“Cat-Belling Problems” by Eliezer Yudkowsky

(Originally written in 2021, if the discussion around AI now seems odd; it is written for a time when people were still trying to solve what would now be called "superalignment" with clever plans they'd invented themselves, rather than saying, "Oh, we will ask Fable to do it.") === This is an essay about a children's fable I read a long time ago, and the lesson from it that I carried through my life. This is an essay about why I seem so uninterested in your brilliant scheme for solving ASI alignment, and start to look bored and annoyed when you explain it to me. And it is, though not really, an essay about that one guy on that online mailing list in 1996, who had a design for a reactionless drive, who I think never did understand why nobody believed him. Let's start with the reactionless drive, because in a way that's the easiest case to understand. i. Mr. L's Reactionless Drive. Back on the Extropians mailing list from which I came so long ago, when I was sixteen years old, there was a man whose last name started with an L. He had a design for a [...] --- Outline: (01:01) i. Mr. L's Reactionless Drive. (08:38) ii. On Miracles Buried Inside Complex Systems. (17:01) iii. Cat-Belling Problems. (21:33) iv. The Optimizer's Curse against complicated plans for hard problems. (25:07) v. When no Authority (that you accept) can tell you that your bright idea is wrong. (33:41) vi. The equal and opposite advice. (35:45) vii. The rest of this post, which I gave up writing. The original text contained 5 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: September 3rd, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SwYBLQvo8MddDcCwz/cat-belling-problems --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. --- Images from the article: Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.