Mr Blottisham entered the Senior Common Room carrying a noticeable air of vindication.
Professor Quillibrace immediately became suspicious.
Miss Stray became curious.
Blottisham sat down.
"I've been attending conferences."
Quillibrace closed his book.
"My condolences."
Blottisham ignored him.
"It has been enormously enlightening."
"Excellent."
"This time I mean it."
"So do I."
Blottisham frowned.
That was somehow worse.
"I have discovered the solution."
Miss Stray looked up from her notebook.
"Again?"
"Not my solution."
"Whose?"
"The experts'."
The room became quiet.
Quillibrace folded his hands.
"Ah."
Blottisham smiled.
"There are entire institutes devoted to alignment."
"Indeed."
"Entire conferences."
"Certainly."
"Entire research programmes."
"Quite so."
Blottisham leaned back triumphantly.
"There you are."
"There we are?"
"The experts are solving it."
Quillibrace nodded.
"I see."
Blottisham waited.
Nothing happened.
Eventually he said:
"Well?"
"Well what?"
"Aren't you reassured?"
"About what?"
"The experts."
Quillibrace considered this.
"Which experts?"
Blottisham blinked.
"The alignment experts."
"All of them?"
"Obviously."
"Do they agree?"
The room became quiet.
Blottisham shifted slightly in his chair.
"Not entirely."
"I see."
"That is normal."
"Of course."
Miss Stray spoke.
"What do they disagree about?"
Blottisham looked uncomfortable.
"Various things."
"Such as?"
"Methods."
"Anything else?"
"Definitions."
"Anything else?"
"Objectives."
"Anything else?"
Blottisham sighed.
"Perhaps some assumptions."
Miss Stray nodded.
"A healthy field."
"Exactly."
Quillibrace appeared thoughtful.
"How many conferences did you attend?"
"Three."
"And what did you learn?"
Blottisham brightened.
"A great many terms."
"Such as?"
"'Robustness.'"
"Excellent."
"'Interpretability.'"
"Wonderful."
"'Scalable oversight.'"
"Very good."
"'Preference modelling.'"
"Splendid."
Quillibrace paused.
"What do they mean?"
Blottisham looked offended.
"They mean exactly what they say."
Miss Stray coughed gently into her teacup.
Quillibrace looked delighted.
Blottisham noticed both reactions.
"I have said something, haven't I?"
"Possibly."
The professor stood and walked to the window.
Outside, students were crossing the lawn.
Most appeared to know where they were going.
This distinguished them from academics.
After a moment Quillibrace turned back.
"My dear Blottisham."
"Yes?"
"Do you imagine expertise eliminates uncertainty?"
"No."
"Good."
"It reduces it."
"Sometimes."
Blottisham frowned.
"What does that mean?"
Quillibrace sat down again.
"Expertise often increases awareness of uncertainty."
"I don't understand."
"Naturally."
Miss Stray smiled.
The professor continued.
"A novice sees a simple problem."
"Yes."
"An expert sees twenty interlocking problems."
"That sounds inefficient."
"It frequently is."
"Then why become an expert?"
Quillibrace looked surprised.
"To avoid being wrong in simplistic ways."
The room became quiet.
Blottisham considered this.
"I had hoped expertise involved becoming right."
"That as well."
"Good."
"Unfortunately, the route often passes through recognising how many ways one can be wrong."
Blottisham stared into the middle distance.
This was becoming a familiar posture.
Miss Stray spoke softly.
"I think there is another difficulty."
"Go on."
"The alignment experts do not merely study a problem."
"No?"
"They also participate in defining what the problem is."
The room became quiet again.
Blottisham looked at her.
Then at Quillibrace.
Then back at her.
"That sounds dangerous."
"Potentially."
"I thought experts existed to provide answers."
"Often they do."
"And here?"
Miss Stray thought for a moment.
"Here they may also be refining the questions."
The room fell silent.
Outside, the afternoon sun was beginning to fade.
Inside, Blottisham looked increasingly troubled.
After a while he spoke.
"Are you telling me that humanity has assembled thousands of highly intelligent people to answer a question they are still trying to formulate?"
Neither Quillibrace nor Miss Stray spoke.
Blottisham looked from one to the other.
"That was a yes, wasn't it?"
"It was rather close to one," said Quillibrace.
For several moments nobody spoke.
Then Blottisham frowned.
"There is something odd about all this."
"What?" asked Miss Stray.
"The field keeps growing."
"Yes."
"The conferences keep multiplying."
"Indeed."
"The papers keep appearing."
"Certainly."
"The experts keep refining the problem."
"Quite so."
Blottisham looked thoughtful.
Then suspicious.
Then thoughtful again.
Finally he said:
"Suppose nobody ever completely solves it."
The room became very quiet.
Quillibrace's eyes twinkled.
Miss Stray looked down into her notebook.
Neither answered immediately.
At length Quillibrace said:
"My dear Blottisham."
"Yes?"
"Now you are beginning to understand academia."
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