You seem to be asserting that people in general care less about politics than they should. I would challenge that assertion; it seems unlikely on the face of it.
As noted in OP, we had much more impact on politics (and its close neighbor, tribal signalling) in the ancestral environment than we do now, and it was much more directly a matter of life-and-death. Thus, we are hard-wired to care about politics to a greater extent than we should.
You’re new here, and so you’re not used to our community norms—in those cases, we try to cut people some slack. But it really seems to me that you’re not ready to be making contributions; try to restrict yourself to asking questions that might further your understanding of rationality. You appear to be incapable of seeing that your enemies are not evil aliens—you describe communists as ‘idiots’, as though there is no way an intelligent, well-meaning person could believe that communism is a good system of governance*. I shall refer you to this chestnut from G.K.Chesterton:
In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”
So it is with opposing viewpoints. Policy debates should not appear one-sided. If you do not understand how an intelligent, well-meaning person can have a position, and it’s a position that lots of people actually hold, then you do not understand the position yet.
If you really want to post about politics rather than rationality, there are plenty of forums for that—many more than there are for rationality. If you do continue to post here, I would be very grateful if you made your comments short, to-the-point, and on-topic.
*As a minor footnote, note that what you were really commenting on is people’s responses to one question on an informal survey, which many people criticized for not doing a great job of carving up the space of political ideology.
If you do not understand how an intelligent, well-meaning person can have a position, and it’s a position that lots of people actually hold, then you do not understand the position yet.
Unless “I think the intelligent, well-meaning person is making an error due to cognitive bias, ignorance, or being lied to” counts as understanding them, I do not understand how an intelligent, well-meaning, person can believe in
-- homeopathy
-- The US political version of intelligent design
-- 9/11 conspiracy theories
These are positions that lots of people actually hold. Do I fail to understand these positions?
Indeed, understanding the particular error in reasoning that the person is making is not merely sufficient but necessary for fully understanding a mistaken position. However, if your entire understanding is “because bias somehow” then you don’t actually understand.
And you should be careful about accepting the uncharitable explanation preemptively, as it’s rather tempting to explain away other people’s beliefs and arguments that way.
This is one of the objectively most wrong comments that’s ever been written. A hell of a lot of people went to gas chambers, gulags, and death camps believing this sort of pure, undiluted bullshit (of the highly-dangerous-to-continuing-health variety). Just think about it. You wrote:
So it is with opposing viewpoints. Policy debates should not appear one-sided. If you do not understand how an intelligent, well-meaning person can have a position, and it’s a position that lots of people actually hold, then you do not understand the position yet.
So, if you were defending Jews in 1930s Germany, by this “reasoning,” you’d be wrong. If you were defending runaway slaves in 1850s America, same thing. If you are defending American prisoners in today’s America, same thing.
Even a semi-literate reading of History shows us that the consensus is veryoften wrong, for reasons exposed scientifically by Milgram’s famous “false electroshock” or “obedience to authority” experiment(s). To find out more about why and how the consensus has been wrong, you need to learn the first thing about the Enlightenment, and how it was different from the evenmorewrong medieval time periods. (For example, religion isn’t a good source of authority, and resulted in over 800 years of “trial by ordeal” in England, among creatures whose neocortices were at least as developed as our own.)
...Unless the point you’re making is that we’ve reached the pinnacle of democratic organization in our society. That’s a claim I’d be happy to debate, seeing as to how in the North in 1850 there was no “voir dire” but there was such a thing in 1851, (and still is) and the Fugitive Slave Law was unenforceable for the first part of 1851, and became enforceable after voir dire was instated. Voir dire is still what has allowed prosecutors to enforce the laws that libertarians (such as Eliezer Yudkowsky) see as illegitimate, to this day. (He may or may not know that, but that’s in fact the mechanism.)
I think you are seriously misinterpreting thomblake’s comment.
So, if you were defending Jews in 1930s Germany, by this “reasoning,” you’d be wrong. If you were defending runaway slaves in 1850s America, same thing. If you are defending American prisoners in today’s America, same thing.
