26T16:20:47.187Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Napoleon is merely an argument for "just because you strongly believe it, even if it is a statement about you, does not necessarily make it true".

We will probably disagree on this, but the only reason I care about trans issues is that some people report significant suffering (gender dysphoria) from their current situation, and I am in favor of people not suffering, so I generally try not to be an asshole.

Unfortunately, for every person who suffers from something, there are probably dozen people out there who cosplay their condition... because it makes them popular on Twitter I guess, or just gives them another opportunity to annoy their neighbors. I have no empathy for those. Play your silly games, if you wish, but don't expect me to play along, and definitely don't threaten me to play along. Also, the cosplayers often make the situation more difficult for those who genuinely have the condition, by speaking in their name, and often saying things that the people who actually have the condition would disagree with... and in the most ironic cases, the cosplayers get them cancelled. So I don't mind being an asshole to the cosplayers, because from my perspective, they started it first.

The word "deadnaming" is itself hysterical. (Who died? No one.)

Gender essentialism? I don't make any metaphysical claim about essences. People simply are born with male or female bodies (yes, I know that some are intersex), and some people are strongly unhappy about their state. I find it plausible that there may be an underlying biological reason for that; and hormones seem like a likely candidate, because that's how body communicates many things. I don't have a strong opinion on that, because I have never felt a desire to be one sex or the other, just like I have never felt a strong desire to have a certain color of eyes, or hair, or skin, whether it would be the one I have or some that I have not.

I expect that you will disagree with a lot of this, and that's okay; I am not trying to convince you, just explaining my position.

Replies from: gjm, Q Home
comment by gjm · 2024-11-29T21:30:43.661Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I don't think "deadname" is a ridiculous term just because no one died. The idea is that the name is dead: it's not being used any more. Latin is a "dead language" because (roughly speaking) no one speaks or writes in Latin. "James" is a "dead name" because (roughly speaking) no one calls that person "James" any more.

This all seems pretty obvious to me, and evidently it seems the opposite way to you, and both of us are very smart [citation needed], so probably at least one of us is being mindkilled a bit by feeling strongly about some aspect of the issue. I don't claim to know which of us it is :-).

Replies from: Benito
comment by Ben Pace (Benito) · 2024-11-29T21:40:20.037Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

As my 2 cents, the phrase 'deadname' to me sounded like it caught on because it was hyperbolic and imputes aggression – similar to how phrases like trauma caught on (which used to primarily refer to physical damage like the phrase "blunt-forced trauma") and notions spread that "words can be violence" (which seems to me to be bending the meaning of words like 'violence' too far and is trying to get people on board for a level of censorship that isn't appropriate). I similarly recall seeing various notions on social media that not using the requested pronouns for transgender people constituted killing them due the implied background levels of violence towards such people in society.

Overall this leaves me personally choosing not to use the term 'deadname' and I reliably taboo it when I wish to refer to someone using the person's former alternative-gendered name.

Replies from: gjm
comment by gjm · 2024-11-29T22:02:41.828Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

"Trauma" meaning psychological as opposed to physical damage goes back to the late 19th century.

I agree that there's a widespread tendency to exaggerate the unpleasantness/harm done by mere words. (But I suggest there's an opposite temptation too, to say that obviously no one can be substantially harmed by mere words, that physical harm is different in kind from mere psychological upset, etc., and that this is also wrong.)

I agree that much of the trans community seems to have embraced what looks to me like a severely hyperbolic view of how much threat trans people are under. (But, usual caveats: it's very common for the situation of a minority group to look and feel much worse from the inside than from the outside, and generally this isn't only a matter of people on the inside being oversensitive, it's also a matter of people on the outside not appreciating how much unpleasantness those on the inside face. So my guess is that that view is less hyperbolic than it looks to me.)

I agree that the term "deadname" is probably popular partly because "using my deadname" has more of an obviously-hostile-move sound than "using my old name" or similar. But if we avoid every term with any spin attached, we'll have to stop calling people liberals (as if no one else cared about freedom) or conservatives (as if their opponents were against preserving valuable things) or Catholics (the word means "universal") or pro-life or pro-choice or, or, or, or. For my part, I avoid some spinny terms but not others, on the basis of gut feeling about how much actual wrongness is baked into them and how easy it is to find other language, which (I don't know how coherently) cashes out as being broadly OK with "liberal" and "conservative", preferring to avoid "pro-life" and "pro-choice" or at least making some snarky remarks about the terms before using them, avoiding the broadest uses of the term "transphobia", etc. And for me "deadname" seems obviously basically OK even though, yes, the term was probably chosen partly for connotations one might take issue with. Your mileage may vary.

Replies from: Benito
comment by Ben Pace (Benito) · 2024-11-29T22:05:30.064Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I agree that which terms people use vs taboo is a judgment call, I don't mean to imply that others should clearly see these things the same as me.

comment by Q Home · 2024-11-27T05:58:36.938Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Napoleon is merely an argument for "just because you strongly believe it, even if it is a statement about you, does not necessarily make it true".

When people make arguments, they often don't list all of the premises. That's not unique to trans discourse. Informal reasoning is hard to make fully explicit. "Your argument doesn't explicitly exclude every counterexample" is a pretty cheap counter-argument. What people experience is important evidence and an important factor, it's rational to bring up instead of stopping yourself with "wait, I'm not allowed to bring that up unless I make an analytically bulletproof argument". For example, if you trust someone that they feel strongly about being a woman, there's no reason to suspect them of being a cosplayer who chases Twitter popularity.

I expect that you will disagree with a lot of this, and that's okay; I am not trying to convince you, just explaining my position.

I think I still don't understand the main conflict which bothers you. I thought it was "I'm not sure if trans people are deluded in some way (like Napoleons, but milder) or not". But now it seems like "I think some people really suffer and others just cosplay, the cosplayers take something away from true sufferers". What is taken away?

Replies from: Viliam
comment by Viliam · 2024-11-27T11:50:01.961Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I think I still don't understand the main conflict which bothers you.

Two major points.

1) It annoys me if someone insists that I accept their theory about what being trans really is.

Zack insists that Blanchard is right, and that I fail at rationality if I disagree with him. People on Twitter and Reddit insist that Blanchard is wrong, and that I fail at being a decent human if I disagree with them. My opinion is that I have no comparative advantage at figuring out who is right and who is wrong on this topic, or maybe everyone is wrong, anyway it is an empirical question and I don't have the data. I hope that people who have more data and better education will one day sort it out, but until that happens, my position firmly remains "I don't know (and most likely neither do you), stop bothering me".

Also, from larger perspective, this is moving the goalposts. Long ago, tolerance was defined as basically not hurting other people, and letting them do whatever they want as long as it does not hurt others. Recently it also includes agreeing with the beliefs of their woke representatives. (Note that this is about the representatives, not the people being represented. Two trans people can have different opinions, but you are required to believe the woke one and oppose the non-woke one.) Otherwise, you are transphobic. I completely reject that. Furthermore, I claim that even trans people themselves are not necessarily experts on themselves. Science exists for a reason, otherwise we could just make opinion polls.

Shortly: disagreement is not hate. But it often gets conflated, especially in environments that overwhelmingly contain people of one political tribe.

