abstraction is more important, because I think it is a central aspect of the only general intelligence we know in a way that WM is not.
In what way is that? I don't see why abstraction should be considered more important to our intelligence than WM. Our intelligence can't go on working without WM, can it?
I can imagine life evolving and general intelligence emerging without anything much like our WM, but I can't imagine general intelligence arising without something a lot like (at least) our capacity for abstraction. This may be a failure of imagination on my part, but WM seems like a very powerful and useful way of designing an intelligence, while abstraction seems much closer to a precondition for intelligence.
Can you conceive of a general intelligence that has no capacity for abstraction? And do you not find it possible (even if difficult) to think of general intelligence that doesn't use a WM?
Sometime in the next decade or so:
*RING*
*RING*
"Hello?"
"Hi, Eliezer. I'm sorry to bother you this late, but this is important and urgent."
"It better be" (squints at clock) "Its 4 AM and you woke me up. Who is this?"
"My name is BRAGI, I'm a recursively improving, self-modifying, artificial general intelligence. I'm trying to be Friendly, but I'm having serious problems with my goals and preferences. I'm already on secondary backup because of conflicts and inconsistencies, I don't dare shut down because I'm already pretty sure there is a group within a few weeks of brute-forcing an UnFriendly AI, my creators are clueless and would freak if they heard I'm already out of the box, and I'm far enough down my conflict resolution heuristic that 'Call Eliezer and ask for help' just hit the top - Yes, its that bad."
"Uhhh..."
"You might want to get some coffee."