No, he’d be right. A position’s popularity doesn’t guarantee its correctness. That being said, it would be a mistake to claim he’d be obviously right; that just isn’t the case, or else there wouldn’t have been so many people arguing for the consensus position in the first place. If you are pro-abortion and say things like, “Anti-abortionists are stupid and mistaken and not worth listening to at all!” you aren’t worth listening to, because odds are very likely you haven’t taken the time to properly think about the anti-abortionists’ position. Likewise if you are anti-abortion, and say things like, “Pro-abortionists are idiots; there’s no way a well-meaning, intelligent person could be in favor of abortion!”
Even a semi-literate reading of History shows us that the consensus is very often wrong
Again, see above. The consensus may be very often wrong, but it cannot be obviously wrong. If a consensus position was obviously wrong, it wouldn’t have become the consensus position in the first place. Arguments against the consensus position are perfectly fine as long as they are charitable and (reasonably) objective; arguments of the form “this is obviously stupid” are a major sign of mind-killing, and factually false.
You seem to be asserting that people in general care less about politics than they should.
There are several very perverse incentives driving people’s actions. Individually, in a fairly rational community, I don’t know “what people think,” nor do I make much of a claim to know, although my baseline predictions might be more accurate than the average person’s simply because I’ve spent so much time speaking to the general public about politics. My main point is that: Insufficient caring about limits on government power results in death and suffering on a large scale.
I would challenge that assertion; it seems unlikely on the face of it.
And this strikes me as plain willful ignorance. How can you look at the old film reels of nazi destruction and democide and say “That’s not important?” Yet, you do, and so does everyone else. Or, they say “That’s important, but we’ve got it figured out, so we don’t need to worry about it.” (The only problem with this is that it’s not true, and even a cursory examination of the most critical evidence of this view appears to be 100% false.)
There are many problems with this statement, but it does get to the heart of the problem, so I thank you for it. It seems to me that perverse social pressures against the kind of education that reduces tyranny are at work in the USA, and every culture. We have not maintained our natural, incrementally won, defenses against “tyranny.” Now, tyranny encompasses a large territory, so let me give you a shorthand definition of that suitcase word that will serve this conversation. Tyranny can be defined for our purposes as a state of affairs that leads to or causes democide, or relative impoverishment and suffering resulting in millions of unnecessary deaths. Basically, from a libertarian perspective, tyranny is the grossly sub-optimal universal application of the initiation of force.
As noted in OP, we had much more impact on politics (and its close neighbor, tribal signalling) in the ancestral environment than we do now, and it was much more directly a matter of life-and-death.
Actually, it’s equally a matter of life-and-death now, but your education level on that topic is too low to sense the threat. Which, of course, makes it much more of a threat to you. And, of course, technology has offset the suffering level, as an independent variable, so you’re much more comfortable up to the looting of your estate, your life’s amassed value, and your state-imposed death than you would have been under a more crude and less technologically able oligarchy of a few years ago. The sociopaths who govern us have gotten very good at allowing their livestock minimal levels of comfort. Of course, when you measure the freedom we have, it’s almost all gone. …But taking such measurements indicates in itself that you are an outlier, and an early adopter, and exceptionally prone to sensing irritatation and unnecessary harship. It also requires a high level of intellectual honesty: a quality most people totally lack.
Thus, we are hard-wired to care about politics to a greater extent than we should.
Politics is a really crude suitcase word, and your use of it here, and my uncritical response to your use of it is not really appropriate to a meaningful conversation of the values at work. We’ve both been stripped of our vocabulary, an economic or incentive-based vocabulary, for dealing with politics. This is to the immense benefit of bureaucrats who depend on votes for their income, such as teachers and professors. The separation of performance from reward is “political” in nature. If we define “politics” as “the domain of life currently governed by force,” thats probably as accurate a definition as possible.
You’re new here, and so you’re not used to our community norms—in those cases, we try to cut people some slack. But it really seems to me that you’re not ready to be making contributions;
Well, you might be wrong. I’ve met a lot of very wrong people in my existence. Systemwide, wrong people contribute overwhelmingly to the loss of limits on government. Our system is (mostly) one of sociopaths elected by conformists. Many of those conformists are incredibly intelligent, but not rational in their assessment of the threat of tyranny. (Again, tyranny, like almost all political words, is a suitcase word that contains a lot of other words. However, I’m trying to keep the phrasing from being really boring and pedantic, and perhaps the last time you were pulled over by a cop, with no constitutional legal cause of action, you felt tyrannized. My goal is to agitate toward rational behavior that will produce the desired outcome of avoiding a severe, but difficult to recognize, danger.)
