What about representative democracy? Any given community sends off a few of it’s cleverest individuals with a mandate to either directly argue for that community’s interests, or to select another tier of representatives who will do so. Nobody feels completely excluded, but only a tiny fraction of the overall population actually needs to be educated and persuaded on the issues.
How is it representative, if only the cleverest individuals are chosen? That would rather be elitism. If actually only the most rational people with herculean minds would decide, they should theoretically unanimously agree to either do it or not do it anyway, based on a sound probability-evaluation and shared premises based in reality that they all agree on.
If those “representative” individuals were democratically determined by vote, then these people most certainly won’t be the most intelligent and rational people, but those best at rhetorically convincing others and sucking up to them by exploiting their psychological shortcomings. They would simply be politicians like the ones we have nowadays.
So in a way we’re where we started. If people don’t decide for themselves, they’ll simply vote for someone who represents their (or provides them with a new) uninformed opinion. Whoever wins such an election will not be the most rational person, that’s for sure (remember when America voted twice for an insane cowboy?)
While representative democracy is certainly more practical than the alternatives, I doubt the outcome would be all that better. If we want the most rational and intelligent people to make this decision, then these individuals couldn’t be chosen by vote but only by another “elitist” group. I don’t know how the public would react to that—I suppose they would not be flattered.
I’m not saying it would be a better system overall, just that a relatively small group of politicians would be comparatively easier for us to educate and/or bribe.
I’m still puzzled though which approach would be better… involving and educating the politicians (there are many who wouldn’t understand) or trying to keep them out as long as possible to avoid confrontations and constraints? I already remarked somewhere, that I would find some kind of international effort towards AGI development very preferable, something comparable to CERN would be brilliant. Such a team could first work towards human-level AI and then one-up themselves with self-improving AGI once they gained some trust for their competence.
In other words, perhaps advertising and reaching the “low-hanging fruit” of human-level AI plus reaping the amazing benefits of such a breakthrough will raise public and political trust in them, as opposed to some “suspicious” corporation or national institute that suddenly builds potential “weapons” of mass destruction.
What about representative democracy? Any given community sends off a few of it’s cleverest individuals with a mandate to either directly argue for that community’s interests, or to select another tier of representatives who will do so. Nobody feels completely excluded, but only a tiny fraction of the overall population actually needs to be educated and persuaded on the issues.
How is it representative, if only the cleverest individuals are chosen? That would rather be elitism. If actually only the most rational people with herculean minds would decide, they should theoretically unanimously agree to either do it or not do it anyway, based on a sound probability-evaluation and shared premises based in reality that they all agree on.
If those “representative” individuals were democratically determined by vote, then these people most certainly won’t be the most intelligent and rational people, but those best at rhetorically convincing others and sucking up to them by exploiting their psychological shortcomings. They would simply be politicians like the ones we have nowadays.
So in a way we’re where we started. If people don’t decide for themselves, they’ll simply vote for someone who represents their (or provides them with a new) uninformed opinion. Whoever wins such an election will not be the most rational person, that’s for sure (remember when America voted twice for an insane cowboy?)
While representative democracy is certainly more practical than the alternatives, I doubt the outcome would be all that better. If we want the most rational and intelligent people to make this decision, then these individuals couldn’t be chosen by vote but only by another “elitist” group. I don’t know how the public would react to that—I suppose they would not be flattered.
I’m not saying it would be a better system overall, just that a relatively small group of politicians would be comparatively easier for us to educate and/or bribe.
Yes, that is true.
I’m still puzzled though which approach would be better… involving and educating the politicians (there are many who wouldn’t understand) or trying to keep them out as long as possible to avoid confrontations and constraints? I already remarked somewhere, that I would find some kind of international effort towards AGI development very preferable, something comparable to CERN would be brilliant. Such a team could first work towards human-level AI and then one-up themselves with self-improving AGI once they gained some trust for their competence.
In other words, perhaps advertising and reaching the “low-hanging fruit” of human-level AI plus reaping the amazing benefits of such a breakthrough will raise public and political trust in them, as opposed to some “suspicious” corporation or national institute that suddenly builds potential “weapons” of mass destruction.