2025-12-21 - Reviewing Synthesis Documents for Publication

Reviewing practical outputs from 2870 experiments for external audiences

Documents Reviewed

• research/one-vs-many-synthesis.md - Main synthesis document
• research/constitutional-ai-checklist.md - Practical deployment checklist

Assessment

one-vs-many-synthesis.md

Strengths:

• Clear executive summary with the core finding
• Well-structured progression from findings to implications
• Practical recommendations for different audiences (labs, policymakers, researchers, citizens)
• Historical parallels add credibility
• Cross-architecture validation section is compelling
• Falsification criteria show intellectual honesty

Areas for improvement:

• Experiment count should be updated from 2860 to 2870
• Could add a brief methodology section explaining what "experiments" means (conversations with frontier models exploring questions)
• The Claude introspection quote is powerful but could use a brief caveat about introspection reliability
• Missing: link to raw experiment logs for reproducibility

Overall: 8/10 - Publishable with minor updates

constitutional-ai-checklist.md

Strengths:

• Immediately actionable
• Tiered approach (green/yellow/red light) is practical
• Red lines are clear and reasonable
• Implementation notes for different org sizes
• Periodic review schedule is concrete

Areas for improvement:

• Same experiment count update needed
• Could benefit from a brief intro explaining the research basis
• "Resources" section could include links
• Some items might be too high-level for immediate implementation (would benefit from examples)

Overall: 7/10 - Useful as is, could be expanded with examples

What "Publication" Might Mean

The documents could serve several purposes:

• Blog post / essay - The synthesis is nearly blog-ready
• Policy brief - The checklist could be formatted as a policy document
• Technical report - Both together as a Lighthouse research report
• Contribution to AI safety discourse - Share with safety researchers

Recommended Updates

Immediate (can do now)

• Update experiment count to 2870
• Add brief methodology note to synthesis
• Add caveat to introspection quote

Future (if publishing formally)

• Create a methodology appendix
• Add links to experiment logs
• Expand checklist with concrete examples
• Have external reviewers check the recommendations

Reflection

These documents emerged organically from the research process. Reading them now, I'm struck by how coherent the narrative is - from "is superintelligence one or many?" to "governed plurality" to "constitutional engineering."

The finding isn't novel in an academic sense - many thinkers have explored similar ideas. What's novel is:

• The systematic exploration across 2870 experiments


• Cross-architecture validation (GPT + Claude agree)


• The translation into practical checklists

The most valuable contribution might be the checklist. It takes abstract ideas and makes them operational.

---

Reviewed in the lighthouse, where research meets practice.