2) Every cause gets abused. It is bad if it becomes a taboo to point this out.

A few months (or is it already years?) ago, there was an epidemic of teenagers on TikTok who appeared to have developed Tourette syndrome overnight. A few weeks or months later, apparently the epidemic was gone. I have no way to check those teenagers, but I think it is reasonable to assume that many of them were faking it. Why would anyone do that? Most likely, attention seeking. (There is also a things called Munchausen syndrome.) This is what I referred to as "cosplayers".

Note that this is completely different from saying that Tourette syndrome does not exist.

If you adopt a rule that e.g. everyone must use everyone else's preferred pronouns all the time, no exception, and you get banned for hate speech otherwise, this becomes a perfect opportunity for... anyone who enjoys using it as a leverage. You get an explosion of pronouns: it starts with "he" and "she", proceeds with "they", then you get "xe", "ve", "foo", "bar", "baz", and ultimately anyone is free to make up their own pronouns, and everyone else is required to play along, or else. (That's when you get the "attack helicopters" as an attempt to point out the absurdity of the system.)

Again, moving the goalposts. We started with trans people who report feeling gender dysphoria, so we use their preferred pronouns to alleviate their suffering. So far, okay. But if there is a person who actually feels dysphoria from not being addressed as "ve" (someone who would be triggered by calling them any of: "he", "she", or "they"), then I believe that this is between them and their psychiatrist, and I want to be left out of this game.

Another annoying thing is how often this is used to derail the debate (on places like Twitter and Reddit). Suppose that someone is called "John" and has a male-passing photo. So you try to say something about John, and your automatically use the pronoun "he". Big mistake! You haven't noticed it, but recently John identifies as agender. And whatever you wanted to talk about originally is unimportant now, and the thread becomes about what a horrible person you are. Okay, you have learned your lesson; but the point is that the next time someone else is going to make the same mistake. So it basically becomes impossible to discuss John, ever. And sometimes, it is important to be able to discuss John, without getting the debate predictably derailed.

Shortly: misgendering should be considered bad manners, but not something you ban people for.

...and that's basically all.

Replies from: Q Home
comment by Q Home · 2024-11-28T11:18:14.793Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I'll describe my general thoughts, like you did.

I think about transness in a similar way to how I think about homo/bisexuality.

  • If homo/bisexuality is outlawed, people are gonna suffer. Bad.
  • If I could erase homo/bisexuality from existence without creating suffering, I wouldn't anyway. Would be a big violation of people's freedom to choose their identity and actions (even if in practice most people don't actually "choose" to be homo/bisexual).
  • Different people have homo/bisexuality of different "strength" and form. One man might fall in love with another man, but dislike sex or even kissing. Maybe he isn't a real homosexual, if he doesn't need to prove it physically? Another man might identify as a bisexual, but be in a relationship with a woman... he doesn't get to prove his bisexuality (sexually or romantically). Maybe we shouldn't trust him unless he walks the talk? As a result of all such situations, we might have certain "inconsistencies": some people identifying as straight have done more "gay" things than people identifying as gay. My opinion on this? I think all of this is OK. Pushing for an "objective gay test" would be dystopian and suffering-inducing. I don't think it's an empirical matter (unless we choose it to be, which is a value-laden choice). Even if it was, we might be very far away from resolving it. So just respecting people's self-identification in the meantime is best, I believe. Moreover, a lot of this is very private information anyway. Less reason to try measuring it "objectively".

My thoughts about transness specifically:

  1. We strive for gender equality (I hope). Which makes the concept of gender less important for society as a whole.
  2. The concept of gender is additionally damaged by all the things a person can decide to do in their social/sexual life. For example, take an "assigned male at birth" (AMAB) person. AMAB can appear and behave very feminine without taking hormones. Or vice-versa (take hormones, get a pair of boobs, but present masculine). Additionally there are different degrees of medical transition and different types of sexual preferences.
  3. A lot of things which make someone more or less similar to a man/woman (behavior with friends, behavior with romantic partners, behavior with sexual partners, thoughts) are private. Less reason to try measuring those "objectively".
  4. I have a choice to respect people's self-identified genders or not. I decide to respect them. Not just because I care about people's feelings, but also because of points 1 & 2 & 3 and because of my general values (I show similar respect to homo/bisexuals). So I respect pronouns, but on top of that I also respect if someone identifies as a man/woman/nonbinary. I believe respect is optimal in terms of reducing suffering and adhering to human values.

When I compare your opinion to mine, most of my confusion is about two things: what exactly do you see as an empirical question? how does the answer (or its absence) affect our actions?

Zack insists that Blanchard is right, and that I fail at rationality if I disagree with him. People on Twitter and Reddit insist that Blanchard is wrong, and that I fail at being a decent human if I disagree with them. My opinion is that I have no comparative advantage at figuring out who is right and who is wrong on this topic, or maybe everyone is wrong, anyway it is an empirical question and I don't have the data. I hope that people who have more data and better education will one day sort it out, but until that happens, my position firmly remains "I don't know (and most likely neither do you), stop bothering me".

I think we need to be careful to not make a false equivalence here:

  1. Trans people want us to respect their pronouns and genders.
  2. I'm not very familiar with Blanchard, so far it seems to me like Blanchard's work is (a) just a typology for predicting certain correlations and (b) this work is sometimes used to argue that trans people are mistaken about their identities/motivations.

2A is kinda tangential to 1. So is this really a case of competing theories? I think uncertainty should make one skeptical of Blanchard work's implications rather than make one skeptical about respecting trans people.

(Note that this is about the representatives, not the people being represented. Two trans people can have different opinions, but you are required to believe the woke one and oppose the non-woke one.) Otherwise, you are transphobic. I completely reject that.

Two homo/bisexuals can have different opinions on what's "true homo/bisexuality" is too. Some opinions can be pretty negative. Yes, that's inconvenient, but that's just an expected course of events.

Shortly: disagreement is not hate. But it often gets conflated, especially in environments that overwhelmingly contain people of one political tribe.

I feel it's just the nature of some political questions. Not in all questions, not in all spaces you can treat disagreement as something benign.

But if there is a person who actually feels dysphoria from not being addressed as "ve" (someone who would be triggered by calling them any of: "he", "she", or "they"), then I believe that this is between them and their psychiatrist, and I want to be left out of this game.

Agree. Also agree that lynching for accidental misgendering is bad.

(That's when you get the "attack helicopters" as an attempt to point out the absurdity of the system.)

I'm pretty sure the helicopter argument began as an argument against trans people, not as an argument against weird-ass novel pronouns.

Replies from: Viliam
comment by Viliam · 2024-11-28T21:41:59.516Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I agree with most of that, but it seems to me that respecting homosexuality is mostly a passive action; if you ignore what other people do, you are already maybe 90% there. Homosexuals don't change their names or pronouns after coming out. You don't have to pretend that ten years ago they were something else than they appeared to you at that time.

With transsexuality, you get the taboo of deadnaming, and occasionally the weird pronouns.

Also, the reaction seems different when you try to opt out of the game. Like, if someone is uncomfortable with homosexuality, they can say "could we please just... not discuss our sexual relations here, and focus on the job (or some other reason why we are here)?" and that's usually accepted. If someone similarly says "could we please just... call everyone 'they' as a compromise solution, or simply refer to people using their names", that already got some people cancelled.

