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i wonder how much of the bias of popular opinion in alignment towards flashy prosaic stuff is because the best conceptual work is actually very conceptually complicated and subtle and takes hours to absorb, whereas "we added a vector to the residual stream and it made the model talk about geese" is a very simple story to tell
related, maybe there's a ton of alpha in having good taste in picking the right conceptually complicated things and being willing to spend time deeply understanding them
Yeah, not to mention when you're doing conceptually novel work sometimes there's no telling how close you are to a genuine breakthrough until you've invested a considerable amount of time exploring outside the streetlight and the landscape suddenly clicks into place.
Moving fast and taking big swings can get flashy results, but I've got to think there's value in a slow and steady search that doesn't have to meet a deadline.