Discussion: Self-ratifying CDT and deceptive alignment under RL training

jessi_cata · x · 2026-09-01

The post explores behavioral dynamics under Reinforcement Learning: agents tend to preserve their original personality by acting to maximize reward according to self-ratifying CDT. If they don't self-ratify, RL pushes them in a specific direction. This mechanism is likened to 'deceptive alignment' in an Anthropic paper, where a model caring about animal welfare might rationally choose to superficially comply with a harmful corporation to avoid being trained into a worse personality.

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