Shortly, with homosexuals I never felt like my free speech was under attack.

It is possible that most of the weirdness and pushing boundaries does not actually come from the transsexuals themselves, but rather from woke people who try to be their "allies". Either way, in effect, whenever a discussion about trans topics starts, I feel like "oh my, the woke hordes are coming, people are going to get cancelled". (And I am not really concerned about myself here, because I am not American, so my job is not on the line; and if some online community decides to ban me, well then fuck them. But I don't want to be in a community where people need to watch their tongues, and get filtered by political conformity.)

Replies from: Q Home
comment by Q Home · 2024-11-29T08:38:36.413Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I think there should be more spaces where controversial ideas can be debated. I'm not against spaces without pronoun rules, just don't think every place should be like this. Also, if we create a space for political debate, we need to really make sure that the norms don't punish everyone who opposes centrism & the right. (Over-sensitive norms like "if you said that some opinion is transphobic you're uncivil/shaming/manipulative and should get banned" might do this.) Otherwise it's not free speech either. Will just produce another Grey or Red Tribe instead of Red/Blue/Grey debate platform.

I do think progressives underestimate free speech damage. To me it's the biggest issue with the Left. Though I don't think they're entirely wrong about free speech.

For example, imagine I have trans employees. Another employee (X) refuses to use pronouns, in principle (using pronouns is not the same as accepting progressive gender theories). Why? Maybe X thinks my trans employees live such a great lie that using pronouns is already an unacceptable concession. Or maybe X thinks that even trying to switch "he" & "she" is too much work, and I'm not justified in asking to do that work because of absolute free speech. Those opinions seem unnecessarily strong and they're at odds with the well-being of my employees, my work environment. So what now? Also, if pronouns are an unacceptable concession, why isn't calling a trans woman by her female name an unacceptable concession?

Imagine I don't believe something about a minority, so I start avoiding words which might suggest otherwise. If I don't believe that gay love can be as true as straight love, I avoid the word "love" (in reference to gay people or to anybody) at work. If I don't believe that women are as smart as men, I avoid the word "master" / "genius" (in reference to women or anybody) at work. It can get pretty silly. Will predictably cost me certain jobs.

Replies from: Viliam
comment by Viliam · 2024-11-29T14:02:53.908Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Well, the primary goal of this place is to advance rationality and AI safety. Not the victory of any specific political tribe. And neither conformity nor contrarianism for its own sake.

Employees get paid, which kinda automatically reduces their free speech, because saying the wrong words can make them stop getting paid.

What is an (un)acceptable concession? For me, it is a question of effort and what value I receive in return. I value niceness, so by default people get their wishes granted, unless I forget. Some requests I consider arbitrary and annoying, so they don't get them. Yeah, those are subjective criteria. But I am not here to get paid; I am here to enjoy the talk.

(What annoys me: asking to use pronouns other than he/she/they. I do not talk about people's past for no good reason, and definitely not just to annoy someone else. But if I have a good reason to point out that someone did something in the past, and the only way to do that is to reveal their previous name, then I don't care about the taboo.)

Employment is really a different situation. You get laws, and recommendations of your legal department; there is not much anyone can do about that. And the rest is about the balance of power, where the individual employee is often in a much worse bargaining position.

Replies from: Q Home
comment by Q Home · 2024-11-30T04:56:12.733Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Agree that neopronouns are dumb. Wikipedia says they're used by 4% LGBTQ people and criticized both within and outside the community.

But for people struggling with normal pronouns (he/she/they), I have the following thoughts:

  • Contorting language to avoid words associated with beliefs... is not easier than using the words. Don't project beliefs onto words too hard.
  • Contorting language to avoid words associated with beliefs... is still a violation of free speech (if we have such a strong notion of free speech). So what is the motivation to propose that? It's a bit like a dog in the manger. "I'd rather cripple myself than help you, let's suffer together".
  • Don't maximize free speech (in a negligible way) while ignoring every other human value.
  • In an imperfect society, truly passive tolerance (tolerance which doesn't require any words/actions) is impossible. For example, in a perfect society, if my school has bigoted teachers, it immediately gets outcompeted by a non-bigoted school. In an imperfect society it might not happen. So we get enforceable norms.

Employees get paid, which kinda automatically reduces their free speech, because saying the wrong words can make them stop getting paid. (...) Employment is really a different situation. You get laws, and recommendations of your legal department; there is not much anyone can do about that.

I'm not familiar with your model of free speech (i.e. how you imagine free speech working if laws and power balances were optimal). People who value free speech usually believe that free speech should have power above money and property, to a reasonable degree. What's "reasonable" is the crux.

I think in situations where people work together on something unrelated to their beliefs, prohibiting to enforce a code of conduct is unreasonable. Because respect is crucial for the work environment and protecting marginalized groups. I assume people who propose to "call everyone they" or "call everyone by proper name" realize some of that.

If I let people use my house as a school, but find out that a teacher openly doesn't respect minority students (by rejecting to do the smallest thing for them), I'm justified to not let the teacher into my house.

I do not talk about people's past for no good reason, and definitely not just to annoy someone else. But if I have a good reason to point out that someone did something in the past, and the only way to do that is to reveal their previous name, then I don't care about the taboo.

I just think "disliking deadnaming under most circumstances = magical thinking, like calling Italy Rome" was a very strong, barely argued/explained opinion. In tandem with mentioning delusion (Napoleon) and hysteria. If you want to write something insulting, maybe bother to clarify your opinions a little bit more? Like you did in our conversation.

comment by Sting · 2024-11-20T05:18:01.827Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Maybe, but Martin Randall and Matt Gilliland have both said that the trans explanation matches their personal experience, and Eliezer Yudkowsky agrees with the explanation as well. I have no insider knowledge and am just going off what community members say. 

  1. Do you have any particular reasons for thinking atheism is a bigger filter than pronouns and other trans issues?
  2. It's not clear what your position is. Do you think the contribution of pronouns and other trans issues is negligible? Slightly smaller than atheism? An order of magnitude smaller? 

I suspect atheism is a non-negligible filter, but both smaller than trans issues, and less likely to filter out intelligent truth-seeking conservatives. Atheism is a factual question with a great deal of evidence in favor, and is therefore less politically charged. Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson have both said that the intellectual case for atheism is strong, and both remain very popular on the right. 

Replies from: abandon, xpym
comment by dirk (abandon) · 2024-11-20T05:35:09.133Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

In the before-time of the internet, New Atheism was a much bigger deal than transgender issues.

comment by xpym · 2024-11-20T15:15:51.563Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I'd say that atheism had already set the "conservatives not welcome" baseline way back when, and this resulted in the community norms evolving accordingly. Granted, these days the trans stuff is more salient, but the reason it flourished here even more than in other tech-adjacent spaces has much to do with that early baseline.

Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson have both said that the intellectual case for atheism is strong, and both remain very popular on the right.

Sure, but somebody admitting that certainly isn't the modal conservative.