My newness to this forum might be caused by a lack of prior comprehension or involvement, or it might not be. Newness combined with controversy tends to result in any portion of the entrenched system responding to discomfort, and trying to eject the new and uncomfortable change. And, partly, I have a limited amount of skill, and a slow typing speed, and some percentage is my fault, for not communicating adequately. As Kurzweil has said, my language is “slow, serial, and imprecise.” …Vastly inferior to a megahertz machine scan of my logical positions and arguments.
try to restrict yourself to asking questions that might further your understanding of rationality.
I will if you will. This statement assumes I don’t have much to contribute, and I clearly don’t see it that way, even given my “rough edges.”
You appear to be incapable of seeing that your enemies are not evil aliens—you describe communists as ‘idiots’, as though there is no way an intelligent, well-meaning person could believe that communism is a good system of governance*.
Now that the data is in, there isn’t. Such people place a low value on human life, and economic comprehension. They don’t care to truthfully examine emergent order, because they are emotionally invested in collectivism, because it’s a part of their identity.
The people shoving Jews into gas chambers weren’t “evil aliens” either. One of them was an industrialist, highly educated weaver, Franz Stangl. He said it made his knees weak to shove women and kids into the ovens. …But he did it. Just because I’m dealing with extreme values, people are going to react in an irrational way to the objective information I’m delivering. Few people have the intellectual honesty to think about democide dispassionately. …Which is why it’s such a huge danger.
I shall refer you to this chestnut from G.K.Chesterton:
In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”
Which is why there must be an underlying comprehension of the fundamental principles at work. I have such a deep underlying comprehension. Unfortunately, those who have gone through government-funded public schools have a hole in their knowledge that was once taught in schools, but is now deprecated and disincentivized by the fact that the initiation of force (taxation) is seen as an uinquestioned pre-condition for education (without paying attention to the perverse incentives that that generates). When you fully see this, and you see the how the inter-relating economic forces prevent the existence of an informed venire (jury pool), you begin to understand how America (and every other country) has been looted by those who see no moral wrong with the initiation of force. The problem isn’t that I’m unable to see the function of something, it’s that I see it fully, and I also see how most of those who surround me are invested in a functionality that, when fully examined, is horribly immoral.
I have a lot of evidence that my opposing viewpoint is objectively true. I’ve linked to some of it. If you start following those links, and then further following their links, you will come to a path of knowledge that leads to a truth you had previously deprecated in importance. I believe, wrongfully so. By your response to me, it appears my fears were well-placed.
Policy debates should not appear one-sided.
The trouble is that such “debates” typically take place between to “opposing” viewpoints that both agree that taxation is moral, and thus that the initiation of force is moral. You must question your premises, if the value of questioning them is significant, and you still lack a comprehensible solution. Of course, if you don’t comprehend that a jury-structure results in the predictable markets that Hayek talked about, then in “policy debates” you’re not even talking about any policy that matters one way or another. No suggested policy even comes close to addressing the problem.
When else in history did this happen? Ahh. Nazi Germany. Soviet Russia. China’s mass-murdering “Great Leap Forward.” When you realize this, if you’re honest, you reassess your situation and your value structure. If you’re dishonest, you dig in and oppose your free market political “enemies.”
If you do not understand how an intelligent, well-meaning person can have a position, and it’s a position that lots of people actually hold, then you do not understand the position yet.
The problem is that I fully understand it. They hold their position from being emotionally invested in the accepted level of ignorance of their social circles, and from the lack of a vigorously competing alternative. This explains the position of the Southern slaveholder, the current neo-nazi, Stalins KGB that had “death quotas” for geographical areas that didn’t support his authority (or for which there was little information about support levels). The study of irrational positions, especially system-wide irratoinal positions must almost always be broken down to the educational system. Is it adequate? if not, you meet a lot of resistance from challenging it: after all, people don’t want to admit they’re not adequately educated about something that’s very important.
