I think one thing we could discuss without wandering onto a minefield is political mechanisms — discussions of ways we can make the system (legislative procedures, division of power, voting systems, etc.) more rational, without discussing specific policies.
We would still have to be careful, as even this depends on certain subjective goals — what do we want the political system to do, ultimately? — but that itself could be an interesting meta-discussion. However, it’s a discussion we’d probably have to have before we even start talking about ideal political mechanisms, because we need to agree on what we want a political system to accomplish (that is, what an ideal policy-making system would look like, and how it would acquire and realize values, keeping in mind that it’ll have to be run mostly by humans for the time being) before we can start understanding how it might work.
And writing that paragraph made me realize a meta-meta-discussion that might also be necessary: is it even possible to separate policy goals from political structural goals? Maybe it is, but it could be difficult. The practical outcome of a direct democracy, a representative democracy, a futarchy, and a dictatorship will all be significantly different, yet in somewhat predictable directions, so even if we banish all policy discussion, we’d need to figure out how to uncover and squash any bias that could make us prefer certain abstract political systems because of actual specific policy goals.
Or maybe we’re not interested in doing that in the first place — maybe you’re satisfied with supporting systems of government that are simply most likely to result in your own values being fulfilled, in which case your ideal system would be a dictatorship run by you (or the system that’s the best at approximating the same), unless you value democracy/pluralism itself more strongly than anything you could achieve as dictator.
And I think I’ll stop musing here, before this post becomes an infinite regress of paragraphs deconstructing their predecessors. My original point was going to be that discussing rational systems of government could be less mind-killing than discussing specific policies and politicians and parties, but now it appears it might not be any less complicated.
I think one thing we could discuss without wandering onto a minefield is political mechanisms — discussions of ways we can make the system (legislative procedures, division of power, voting systems, etc.) more rational, without discussing specific policies.
We would still have to be careful, as even this depends on certain subjective goals — what do we want the political system to do, ultimately? — but that itself could be an interesting meta-discussion. However, it’s a discussion we’d probably have to have before we even start talking about ideal political mechanisms, because we need to agree on what we want a political system to accomplish (that is, what an ideal policy-making system would look like, and how it would acquire and realize values, keeping in mind that it’ll have to be run mostly by humans for the time being) before we can start understanding how it might work.
And writing that paragraph made me realize a meta-meta-discussion that might also be necessary: is it even possible to separate policy goals from political structural goals? Maybe it is, but it could be difficult. The practical outcome of a direct democracy, a representative democracy, a futarchy, and a dictatorship will all be significantly different, yet in somewhat predictable directions, so even if we banish all policy discussion, we’d need to figure out how to uncover and squash any bias that could make us prefer certain abstract political systems because of actual specific policy goals.
Or maybe we’re not interested in doing that in the first place — maybe you’re satisfied with supporting systems of government that are simply most likely to result in your own values being fulfilled, in which case your ideal system would be a dictatorship run by you (or the system that’s the best at approximating the same), unless you value democracy/pluralism itself more strongly than anything you could achieve as dictator.
And I think I’ll stop musing here, before this post becomes an infinite regress of paragraphs deconstructing their predecessors. My original point was going to be that discussing rational systems of government could be less mind-killing than discussing specific policies and politicians and parties, but now it appears it might not be any less complicated.
Talking at a meta level, I like Futarchy’s split between values and policies to achieve them.
That is a very useful split which can be adopted even in non-futarchic governments.
For eg. It is an obvious moral thing to take into account everybody’s values. Universal franchise for values.
It is not so obvious to take into account everyone’s opinion about how to achieve the same equally seriously. Simply because of differing expertise.
Two or three more paragraphs of de-construction would be good enough for a top-level post