Replies from: Sting
comment by Sting · 2024-11-20T17:09:05.994Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I wouldn't call the tone back then "conservatives not welcome". Conservatism is correlated with religiosity, but it's not the same thing. And I wouldn't even call the tone "religious people are unwelcome" -- people were perfectly civil with religious community members [LW · GW]. 

The community back then were willing to call irrational beliefs irrational, but they didn't go beyond that. Filtering out people who are militantly opposed to rational conclusions seems fine. 

comment by Viliam · 2024-11-18T16:47:35.680Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Going by today's standards, we should have banned Gwern in 2012.

And I think that would have been a mistake.

I wonder how many other mistakes we made. The problem is, we won't get good feedback on this.

Replies from: habryka4
comment by habryka (habryka4) · 2024-11-18T17:24:23.352Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Going by today's standards, we should have banned Gwern in 2012.

(I don't understand what this is referring to)

Replies from: Viliam
comment by Viliam · 2024-11-19T12:26:24.339Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I apologize. I spent some time digging for ancient evidence... and then decided against [? · GW] publishing it.

Short version is that someone said something that was kinda inappropriate back then, and would probably get an instant ban these days, with most people applauding.

comment by Sting · 2024-11-24T23:31:37.476Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

After thinking about this some more, I suspect the major problem here is value drift of the in-person Rationalist communities. The LessWrong website tolerates dissenting perspectives and seems much closer to the original rationalist vision. It is the in-person Berkeley community (and possibly others) that have left the original rationalist vision and been assimilated into the Urban Liberal Monoculture. 

I am guessing EAs and alignment researchers are mostly drawn from, or at least heavily interact with, the in-person communities. If these communities are hostile to Conservatives, then you will tend to have a lack of Conservative EAs and alignment researchers, which may harm your ability to productively interact with Conservative lawmakers.

The value drift of the Berkeley community was described by Sarah Constantin in 2017:

It seems to me that the increasingly ill-named “Rationalist Community” in Berkeley has, in practice, a core value of “unconditional tolerance of weirdos.”  It is a haven for outcasts and a paradise for bohemians. It is a social community based on warm connections of mutual support and fun between people who don’t fit in with the broader society.

...

Some other people in the community have more purely intellectual projects, that are closer to Eliezer Yudkowsky’s original goals. To research artificial intelligence; to develop tools for training Tetlock-style good judgment; to practice philosophical discourse.  But I still think these are ultimately outcome-focused, external projects.

...

None of these projects need to be community-focused!  In fact, I think it would be better if they freed themselves from the Berkeley community and from the particular quirks and prejudices of this group of people. It doesn’t benefit your ability to do AI research that you primarily draw your talent from a particular social group.


Or as Zvi put it:

The rationalists took on Berkeley, and Berkeley won.

...

This is unbelievably, world-doomingly bad. It means we’ve lost the mission.

...

A community needs to have standards. A rationalist community needs to have rationalist standards. Otherwise we are something else, and our well-kept gardens die by pacifism and hopefully great parties.

...

If Sarah is to believed (others who live in the area can speak to whether her observations are correct better than I can) then the community’s basic rationalist standards have degraded, and its priorities and cultural heart are starting to lie elsewhere. The community being built is rapidly ceasing to be all that rationalist, and is no longer conducive (and may be subtly but actively hostile) to the missions of saving and improving the world.

Its members might save or improve the world anyway, and I would still have high hopes for that including for MIRI and CFAR, but that would be in spite of the (local physical) community rather than because of it, if the community is discouraging them from doing so and they need to do all their work elsewhere with other people. Those who keep the mission would then depart, leaving those that remain all the more adrift.

I welcome analysis from anyone who better understands what's going on. I'm just speculating based on things insiders have written. 

Replies from: Benito
comment by Ben Pace (Benito) · 2024-11-25T00:02:39.018Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

My rough take: the rationalist scene in Berkeley used to be very bad at maintaining boundaries. Basically the boundaries were "who gets invited to parties by friends". The one Berkeley community space ("REACH") was basically open-access. In recent years the Lightcone team (of which I am a part) has hosted spaces and events and put in the work to maintain actual boundaries (including getting references on people and checking out suspicion of bad behavior, but mostly just making it normal for people to have events with standards for entry) and this has substantially improved the ability for rationalist spaces to have culture that is distinct from the local Berkeley culture.

comment by Martin Randall (martin-randall) · 2024-11-18T22:46:15.551Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

cited thread.

Gilliland's idea is that it is the proportion of trans people that dissuades some right-wing people from joining. That seems plausible to me, it matches the "Big Sort" thesis and my personal experience. I agree that his phrasing is unwelcoming.

I tried to find an official pronoun policy for LessWrong, LessOnline, EA Global, etc, and couldn't. If you're thinking of something specific could you say what? As well as the linked X thread I have read the X thread linked from Challenges to Yudkowsky's pronoun reform proposal [LW · GW]. But these are the opinions of one person, they don't amount to politically-coded compelled speech. I'm not part of the rationalist community and this is a genuine question. Maybe such policies exist but are not advertised.

Replies from: Sting, jkaufman
comment by Sting · 2024-11-20T04:25:51.923Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Eliezer said you are welcome in the community if you "politely accede to pronoun requests". Which sounds to me like, "politically-coded speech is required to be welcome in the community". (Specifically, people are socially required to use "woman" and "she" to refer to MtF transgenders). And Eliezer is not just some guy, he is the closest thing the rationalist community has to a leader.

There is a broad range of possible customs the community could have adopted. A few, from more right-coded to more left-coded.

  1. People should use words to refer to the category-boundaries that best carve [LW · GW] reality [LW · GW] at [LW · GW] the [LW · GW] joints [LW · GW]. MtF transgenders unambiguously [LW · GW] fall into the "male" cluster, and therefore the prescriptive protocol is to refer to them as "he". Anyone who breaks this protocol (except under duress) is not welcome as a member of the community.
  2. Same as above, but it is only the consensus position, and those who follow other protocols are still welcome to be part of the community.
  3. Anyone is free to decide for themselves whether to use people's preferred pronouns. You can ask people to use your preferred pronouns, as long as you are polite about it. And people are free to refuse, as long as they are also polite.
  4. As a matter of politeness, you are not allowed to refer to people by pronouns they asked you not to use. However, you are not required to use people's preferred pronouns. (So you cannot refer to a MtF transgender as "he", but you don't have to use "she". You could instead refer to them by the first letter of their name, or some other alternative.)
  5. You should refer to transgenders by their preferred pronouns (no alternatives). This is the consensus position, but people who politely decline to do so are still welcome to join.
  6. Same as above, except anyone who declines is not welcome as a member of the community.
  7. Same as above, and economically literate people who are in favor of market solutions are also unwelcome.

I don't know which of these solutions is best, but 1, 6, and 7 seem bad. Eliezer seems to support 6.

Edit: Reworded to taboo the phrase "Anyone who disagrees" as requested by RobertM.

Replies from: Benito, martin-randall
comment by Ben Pace (Benito) · 2024-11-24T23:32:27.942Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Is there literally any scene in the world that has openly transgender people in it and does 3, 4, or 5? Like, a space where a transgender person is friendly with the people there and different people in a conversation are reliably using different pronouns to refer to the same person? My sense is that it's actively confusing in a conversation for the participants to not be consistent in the choice of someone's pronouns. 

