> And to boot, after so many words, the final advice is extremely hollow... literally just saying,
> > “And so we should try to do better along lots of axes.”
> How should we improve? I guess by “doing better” on “multiple axes.”
That's not what the final advice is, the author is suggesting the use of "meta-rationality":
> "AI is a wolpertinger: not a coherent, unified technical discipline, but a peculiar hybrid of fields with diverse ways of seeing, diverse criteria for progress, and diverse rational and non-rational methods. Characteristically, meta-rationality evaluates, selects, combines, modifies, discovers, creates, and monitors multiple frameworks."
Although not expanded on in this essay, it seems like the whole blog is dedicated to the topic.
> "That's not what the final advice is, the author is suggesting the use of "meta-rationality""
I think you mis-read that section of the essay, because the whole conclusion of the meta-rationality section was the quote that I already gave in my comment, “And so we should try to do better along lots of axes.”
Literally, that is the sum-up of advice in the lone section of the essay that possibly has any call to action or advice. It gives a fairly quick and superficial overview of meta-rationality (which is OK), but does not say anything at all about putting it into practice except for "doing better" on "multiple axes" (literally, this is all it says).
So when you say the "final advice" is meta-rationality -- that's already what I was talking about. That's exactly the part where the essay fails to give any type of actionable payoff at all.
That's not what the final advice is, the author is suggesting the use of "meta-rationality":
> "AI is a wolpertinger: not a coherent, unified technical discipline, but a peculiar hybrid of fields with diverse ways of seeing, diverse criteria for progress, and diverse rational and non-rational methods. Characteristically, meta-rationality evaluates, selects, combines, modifies, discovers, creates, and monitors multiple frameworks."
Although not expanded on in this essay, it seems like the whole blog is dedicated to the topic.