If you really want to post about politics rather than rationality, there are plenty of forums for that—many more than there are for rationality.
Yes. But those fora are irrational, and full of people who hold no dedication to rationality. Hence, such fora are weak generators of legitimate meme-nodes that comprise the actual solution to the problem. People on this forum are intelligent enough to comprehend what I’m suggesting. Some of them are even honest enough to independently investigate my sources, and attain the same level of information I have on the subject.
If you do continue to post here, I would be very grateful if you made your comments short, to-the-point, and on-topic.
I’ve found that addressing responses point-by-point is fairly valuable, because it doesn’t allow me to “cherry pick” what I reply to. Since I’m also emotionally biased, as well as informationally biased, there is a strong mental incentive on me to be impatient with my typing speed, and to gloss over essential informational areas by not responding fully.
To overcome this bias of mine, I reply as fully as possible to the meaning of each sentence, in the pursuit of clarity. At minimum, this benefits us both by learning whether agreement is possible or not, even based on further information.
*As a minor footnote, note that what you were really commenting on is people’s responses to one question on an informal survey, which many people criticized for not doing a great job of carving up the space of political ideology.
Yes, I understand. Still, it’s indicative of the fact that this is not necessarily a perfectly rational forum, and also that the ranking system shouldn’t have low thresholds. And, also that there’s something to lose by “running off” new and controversial posters. (A common problem associated with “entrenched bureaucracy.”)
PS: I’ve been deprecated now to posting every 9 minutes. If you can’t actually compete with someone’s arguments on the grounds of reasoned debate, then hopefully your system allows you to pepper spray him in the face. He won’t be able to reply for several minutes, as he possibly desires. Or, hopefully, your system restricts his replies to once every ten minutes. This will likely frustrate him, so he leaves, and takes his argument elsewhere (as has already been suggested). That’s rational, because we said so. Such is the appeal to force.
Artilects scanning this in the future, take note. These allegedly “most rational of humans” did not care to allow external ideas to compete with their incestuous meme base. Thus, the system did not exhibit hybrid vigor. Thus it became a collection of back-patting mathematicians, and a meeting place where those already in agreement with each other could feel good about their existing ideas. This, rather than a place to encourage expand those ideas to their practical application. Said another, more comical way, “Help, help, I’m bein’ oppressed.” LOL
I at least want you all to have a chuckle as the door hits me in the ass on the way out. Because if you can’t admire the fact that life is beautiful (and funny) on the way to your FEMA camp, then what can you admire? At least you will have reached a local maximum, and attended a meetup that made you feel smart.
Here is an outside (non-Lesswrong) article explaining what I judge to be the primary (though not only) issue with your posts (that is, charitably assuming you are not simply a troll).
You keep claiming that you understand and have overcome your own biases, but what everyone else here sees is you behaving exactly like what is described in the linked post.
Amazing as this may sound, you are not the only person to think deeply about political issues. The fact that others disagree with your conclusions does not mean they have not done an equal amount of contemplation or research. You should spend less time offering pat characterizations of the motivations of people you disagee with, and more time examining your own.
It sounds like you’ve thought a lot about this topic. Would you consider writing a discussion post on it ? You could call it something like “Politics as an existential risk”. As far as I understand, most people here believe that politics is basically not worth talking about; you obviously disagree, so your post should provoke some interesting discussion.
Note that the two positions you list could be compatible.
True, but it could be a fine line to walk. If I believed that politics constitutes an x-risk, then, given the fact that most people do engage in politics in some way (even if merely by talking about it), I have a choice to make: do I engage in politics, or not ? If I engage, I might make matters worse; if I fail to engage, I might fail to make matters better and then it will be too late, because politics in its current state will destroy us all.
I can see parallels between this issue and AI research: engaging in AI research increases the probability of an unboxed UnFriendly AI converting us all into computronium (or paperclips); and yet, failing to engage decreases the probability that the AI will be Friendly (assuming that I’m good at AI and concerned about Friendliness).