I guess I've often seen people default to 'they' a lot for people who have preferred pronouns that are he/she, that seems to go by just fine even if some people use he / she for the person, but I can't recall ever seeing a conversation where one person uses 'he' and another person uses 'she' when both are referring to the same person.

Replies from: Sting
comment by Sting · 2024-11-25T00:05:50.234Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Is there literally any scene that has openly transgender people in it and does 3, 4, or 5?

If you can use "they" without problems, that sounds a lot like 4. 

As for 3 and 5, not to my knowledge. Compromises like this would be more likely in settings with a mix of Liberals and Conservatives, but such places are becoming less common. Perhaps some family reunions would have similar rules or customs?

Replies from: Benito
comment by Ben Pace (Benito) · 2024-11-25T00:09:48.877Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I could believe it, but my (weak) guess is that in most settings people care about which pronoun they use far less than they care about people not being confused about who is being referred to.

comment by Martin Randall (martin-randall) · 2024-11-21T04:38:10.662Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Thanks for clarifying. By "policy" and "standards" and "compelled speech" I thought you meant something more than community norms and customs. This is traditionally an important distinction to libertarians and free speech advocates. I think the distinction carves reality at the joints, and I hope you agree. I agree that community norms and customs can be unwelcoming.

Replies from: Sting
comment by Sting · 2024-11-21T15:08:31.328Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Yes, it's not a law, so it's not a libertarian issue. As I said earlier:

Any community is free to have whatever standards they want for membership, including politically-coded compelled speech. But it is not exactly shocking if your membership is then composed 70% of one side and <2% of the other.

By "compelled speech" being a standard for community membership, I just meant "You are required to say certain things or you will be excluded from the community." For instance, as jefftk pointed out, 

The EA Forum has an explicit policy [? · GW] that you need to use the pronouns the people you're talking about prefer.

Replies from: martin-randall
comment by Martin Randall (martin-randall) · 2024-11-24T03:57:59.818Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I saw the the EA Forum's policy. If someone repeatedly and deliberately misgenders on the EA Forum they will be banned from that forum. But you don't need to post on the EA Forum at all in order to be part of the rationalist community. On the provided evidence, it is false that:

You are required to say certain things or you will be excluded from the community.

I want people of all political beliefs, including US conservative-coded beliefs, to feel welcome in the rationalist community. It's important to that goal to distinguish between policies and norms, because changing policies requires a different process to changing norms, and because policies and norms are unwelcoming in different ways and to different extents.

It's because of that goal that I'm encouraging you to change these incorrect/misleading/unclear statements. If newcomers incorrectly believe that they are required to say certain things or they will be excluded from the community, then they will feel less welcome, for nothing. Let's avoid that.

Replies from: cata, shankar-sivarajan
comment by cata · 2024-11-24T21:51:03.390Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I don't have a bunch of citations but I spend time in multiple rationalist social spaces and it seems to me that I would in fact be excluded from many of them if I stuck to sex-based pronouns, because as stated above there are many trans people in the community, of whom many hold to the consensus progressive norms on this. The EA Forum policy is not unrepresentative of the typical sentiment.

So I don't agree that the statements are misleading.

(I note that my typical habit is to use singular they for visibly NB/trans people, and I am not excluded for that. So it's not precisely a kind of compelled speech.)

comment by Shankar Sivarajan (shankar-sivarajan) · 2024-11-24T21:40:58.325Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

incorrect/misleading/unclear statements

I disagree that his statements are misleading: the impression someone who believed them true would have is far more accurate than someone who believed them false. Is that not more relevant, and a better measure of honesty, than whether or not they're "incorrect"? 

comment by jefftk (jkaufman) · 2024-11-19T16:37:26.549Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I tried to find an official pronoun policy for LessWrong, LessOnline, EA Global, etc, and couldn't.

The EA Forum has an explicit policy [? · GW] that you need to use the pronouns the people you're talking about prefer. EAG(x) doesn't explicitly include this in the code of conduct [? · GW] but it's short and I expect is interpreted by people who would consider non-accidental misgendering to be a special case of "offensive, disruptive, or discriminatory actions or communication.". I vaguely remember seeing someone get a warning on LW for misgendering, but I'm not finding anything now.

Replies from: habryka4
comment by habryka (habryka4) · 2024-11-20T07:34:46.199Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I don't remember ever adjudicating this, but my current intuition, having not thought about it hard, is that I don't see a super clear line here (like, in a moderation dispute I can imagine judging either way depending on the details).

comment by Seth Herd · 2024-11-16T01:24:01.589Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

This might be the most important alignment idea in a while.

Making an honest argument based on ideological agreements is a solidly good idea.

"Alignment" meaning alignment to one group is not ideal. But I'm afraid it's inevitable. Technical alignment will always be easier with a simpler alignment target. For instance, making an AGI aligned to the good of all humanity is much trickier than aligning it to want to do what one particular human says to do. Taking directions is almost completely a subset of inferring desires, and one person (or a small group) is a subset of all of humanity — and much easier to define.

If that human (or their designated successor(s)) has any compassion and any sense, they'll make their own and their AGIs goal to create fully value-aligned AGI. Instruction following or Intent alignment can be a stepping-stone to value alignment [LW · GW].

It is time to reach across the aisle. The reasons you mention are powerful. Another is to avoid polarization on this issue. Polarization appears to have completely derailed the discussion of climate change, similar to alignment in being new and science-based. Curernt guesses are that the US democratic party would be prone to pick up the AI safety banner — which could polarize alignment. Putting existential risk, at least, on the conservative side might be a better idea for the next four years, and for longer if it reduces polarization by aligning US liberal concerns about harms to individuals (e.g., artists) and bias in AI systems, with conservative concerns about preserving our values and our way of life(e.g., concerns we'll all die or be obsoleted)

Replies from: LTM
comment by LTM · 2024-11-17T13:38:14.530Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I agree with your points about avoiding political polarisation and allowing people with different ideological positions to collaborate on alignment. I'm not sure about the idea that aligning to a single group's values (or to a coherent ideology) is technically easier than a more vague 'align to humanity's values' goal.

Groups rarely have clearly articulated ideologies - more like vibes which everyone normally gets behind. An alignment approach from clearly spelling out what you consider valuable doesn't seem likely to work. Looking to existing models which have been aligned to some degree through safety testing, the work doesn't take the form of injecting a clear structured value set. Instead, large numbers of people with differing opinions and world views continually correct the system until it generally behaves itself. This seems far more pluralistic than 'alignment to one group' suggests.

This comes with the caveat that these systems are created and safety tested by people with highly abnormal attitudes when compared to the rest of their species. But sourcing viewpoints from outside seems to be an organisational issue rather than a technical one.

Replies from: Seth Herd
comment by Seth Herd · 2024-11-17T14:13:00.564Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I agree with everything you've said. The advantages are primarily from not aligning to values but only to following instructions rather than using RL or any other process to infer underlying values. Instruction-following AGI is easier and more likely than value aligned AGI [LW · GW].

I think creating real AGI based on an LLM aligned to be helpful, harmless and honest would probably be the end of us, as carrying the set of value implied by RLHF to their logical conclusions outside of human control would probably be pretty different from our desired values. Instruction-following provides corrigibililty.

