Yeah, that’s again that thing… people in different parts of the world using the same word to mean something different.
I grew up in a country whose official name was “Czechoslovakian socialist republic”. We were a satellite to a country called “Union of council socialist republics”. The political/economical regime we had was officially called “socialism”. -- In my country, almost everyone means this when they use the word “socialism”.
So talking with other people who use the word “socialism” to mean something else, feels kind of surreal. It’s like… are they from other planet or what? Are they not aware that we had “socialist” countries for decades in this part of the world? Or are they in a complete denial about what happened (all the murders, torture, fear, and censorship) in those countries? (Then perhaps it is my moral duty to educate them.) Oh no, they are just using the same word to mean something completely different. At least I hope that all of them do.
To illustrate my level of confusion, just imagine that you meet a group of young people from other side of the planet, identifying themselves as “nazis”. When you ask them what exactly they mean using this word, they tell you it means a lifestyle based on “My Little Pony”. You are like: WTF?!! Then you ask them whether they know something about European history, and what is their opinion about the guys who called themselves nazis, like Hitler and his friends. They patiently explain to you that Hitler and his friends were definitely not true nazis, because, you know, they were completely unlike the “My Little Pony”. Isn’t that obvious? Therefore it would be more proper to call Hitler an anti-nazi. (And later, you see that 27% of LW readers self-identify as nazis. How horrifying would that feel?)
I tend to think of “socialism” as an umbrella term that includes a number of different concrete political systems, all broadly committed to some form of state-directed egalitarianism (or at least more committed than traditional liberalism). Specific socialist doctrines range from anarchism to Soviet-style communism to Scandinavian-style social democracy. Historically, I think most of these systems regarded the socialist state as transitory (or non-existent, in the case of anarchism), paving the way for a class-less utopia where all means of production are held in common, but I think few self-described socialists (excepting perhaps hardcore communists) would see this transition as plausible any more. I certainly don’t.
So I wouldn’t say that I mean something different when I say “socialism” than you do, nor would I say that communism isn’t true socialism. I would say that we are both talking about socialist systems, but different types of socialist systems. There is something that communism and social democracy have in common, which makes them both forms of socialism, but I doubt that that common core includes what you find most reprehensible about communist regimes.
I agree that something like “social democrat” would be a less confusing label than “socialist” for the next census, in order to distinguish the particular variety of socialism that was intended.
Yeah, that makes sense. The utopia, the Scandinavian-style social democracy, the Soviet-style communisms all belong to a greater “socialism” superset, just like Friendly AI and the paperclip maximizer both belong to an “artificial intelligence” superset.
And that is also a reason why someone telling “we are ready to build an artificial intelligence tomorrow”, without providing any more details, would make some people here scared. Not because all AIs are wrong; not because we don’t want a kind of AI here; not because we know that their AI would be unfriendly. But simply because the fact that they didn’t specify the details is an evidence that they didn’t think about the details, and thus they are likely to build an unfriendly AI without actually wanting to. Because the prior probability of unfriendly AI is greater than the prior probability of a friendly AI, so if you just blindly hit a point within the “artificial intelligence” space, it is likely to go wrong.
In a similar way, I am concerned that people who want utopia-socialism don’t pay much attention to the details (my evidence is that they don’t find the details worth mentioning), and are probably not aware (or disagree) with my opinion that it is much easier to create a Soviet-style communism than a stable Friendly socialism. I mean, even if your starting group of revolutionaries all have good intentions, you will probably get infiltrated and removed from power by some power-hungry psychopaths, because… that is what homo sapiens usually does. You know, mindkilling, corrupted hardware, conjunction fallacy (all the things that must succeed to build the utopia), and so on. -- And the different opinions may be caused by some people having first-hand experience of the Soviet-style communism (especially with the aspect that many well-meaning people created the system and supported its running, despite the horrible things that happened; partially because the system made it illegal to share information about those horrible things, while supported spreading the good news, whether real or imaginary), and other people not having this experience (but hearing some of the good news).
