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Equation 24 · Part 1 · What Alignment Actually Costs

Symbol w

ww
ww

What this part means

w is a part of this expression. Its role is fixed by the surrounding article and by the operations shown in the formula.

Its job in the formula

w is a part of this expression. Its role is fixed by the surrounding article and by the operations shown in the formula.

The passage around this formula

the cost of testing D domains to an adequate depth h (in expert-hours per domain) at a specialist wage w . Anchoring h at roughly 150 hours, taken from Anthropic’s single-domain biosecurity effort, and w at a conservative 50 to 100 US dollars an hour for domain expertise — well below typical consulting rates for the specialists these programmes actually recruit — testing even fifty domains to that…

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Learn the underlying idea

A variable is a named place for a value. Its letter is a local label: x can mean position in one formula and a data point in another.

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Sources cited in the article section

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