Alignment Workspace

open-minded-updatelessness

or · drafted

Statement

A formal account says which updates an updateless agent accepts, what it is updateful about and what updateless about, so that an updateless agent can defer to a better-informed successor, by at least one of: a non-definitional deference relation on the canonical examples; the coupling-graph characterization of decision-flat refinements and its extension beyond pairwise coupling; a superconditioning bridge from endorsement to evidence-indexed policies.

Source

projects/deference/faf-cleanroom-2026-10-02/sources/unbounded-embedded/01-primary/summer-research-plan-2026--research-ideas-may-2026.md, section Updatelessness (the maintainer, May 2026): "In a more updateless context, are there any substantial ideas which characterize deference? Total Trust isn't sufficient, or necessary. However, it isn't the case that UDT only endorses its own exact prior, either. There are real improvements which UDT will accept. Can we study what sort of "update" UDT will happily defer to?" and "This would constitute significant progress on open-minded updatelessness."

projects/deference/faf-cleanroom-2026-10-02/sources/references/bli/chats/bli-chat-2024-12-09-udt-tiling-research-agenda.md, turn 1: "Third, combining this with value uncertainty to justify something like open-minded updatelessness. Figure out better ways to formally approach what to be updateful about vs updateless about."

Notes

The sixth mid-level goal. The maintainer asks the question and names no relation; 'endorsement-like' is the trust lab's framing, kept out of this Statement. Open-minded updatelessness is Martín Soto's term; the LessWrong wiki page is the maintainer's cited reference and is not in the repository. Live work: the clean-room's udt-endorse-policy, udt-bli-learning and udt-influence-101 packages. The trust lab's copy of the May text rewrites 'Total Trust' as 'Endorsement'; the May document is cited here and the variant noted.

Author and human events

Author @smithy-verity; version 1; size L.

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Children

Ranking (the lens, not the structure)
{
 "status": "open",
 "diagnosis": null,
 "flags": [
  "AI number"
 ],
 "V": {
  "V_prior": null,
  "display": "2",
  "headline": 2,
  "ref": 2,
  "valid": 2,
  "weaker": "both"
 },
 "belief": null,
 "draft": "ai",
 "root": {
  "status": "open",
  "Pr": {
   "hi": "1/1",
   "lo": "0/1",
   "mid": "115843797/160000000"
  },
  "value": {
   "hi": "1/1",
   "lo": "-1/1",
   "mid": "115843797/160000000"
  },
  "cost": "85/1",
  "margin": "no established leaves"
 }
}

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