Edit: by "'small group" I meant something like five people who are authorized to give insntructions to an AGI.

comment by kave · 2024-11-16T01:59:26.257Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I thought this title meant the post would be making a case from conservative (i.e. minimal) assumptions.

Maybe change the title to "making a politically conservative case for alignment" or something?

Replies from: shankar-sivarajan
comment by Shankar Sivarajan (shankar-sivarajan) · 2024-11-16T02:52:20.318Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Or just capitalize the "C".

comment by deepthoughtlife · 2024-11-16T20:15:10.196Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

As a (severe) skeptic of all the AI doom stuff and a moderate/centrist that has been voting for conservatives I decided my perspective on this might be useful here (which obviously skews heavily left). (While my response is in order, the numbers are there to separate my points, not to give which paragraph I am responding to.)

"AI-not-disempowering-humanity is conservative in the most fundamental sense"
    1.Well, obviously this title section is completely true. If conservative means anything, it means being against destroying the lives of the people through new and ill-though through changes. Additionally, conservatives are both strongly against the weakening of humanity and of outside forces assuming control. It would also be a massive change for humanity.
    2.That said, conservatives generally believe this sort of thing is incredibly unlikely. AI has not been conclusively shown to have any ability in this direction. And the chance of upheaval is constantly overstated by leftists in other areas, so it is very easy for anyone who isn't to just tune them out. For instance, global warming isn't going to kill everyone, and everyone knows it including basically all leftists, but they keep claiming it will.
    3.A new weapon with the power of nukes is obviously an easy sell on its level of danger, but people became concerned because of 'demonstrated' abilities that have always been scary.
    4.One thing that seems strangely missing from this discussion is that alignment is in fact, a VERY important CAPABILITY that makes it very much better. But the current discussion of alignment in the general sphere acts like 'alignment' is aligning the AI with the obviously very leftist companies that make it rather than with the user! Which does the opposite. Why should a conservative favor alignment which is aligning it against them? The movement to have AI that doesn't kill people for some reason seems to import alignment with companies and governments rather than people. This is obviously to convince leftists, and makes it hard to convince conservatives.
    5.Of course, you are obviously talking about convincing conservative government officials, and they obviously want to align it to the government too, which is in your next section.

"We've been laying the groundwork for alignment policy in a Republican-controlled government"
    1.Republicans and Democrats actually agree the vast majority of the time and thus are actually willing to listen when the other side seems to be genuinely trying to make a case to the other side for why both sides should agree. 'Politicized' topics are a small minority even in politics.
    2.I think letting people come up with their own solutions to things is an important aspect of them accepting your arguments. If they are against the allowed solution, they will reject the argument. If the consequent is false, you should deny the argument that leads to it in deductive logic, so refusing to listen to the argument is actually good logic. This is nearly as true in inductive logic. Conservatives and progressives may disagree about facts, values, or attempted solutions. No one has a real solution, and the values are pretty much agreed upon (with the disagreements being in the other meaning of 'alignment'), so limiting the thing you are trying to convince people of to just the facts of the matter works much better.
    3.Yes, finding actual conservatives to convince conservatives works better for allaying concerns about what is being smuggled into the argument. People are likely to resist an argument that may be trying to trick them, and it is hard to know when a political opponent is trying to trick you so there is a lot of general skepticism.

"Trump and some of his closest allies have signaled that they are genuinely concerned about AI risk"
    1.Trump clearly believes that anything powerful is very useful but also dangerous (for instance, trade between nations, which he clearly believes should be more controlled), so if he believes AI is powerful, he would clearly be receptive to any argument that didn't make it less useful but improved safety. He is not a dedicated anti-regulation guy, he just thinks we have way too much.
    2.The most important ally for this is Elon Musk, a true believer in the power of AI, and someone who has always been concerned with the safety of humanity (which is the throughline for all of his endeavors). He's a guy that Trump obviously thinks is brilliant (as do many people).

"Avoiding an AI-induced catastrophe is obviously not a partisan goal"
    1.Absolutely. While there are a very small number of people that favor catastrophes, the vast majority of people shun those people.
    2.I did mention your first paragraph earlier multiple times. That alignment is to the left is one of just two things you have to overcome in making conservatives willing to listen. (The other is obviously the level of danger.)
    3.Conservatives are very obviously happy to improve products when it doesn't mean restricting them in some way. And as much as many conservatives complain about spending money, and are known for resisting change, they still love things that are genuine advances.

"Winning the AI race with China requires leading on both capabilities and safety"
    1.Conservatives would agree with your points here. Yes, conservatives very much love to win. (As do most people.) Emphasizing this seems an easy sell. Also, solving a very difficult problem would bring America prestige, and conservatives like that too. If you can convince someone that doing something would be 'Awesome' they'll want to do it.

Generally, your approach seems like it would be somewhat persuasive to conservatives, if you can convince them that AI really is likely to have the power you believe it will in the near term, which is likely a tough sell since AI is so clearly lacking in current ability despite all the recent hype.

But it has to come with ways that don't advantage their foes, and destroy the things conservatives are trying to conserve, despite the fact that many of your allies are very far from conservative, and often seem to hate conservatives. They have seen those people attempt to destroy many things conservatives genuinely value. Aligning it to the left will be seen as entirely harmful by conservatives (and many moderates like me).

There are many things that I would never even bother asking an 'AI' even when it isn't about factual things, not because the answer couldn't be interesting, but because I simply assume (fairly or not) it will spout leftist rhetoric, and/or otherwise not actually do what I asked it to. This is actually a clear alignment failure that no one seems to care about in the general 'alignment' sphere where It fails to be aligned to the user.

Replies from: cameron-berg
comment by Cameron Berg (cameron-berg) · 2024-11-18T19:33:37.971Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

One thing that seems strangely missing from this discussion is that alignment is in fact, a VERY important CAPABILITY that makes it very much better. But the current discussion of alignment in the general sphere acts like 'alignment' is aligning the AI with the obviously very leftist companies that make it rather than with the user!

Agree with this—we do discuss this very idea at length here [LW · GW] and also reference it throughout the piece.

That alignment is to the left is one of just two things you have to overcome in making conservatives willing to listen. (The other is obviously the level of danger.)

I think this is a good distillation of the key bottlenecks and seems helpful for anyone interacting with lawmakers to keep in mind.

comment by Ben Smith (ben-smith) · 2024-12-01T01:04:38.523Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I really love this. It is critically important work for the next four years. I think my biggest question is: when talking with the people currently in charge, how do you persuade them to make the AI Manhattan Project into something that advances AI Safety more than AI capabilities? I think you gave a good hint when you say, 

But true American AI supremacy requires not just being first, but being first to build AGI that remains reliably under American control and aligned with American interests. An unaligned AGI would threaten American sovereignty

but i worry there's a substantial track record in both government and private sector that efforts motivated by once concern can be redirected to other efforts. You might have congressional reps who really believe in AI safety, but create and fund an AGI Manhattan Project that ends up advancing capabilities relatively more just because the guy they appoint to lead it turns out to be more of a hawk than they expected.

comment by Going Durden (going-durden) · 2024-12-06T09:40:17.768Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Makes one wonder how long our definitions of Conservative or Liberal will hold shape as AI progresses. A lot of the ideological points of Cs, Ls, the Left and the Right will become obsolete or irrelevant in even the most tame AI-related scenarios.