“Socialist” was tabooed on the census, as were the other political orientations. The text of the option was:
I picked “Socialist” on this basis. There was a separate option for Soviet-style communism, which 0.7% of respondents picked.
Yeah, that’s again that thing… people in different parts of the world using the same word to mean something different.
I grew up in a country whose official name was “Czechoslovakian socialist republic”. We were a satellite to a country called “Union of council socialist republics”. The political/economical regime we had was officially called “socialism”. -- In my country, almost everyone means this when they use the word “socialism”.
So talking with other people who use the word “socialism” to mean something else, feels kind of surreal. It’s like… are they from other planet or what? Are they not aware that we had “socialist” countries for decades in this part of the world? Or are they in a complete denial about what happened (all the murders, torture, fear, and censorship) in those countries? (Then perhaps it is my moral duty to educate them.) Oh no, they are just using the same word to mean something completely different. At least I hope that all of them do.
To illustrate my level of confusion, just imagine that you meet a group of young people from other side of the planet, identifying themselves as “nazis”. When you ask them what exactly they mean using this word, they tell you it means a lifestyle based on “My Little Pony”. You are like: WTF?!! Then you ask them whether they know something about European history, and what is their opinion about the guys who called themselves nazis, like Hitler and his friends. They patiently explain to you that Hitler and his friends were definitely not true nazis, because, you know, they were completely unlike the “My Little Pony”. Isn’t that obvious? Therefore it would be more proper to call Hitler an anti-nazi. (And later, you see that 27% of LW readers self-identify as nazis. How horrifying would that feel?)
I tend to think of “socialism” as an umbrella term that includes a number of different concrete political systems, all broadly committed to some form of state-directed egalitarianism (or at least more committed than traditional liberalism). Specific socialist doctrines range from anarchism to Soviet-style communism to Scandinavian-style social democracy. Historically, I think most of these systems regarded the socialist state as transitory (or non-existent, in the case of anarchism), paving the way for a class-less utopia where all means of production are held in common, but I think few self-described socialists (excepting perhaps hardcore communists) would see this transition as plausible any more. I certainly don’t.
So I wouldn’t say that I mean something different when I say “socialism” than you do, nor would I say that communism isn’t true socialism. I would say that we are both talking about socialist systems, but different types of socialist systems. There is something that communism and social democracy have in common, which makes them both forms of socialism, but I doubt that that common core includes what you find most reprehensible about communist regimes.
I agree that something like “social democrat” would be a less confusing label than “socialist” for the next census, in order to distinguish the particular variety of socialism that was intended.
Yeah, that makes sense. The utopia, the Scandinavian-style social democracy, the Soviet-style communisms all belong to a greater “socialism” superset, just like Friendly AI and the paperclip maximizer both belong to an “artificial intelligence” superset.
And that is also a reason why someone telling “we are ready to build an artificial intelligence tomorrow”, without providing any more details, would make some people here scared. Not because all AIs are wrong; not because we don’t want a kind of AI here; not because we know that their AI would be unfriendly. But simply because the fact that they didn’t specify the details is an evidence that they didn’t think about the details, and thus they are likely to build an unfriendly AI without actually wanting to. Because the prior probability of unfriendly AI is greater than the prior probability of a friendly AI, so if you just blindly hit a point within the “artificial intelligence” space, it is likely to go wrong.
In a similar way, I am concerned that people who want utopia-socialism don’t pay much attention to the details (my evidence is that they don’t find the details worth mentioning), and are probably not aware (or disagree) with my opinion that it is much easier to create a Soviet-style communism than a stable Friendly socialism. I mean, even if your starting group of revolutionaries all have good intentions, you will probably get infiltrated and removed from power by some power-hungry psychopaths, because… that is what homo sapiens usually does. You know, mindkilling, corrupted hardware, conjunction fallacy (all the things that must succeed to build the utopia), and so on. -- And the different opinions may be caused by some people having first-hand experience of the Soviet-style communism (especially with the aspect that many well-meaning people created the system and supported its running, despite the horrible things that happened; partially because the system made it illegal to share information about those horrible things, while supported spreading the good news, whether real or imaginary), and other people not having this experience (but hearing some of the good news).