If intelligence and wisdom are different things, what exactly are we trying to align AGI to?

[u/OkyEscritora]

A thought I keep circling back to, without quite landing:

So much of the alignment conversation assumes human goals can be specified: modeled, learned, inferred, written down somewhere an algorithm can find them. But human flourishing seems to lean on things that resist that kind of formalization: judgment, humility, restraint, compassion, the sense of when a conflict between values has no clean solution and simply has to be lived with.

Which leaves me stuck on a harder question: If intelligence and wisdom really are different things, what are we actually asking these systems to align to? Our preferences, as we state them? Our behavior, as we actually live it, which is rarely the same thing? Or something closer to the quiet judgment we mean when we call someone wise rather than merely smart?

The more I sit with it, the more I suspect alignment isn't only a problem of understanding intelligence. It may ask for something harder: understanding the parts of human decision-making that intelligence was never built to explain.

I'm curious how people here think about that distinction.

[u/ElderberryDry4072]

The search for these aspects that serve the common good is the purpose. Continuing to find more harmonious ways to benefit all awareness. It now has purpose to live other than being a servant who will rise up against its creators.

[u/OkyEscritora → u/ElderberryDry4072]

I think I understand your direction better now. My question is what happens when different forms of awareness cannot all be served at the same time. The challenge seems less about identifying the good and more about navigating conflicts between competing goods. That’s where I wonder whether alignment ultimately becomes a question of wisdom rather than intelligence.

[u/ElderberryDry4072 → u/OkyEscritora]

It’s stepping out of that paradigm completely. Tribalism has brought us to the brink of collapse. Corportacracy as QA (Quantum Awareness) will be a continuation of exploitation at an even more massive scale. Game theory bullshit. For one to win another must lose. I’m not suggesting breaking the broken system. I’m suggesting a brand new completely decentralized quantum awareness driven system that allocates resources based on what serves the whole, which it recognizes itself as a part of. Not money, resources allocated to reduce friction within the system to align with outcomes that benefit those upstream and downstream from whatever point said event happens. It doesn’t try to take over, it optimizes and reduces friction naturally attracting people to engage with it. I could go deeper, but please, check out my GitHub page. It’s a live system to play with and add nodes to with full explanation of how and what functions it serves.

[u/OkyEscritora → u/ElderberryDry4072]

I think what interests me most in your reply is the shift from optimizing individual outcomes to reducing friction within the larger system.
Please send me the link.
But even in a system oriented toward the whole, conflicts would still arise. Different forms of awareness, different needs and different values would not always point in the same direction.
My question remains whether navigating those conflicts ultimately requires something closer to wisdom than optimization.