Disclaimer: this is published without any post-processing or editing for typos after the dialogue took place.

Gabriel Alfour

Let's split the conversation in three parts (with no time commitment for each):

1) Exposing our Theses

We start with a brief overview of our theses, just for some high-level context.

2) Probing Questions

We ask each other a bunch of questions to understand our mutual points of view: probe around what we expect to be our respective blindspots.

Ideally, we’d end this half with a better understanding of our positions. And also of our K-positions (as in, X vs Ka(X) in epistemic modal logic): where we expect each other to miss facts and considerations

3) Investigative Debate

We look for concrete cruxes. We debate, but rather than resolving disagreements, we aim to make them more precise. Ie: working to identify where we disagree in practice rather than in words.

Ideally, we’d end this half with a list of better-specified disagreements: empiricals, thought experiments, concrete scenarios, predictions, and the like

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Also, for some context:

The conversation was sparked by this Tweet.
Davidad and I have already discussed AI x-risks IRL a few times. We agree and disagree on many related topics!

davidad

Happy [...]

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First published:
January 26th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/M5s6WgScRfmeWsLD4/dialogue-is-there-a-natural-abstraction-of-good

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Dialogue: Is there a Natural Abstraction of Good?” by davidad, Gabriel Alfour

LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“Dialogue: Is there a Natural Abstraction of Good?” by davidad, Gabriel Alfour