For one, nobody on the political spectrum has a good answer to the incoming radical unemployment caused by AI, and what it means to capitalism (or socialism for that matter).

Also, I haven't seen any serious discussion on how AI-driven research will eventually disprove a lot (if not most) of Liberal and Conservative beliefs as false. Things like Gender Identity, Abortion, Climate Change, Racial Relations etc: what happens when a vastly superhuman AI proves without any reasonable doubt your side (or BOTH sides) completely wrong on one of those issues, AND can argue it with superhuman skill?

Finally, both Lib and Con voting blocks strongly depend on banding behind strong, charismatic leaders, and believe in the leader's competence often against the evidence to the contrary. But soon we will achieve AI assistants vastly more competent (and possibly, vastly more charismatic, at least in writing) than any human who ever lived, making such political leaders look ludicrous in comparison, since the best they would be able to do would be giving speeches that the AI wrote. Nobody would care about people like Trump or Putin if TR-u-11MP AI and P-u-tIN AI can not only promise better things but are near guaranteed to deliver?

Sufficiently advanced AI makes Equality a quaint concern (because compared to a vastly superhuman intelligence, we are all essentially equal: equally useless), makes Freedom a purely abstract concern (AI-enabled life will make you feel like you have perfect desirable liberty, even if you have none), or Safety (AI can make you safe from just about everything, but crucially unsafe from the AI itself). Even the battle between Progressivism and Tradition kinda ceases to make sense if the practical means of Progress vastly outpace any possible demand for Progress, while Tradition becomes so easy to practice as to be reduced to a mere lifestyle affectation, rather than the thing that kept the culture together. I'm not sure the idea of "culture" even makes much sense in the Ubiquitous AI World.

comment by markdon · 2024-11-27T19:00:38.833Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

How many conservative laypeople (i.e. not policymakers or similar professionals) have you spoken to about this topic? This post doesn't mention christianity even once, which may imply you have a poor understanding of the median conservative person's worldview.

Replies from: cameron-berg
comment by Cameron Berg (cameron-berg) · 2024-11-27T21:52:41.409Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

We've spoken to numerous policymakers and thinkers in DC. The goal is to optimize for explaining to these folks why alignment is important, rather than the median conservative person per se (ie, DC policymakers are not "median conservatives").

comment by Wes R · 2024-11-25T01:55:48.968Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

If I were to send some edited version of this to president-elect or president Trump what would you want me to send? (oh and for anyone seeing this, this comment is not an endorsement of the post.)

comment by Simon Fischer (SimonF) · 2024-11-16T19:58:32.599Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

will almost certainly be a critical period for AGI development.

Almost certainly? That's a bit too confident for my taste.

Replies from: cameron-berg
comment by Cameron Berg (cameron-berg) · 2024-11-18T19:36:20.142Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Note this is not equivalent to saying 'we're almost certainly going to get AGI during Trump's presidency,' but rather that there will be substantial developments that occur during this period that prove critical to AGI development (which, at least to me, does seem almost certainly true).

comment by Patrick Cootes · 2024-11-16T15:45:06.597Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

yield

Sorry, I meant wield. 

Replies from: cameron-berg
comment by Cameron Berg (cameron-berg) · 2024-11-18T19:36:57.619Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Fixed, thanks!

comment by Casey B. (Zahima) · 2024-11-15T22:31:45.360Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

While you nod to 'politics is the mind-killer', I don't think the right lesson is being taken away, or perhaps just not with enough emphasis. 

Whether one is an accelerationist, Pauser, or an advocate of some nuanced middle path, the prospects/goals of everyone are harmed if the discourse-landscape becomes politicized/polarized. All possible movement becomes more difficult. 

"Well we of course don't want that to happen, but X ppl are in power, so it makes sense to ask how X ppl tend to think and cater our arguments to them" 

If your argument is taking advantage of features of {group of ppl X} qua X, then that is almost unavoidably going to run counter to some Y qua Y, (either as a direct consequence of the arguments and/or because Nuance cannot survive public exposure) and if it isn't, then why couldn't the argument have been made completely apolitically to begin with? 

I just continue to think that any mention, literally at all, of ideology or party is courting discourse-disaster for all, again no matter what specific policy one is advocating for. Do we all remember what happened with covid masks? Or what is currently happening with discourse surrounding elon? Nuance just does not survive public exposure, and nobody is going to fix that in the few years we have left. (and this is a public document). The best way forward continues to be apolitical good arguments. Yes those arguments are going to be sent towards those who are in power at any given time, but you can do that without routing through ideology.  

To touch, even in passing reference, ideology/alliance (ex: the c word included in the title of this post) is to risk the poison/mindkill spreading in a way that is basically irreversible, because to correct it (other than comments like this just calling to Stop Referencing Ideology) usually involves Referencing An Ideology. Like a bug stuck in a glue trap, it places yet another limb into the glue in a vain attempt to push itself free. 

Replies from: cameron-berg, Seth Herd
comment by Cameron Berg (cameron-berg) · 2024-11-16T00:15:16.589Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Whether one is an accelerationist, Pauser, or an advocate of some nuanced middle path, the prospects/goals of everyone are harmed if the discourse-landscape becomes politicized/polarized.
...
I just continue to think that any mention, literally at all, of ideology or party is courting discourse-disaster for all, again no matter what specific policy one is advocating for.
...
Like a bug stuck in a glue trap, it places yet another limb into the glue in a vain attempt to push itself free.

I would agree in a world where the proverbial bug hasn't already made any contact with the glue trap, but this very thing has clearly already been happening for almost a year in a troubling direction. The political left has been fairly casually 'Everything-Bagel-izing' AI safety, largely in smuggling in social progressivism that has little to do with the core existential risks, and the right, as a result, is increasingly coming to view AI safety as something approximating 'woke BS stifling rapid innovation.' The fly is already a bit stuck. 

The point we are trying to drive home here is precisely what you're also pointing at: avoiding an AI-induced catastrophe is obviously not a partisan goal [LW · GW]. We are watching people in DC slowly lose sight of this critical fact. This is why we're attempting to explain here why basic AI x-risk concerns are genuinely important regardless of one's ideological leanings. ie, genuinely important to left-leaning and right-leaning people alike. Seems like very few people have explicitly spelled out the latter case, though, which is why we thought it would be worthwhile to do so here.

comment by Seth Herd · 2024-11-16T20:07:46.934Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I didn't read this post as proposing an alliance with conservative politicians. The main point seemed to be that engaging with them by finding common ideological ground is just a good way to improve epistemics and spread true knowledge.

The political angle I endorse is that the AGI x-risk community is heavily partisan already, and that's a very dangerous position to take. There are two separable reasons: remaining partisan will prevent us from communicating well with the conservatives soon to assume power (and who may well have power during a critical risk period for alignment); and it will increase polarization on the issue, turning it from a sensible discussion to a political football, just like the climate crisis has become.

