# What are some exercises for building/generating intuitions about key disagreements in AI alignment?

I am interested in having my own opinion about more of the [key disagreements](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mJ5oNYnkYrd4sD5uE/clarifying-some-key-hypotheses-in-ai-alignment) within the AI alignment field, such as whether there is a basin of attraction for corrigibility, whether there is [a theory of rationality that is sufficiently precise to build hierarchies of abstraction](https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/suxvE2ddnYMPJN9HD/realism-about-rationality/comment/YMNwHcPNPd4pDK7MR), and to what extent there will be a [competence gap](https://agentfoundations.org/item?id=64).

In ["Is That Your True Rejection?"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TGux5Fhcd7GmTfNGC/is-that-your-true-rejection), Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote:

> I suspect that, in general, if two rationalists set out to resolve a disagreement that persisted past the first exchange, they should expect to find that the true sources of the disagreement are either hard to communicate, or hard to expose. E.g.:
>
> - Uncommon, but well-supported, scientific knowledge or math;
> - Long inferential distances;
> - Hard-to-verbalize intuitions, perhaps stemming from specific visualizations;
> - Zeitgeists inherited from a profession (that may have good reason for it);
> - Patterns perceptually recognized from experience;
> - Sheer habits of thought;
> - Emotional commitments to believing in a particular outcome;
> - Fear that a past mistake could be disproved;
> - Deep self-deception for the sake of pride or other personal benefits.

I am assuming that something like this is happening in the key disagreements in AI alignment. The last three bullet points are somewhat uncharitable to proponents of a particular view, and also seem less likely to me. Summarizing the first six bullet points, I want to say something like: some combination of "innate intuitions" and "life experiences" led e.g. Eliezer and Paul Christiano to arrive at different opinions. I want to go through a useful subset of the "life experiences" part, so that I can share some of the same intuitions.

To that end, my question is something like: What fields should I learn? What textbooks/textbook chapters/papers/articles should I read? What historical examples (from history of AI/ML or from the world at large) should I spend time thinking about? (The more specific the resource, the better.) What intuitions should I expect to build by going through this resource? In the question title I am using the word "exercise" pretty broadly.

If you believe one just needs to be born with one set of intuitions rather than another, and that there are no resources I can consume to refine my intuitions, then my question is instead more like: How can I better introspect so as to find out which side I am on :)?

Some ideas I am aware of:

- Reading discussions between Eliezer/Paul/other people: I've already done a lot of this; it just feels like now I am no longer making much progress.
- Learn more theoretical computer science to learn the Search For Solutions And Fundamental Obstructions intuition, as mentioned in [this post](http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/the-i-already-get-it-slide).