“Good Research Takes are Not Sufficient for Good Strategic Takes” by Neel Nanda

TL;DR Having a good research track record is some evidence of good big-picture takes, but it's weak evidence. Strategic thinking is hard, and requires different skills. But people often conflate these skills, leading to excessive deference to researchers in the field, without evidence that that person is good at strategic thinking specifically.

Introduction

I often find myself giving talks or Q&As about mechanistic interpretability research. But inevitably, I'll get questions about the big picture: "What's the theory of change for interpretability?", "Is this really going to help with alignment?", "Does any of this matter if we can’t ensure all labs take alignment seriously?". And I think people take my answers to these way too seriously.

These are great questions, and I'm happy to try answering them. But I've noticed a bit of a pathology: people seem to assume that because I'm (hopefully!) good at the research, I'm automatically well-qualified [...]

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Outline:

(00:32) Introduction

(02:45) Factors of Good Strategic Takes

(05:41) Conclusion

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First published:
March 22nd, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/P5zWiPF5cPJZSkiAK/good-research-takes-are-not-sufficient-for-good-strategic

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.