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by somesortofthing 4 hours ago
In LLMs, much like in humans, agency and misalignment are two sides of the same coin.
1 comments

> agency and misalignment are two sides of the same coin.

The free will coin?

In my experience "free will", like "consciousness" and "common sense", is not so much a concept with a universally agreed definition as it is a cognitive stop sign or an applause light, meaning different things to everyone who uses the term.

Do I have free will, or am I bounded by the laws of physics?

Even if you think my soul is completely independent of my body, there are theologians who argue that God being omniscient means that who goes to heaven and hell is predetermined before birth and therefore no action you take will ever change the afterlife you go to, and that to think God isn't omniscient would be blasphemy; do they think I have free will?

And then there's Thelma with "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law", which can be understood in terms of (amongst other things) "Don't let peer pressure manipulate you into thinking you want other things than you really want", though this is of course a simplification much as the omniscient example above: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Will