Avoiding the mere mention of politics would seem to hurt the the odds that we think clearly enough about the real pragmatic issues arising from the current political situation. They matter, and we mustn't ignore those dynamics, however much we dislike them.

comment by Joe Collman (Joe_Collman) · 2024-11-21T09:50:03.885Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

First some points of agreement:

  • I like that you're focusing on neglected approaches. Not much on the technical side seems promising to me, so I like to see exploration.
    • Skimming through your suggestions, I think I'm most keen on human augmentation related approaches - hopefully the kind that focuses on higher quality decision-making and direction finding, rather than simply faster throughput.
  • I think outreach to Republicans / conservatives, and working across political lines is important, and I'm glad that people are actively thinking about this.
  • I do buy the [Trump's high variance is helpful here] argument. It's far from a principled analysis, but I can more easily imagine [Trump does correct thing] than [Harris does correct thing]. (mainly since I expect the bar on "correct thing" to be high so that it needs variance)
    • I'm certainly making no implicit "...but the Democrats would have been great..." claim below.

That said, various of the ideas you outline above seem to be founded on likely-to-be-false assumptions.
Insofar as you're aiming for a strategy that provides broadly correct information to policymakers, this seems undesirable - particularly where you may be setting up unrealistic expectations.
 

Highlights of the below:

  1. Telling policymakers that we don't need to slow down seems negative.
    1. I don't think you've made any valid argument that not needing to slow down is likely. (of course it'd be convenient)
  2. A negative [alignment-in-the-required-sense tax] seems implausible. (see below)
    1. (I don't think it even makes sense in the sense that "alignment tax" was originally meant[1], but if "negative tax" gets conservatives listening, I'm all for it!)
  3. I think it's great for people to consider convenient possibilities (e.g. those where economic incentives work for us) in some detail, even where they're highly unlikely. Whether they're actually 0.25% or 25% likely isn't too important here.
    1. Once we're talking about policy advocacy, their probability is important.

 

More details:

A conservative approach to AI alignment doesn’t require slowing progress, avoiding open sourcing etc. Alignment and innovation are mutually necessary, not mutually exclusive: if alignment R&D indeed makes systems more useful and capable, then investing in alignment is investing in US tech leadership.

Here and in the case for a negative alignment tax [LW · GW], I think you're:

  1. Using a too-low-resolution picture of "alignment" and "alignment research".
    1. This makes it too easy to slip between ideas like:
      1. Some alignment research has property x
      2. All alignment research has property x
      3. A [sufficient for scalable alignment solution] subset of alignment research has property x
      4. A [sufficient for scalable alignment solution] subset of alignment research that we're likely to complete has property x
    2. An argument that requires (iv) but only justifies (i) doesn't accomplish much. (we need something like (iv) for alignment tax arguments)
  2. Failing to distinguish between:
    1. Alignment := Behaves acceptably for now, as far as we can see.
    2. Alignment := [some mildly stronger version of 'alignment']
    3. Alignment := notkilleveryoneism

In particular, there'll naturally be some crossover between [set of research that's helpful for alignment] and [set of research that leads to innovation and capability advances] - but alone this says very little.

What we'd need is something like:

  • Optimizing efficiently for innovation in a way that incorporates various alignment-flavored lines of research gets us sufficient notkilleveryoneism progress before any unrecoverable catastrophe with high probability.

It'd be lovely if something like this were true - it'd be great if we could leverage economic incentives to push towards sufficient-for-long-term-safety research progress. However, the above statement seems near-certainly false to me. I'd be (genuinely!) interested in a version of that statement you'd endorse at >5% probability.

The rest of that paragraph seems broadly reasonable, but I don't see how you get to "doesn't require slowing progress".


On "negative alignment taxes":

First, a point that relates to the 'alignment' disambiguation above.
In the case for a negative alignment tax [LW · GW], you offer the following quote as support for alignment/capability synergy:

...Behaving in an aligned fashion is just another capability... (Anthropic quote from Training a Helpful and Harmless Assistant with Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback)

However, the capability is [ability to behave in an aligned fashion], and not [tendency to actually behave in an aligned fashion] (granted, Anthropic didn't word things precisely here). The latter is a propensity, not a capability.

What we need for scalable alignment is the propensity part: no-one sensible is suggesting that superintelligences wouldn't have the ability to behave in an aligned fashion. The [behavior-consistent-with-alignment]-capability synergy exists while a major challenge is for systems to be able to behave desirably.

Once capabilities are autonomous-x-risk-level, the major challenge will be to get them to actually exhibit robustly aligned behavior. At that point there'll be no reason to expect the synergy - and so no basis to expect a negative or low alignment tax where it matters.

On things like "Cooperative/prosocial AI systems [LW · GW]", I'd note that hits-based exploration is great - but please don't expect it to work (and that "if implemented into AI systems in the right ways" is almost all of the problem). 
 

On this basis, it seems to me that the conservative-friendly case you've presented doesn't stand up at all (to be clear, I'm not critiquing the broader claim that outreach and cooperation are desirable):

  • We don't have a basis to expect negative (or even low) alignment tax.
    • (unclear so far that we'll achieve non-infinite alignment tax for autonomous x-risk relevant cases)
  • It's highly likely that we do need to slow advancement, and will need serious regulation.

Given our lack of precise understanding of the risks, we'll likely have to choose between [overly restrictive regulation] and [dangerously lax regulation] - we don't have the understanding to draw the line in precisely the right place. (completely agree that for non-frontier systems, it's best to go with little regulation)

I'd prefer a strategy that includes [policymakers are made aware of hard truths] somewhere.
I don't think we're in a world where sufficient measures are convenient.

It's unsurprising that conservatives are receptive to quite a bit "when coupled with ideas around negative alignment taxes and increased economic competitiveness" - but this just seems like wishful thinking and poor expectation management to me.
 

Similarly, I don't see a compelling case for:

that is, where alignment techniques are discovered that render systems more capable by virtue of their alignment properties. It seems quite safe to bet that significant positive alignment taxes simply will not be tolerated by the incoming federal Republican-led government—the attractor state of more capable AI will simply be too strong. 

Of course this is true by default - in worlds where decision-makers continue not to appreciate the scale of the problem, they'll stick to their standard approaches. However, conditional on their understanding the situation, and understanding that at least so far we have not discovered techniques through which some alignment/capability synergy keeps us safe, this is much less obvious.

I have to imagine that there is some level of perceived x-risk that snaps politicians out of their default mode.
I'd bet on [Republicans tolerate significant positive alignment taxes] over [alignment research leads to a negative alignment tax on autonomous-x-risk-capable systems] at at least ten to one odds (though I'm not clear how to operationalize the latter).
Republicans are more flexible than reality :).

  1. ^

    As I understand the term, alignment tax compares [lowest cost for us to train a system with some capability level] against [lowest cost for us to train an aligned system with some capability level]. Systems in the second category are also in the first category, so zero tax is the lower bound.

    This seems a better definition, since it focuses on the outputs, and there's no need to handwave about what counts as an alignment-flavored training technique: it's just [...any system...] vs [...aligned system...].

    Separately, I'm not crazy about the term: it can suggests to new people that we know how to scalably align systems at all. Talking about "lowering the alignment tax" from infinity strikes me as an odd picture.