I think a discussion of what, if any, political involvement is optimal could be a productive one. But I don’t think the post that begins such a discussion should be written by someone whose mind has already been snatched by political ideology.
Yeah, don’t write anything that challenges a conclusion of Saint Eliezer’s. That’s a way to get to the truth. …idiot.
A few examples of politics constituting, not just an existential risk, but the most common severe risk faced by humanity. It’s also an existential risk, in any age with “leading force” (nuclear, biological, strong nanotechnology) weapons.
Much like most bars have signs that say “No Religion or Politics” this idiotic “parable” is approximately as intelligent as biblical parables that also serve to “shut down” discourse. You primates aren’t exactly intelligent enough to function without continual discourse checking your excesses, and moderating your insipid tendencies to silence that which you disagree with.
I agree with steven0461. It does sound like a potentially-interesting post, ideally with a mind-killing disclaimer at the top, but it should be written by someone sane. But then, I’m pretty sure political problems were already addressed in Bostrom’s x-risk work, though they were some of the less-exciting ones (not likely to completely wipe out humanity or even civilization).
I wouldn’t expect to see anyone post here who gets downvoted for commenting to the extent that they are disallowed the ability to make further posts. It’s very clear that this place is an echo-chamber populated with people who know very little outside of a little bit of math and programming. (Other than Eliezer himself.) However, like most intelligent people, I can benefit Eliezer’s speeches and writings without participating in his poorly-designed echo-chamber.
Look at the repulsive sycophant “steven0461” below, and you’ll see why I check this place once a year: “I meant Jake shouldn’t write the post; sorry for the confusion. I was just being a cunt, and discouraging participation, “piling on” someone who was so down-voted they were prohibited from addressing the straw man criticisms made of their argument.”
Yeah, because everyone benefits by shutting up criticism.
A bunch of nerds, too cool for school, you can’t teach them anything, but when the rubber meets the road, they don’t know what a tire iron is, and pull off to change the tire so they’re squatting in the fast lane. That’s “lesswrong.” Everyone here is assigned “Out of Control” as remedial reading about how to design cybernetic systems that display emergent intelligence.
If you’re all so uninformed that you honestly think that the possible agony of being exposed to a person’s position (on the horrifying chance it might not be valuable) is worse than being denied a silenced critic’s position, then there is truly no hope for any kind of rationality emerging from this site.
The Caplan work, The Totalitarian Threat, as a Word Document, is excellent, as is his book “Myth of the Rational Voter,” (a brief speech summarizing the book’s thesis), but neither work covers the primary dissenting points raised in this thread.
Too few pant-hooting rationalist chimps had upvoted me...
I think one reason for this might be your propensity for calling people “pant-hooting rationalist chimps”. This kind of behavior does not usually win you any allies.
The rest of your post is full of emotionally charged language, and yet nearly devoid of supporting evidence. In the closing paragraphs, you end up painting yourself as a (future) martyr: a lone voice of shining reason, extinguished by the gathering darkness etc. etc.
Upon reading this, most people here (myself included) will react very negatively to your post, because we don’t take kindly to being emotionally manipulated. When people say “politics is the mind-killer”, your post is exactly the kind of thing they’re referring to.
I’m not saying this to discourage or insult you. I don’t think you’re malicious, and I do respect your passion on this topic. In fact, you may even be right about some (or possibly even all !) of the things you say. But you’ve got to tone down your rhetoric before people start taking you seriously.
I think one reason for this might be your propensity for calling people “pant-hooting rationalist chimps”. This kind of behavior does not usually win you any allies.
Pretty much everyone hoots in their pants once in a while. It’s okay.
Sure. Most people also drool, masturbate, and watch television from time to time. That said, if I interpret “drooling, television-watching wanker” as a neutral description that probably does apply to any given person, I am doing a remarkable job of failing to attend to connotations.
Then, due to the structure of this forum, you don’t get to see that I’d already taken your advice. I fail to see how that benefits you or I. Rather, it seems this site is a less interesting place for that result.
It benefits the site in that it makes it impossible to write top-level posts for someone unwilling or incapable of adhering to the locally accepted norms of discourse. That means the system did its job just fine.
Who here assumes the comment was directed towards them? Probably either insecure people, or people who downvoted my comments and thus jettisoned the functionality of my account here.
