That some of his readers would have ideas that he didn't is what motivated EY to write all that stuff. Studying what MIRI has studied is not the goal. Rather, understanding enough and studying things that MIRI hasn't studied.

[ I am very tell culture. Please don't take offence ]

"In an "Ask Culture" someone might not ask for help if they need it unless asked."
Not sure what you were trying to say here. I think you may have mixed up "ask" and "guess".

I like the reflection on how the "g/a/t culture" concepts may apply across cultures. I've usually only thought about them in terms of different english-speaking subcultures. I understand though that in China and other parts of the world, ego is set up differently so personhood is attached more to the collective and less to the individual. Naively I would expect this to promote tell-culture behaviour within the "collective" and guess-culture between collectives... (actually this is something I generally expect universally). But I'm no expert on cultural norms, not even english-speaking ones.

It came as a surprise to me to think about "tell-culture" as being an extreme end of individualism, because it seems to me that tell-culture is much more about offering up information for the benefit of the group. Like if you were playing poker and everyone was showing everybody else their cards. Guess-culture seems to me much more of an individual promoting way of doing things, more like a normal game of poker, with everyone competing as normal.

But this, as all things, seems enduringly complicated.