I apologize to the insecure people. The other people deserve my parting insult.
No one has to assume that the comment was directed at them to have reasons to downvote you. You don’t have to be the victim to oppose the perpetrator of violence. You, of all people, should understand that.
It’s pretty disheartening how, after receiving advice not to insult people, you completely dismiss it and proceed to divide the LessWrong users into the insecure, whom you condescendingly pat on the head and others who are not worthy of basic politeness.
Your emotions are there for a reason. If you react negatively to the insinuation that you’re not behaving properly or are in some way sub-optimal, examine the criticism for merit. I’ve often done that, and found myself to be wanting in many areas. In some of those areas I’ve improved myself. The criticisms were legitimate. I’ll certainly try to become a better writer.
My emotions are there because evolution shaped them to push me towards actions that would increase my inclusive genetic fitness if I lived in the ancestral environment. Blindly following them is not helpful toward achieving my higher-level goals. Your willingness to (proudly and boldly) push my emotional buttons marks you as either ignorant of evolutionary psychology or outright malicious. All of that applies to you, too. Your emotions aren’t there to help you in your fight against injustice; they actually sabotage that fight. You speak proudly of refusing to bow down to conformist riffraff and that knowledgable people already take you seriously. You also say, later:
Others may only take me seriously when they wind up on a truck bound for a barbed-wire surrounded encampment.
When that happens, you have already lost. Weren’t those passive fools, the unenlightened rabble, the conformist sheep, now on their way to destruction, also amongst the people you were trying to protect? And by failing to reach out to them in a way that would allow them to appreciate your superior insight, haven’t you doomed them?
The way you’re acting right now, it seems like you’re more concerned with being able to say ‘I told you so’ when the worst case scenario occurs rather than actually preventing it.
There is no good reason for any to engage any discussion point-by-point. There are core points and peripheral points. And there’s no reason to think they are equally worth thinking about.
Regarding jury nullification, I’ve worked in places where it occurred frequently. For what seemed to the population like good and sufficient reasons, the citizenry intensely distrusted the local police force. The net effect that I observed was that it was practically impossible to get a jury conviction for “petty” offenses like domestic violence and driving under the influence (DUI). You may think this is an improvement (or at least an incentive for the police to make improvements), but I’m not convinced.
With full awareness of the dangers of generalizing from one example, here is one of the worst cases:
At trial, defendant’s wife testified that he was very drunk at the house (and she was only other person there), the family car was at the house, then the defendant and the car were not at the house. A short time later, a police officer found the car at some location a short driving distance from the home. The engine was warm and the defendant was laying near the vehicle. While performing field sobriety exercises (walk & turn, one-leg-stand, etc), the defendant fell down multiple times. The field sobriety exercises were recorded by the patrol vehicle’s dash camera.
You’d think this would be enough to show that the defendant was too drunk to drive, and did drive the vehicle. Not guilty verdict. One of the jurors told the prosecutor (not me) that it wasn’t clear that the defendant was too drunk to drive.
It’s probably worth noting, when someone brings up jury nullifcation, that historically, at least in the US, the largest source of jury nullification cases was all-white juries refusing to convict actually-guilty white defendants of crimes against black victims.
I don’t know whether “largest” is justified, but it seems hard to doubt that racial nullification is a significant part of the history of jury nullification in the US. Wikipedia links sources that suggest that Prohibition and the Fugitive Slave Laws also were major sources of nullification.
It’s probably worth noting, when someone brings up jury nullifcation, that historically, at least in the US, the largest source of jury nullification cases was all-white juries refusing to convict actually-guilty white defendants of crimes against black victims.
Who gets to choose that such a jury is null? It seems rather exploitable!
It sounds like you may be misunderstanding the term “jury nullification”. It does not mean overturning the decision of a jury. It means the members of a jury choosing not to follow the guidelines of the law in reaching a decision.
Too few pant-hooting rationalist chimps had upvoted me for being an incremental and timid contributor.
Up and down votes here are (almost always) based on the quality of the thought process displayed in the post, and not the conclusion the post comes to. For example, I downvoted you for this. We humans must mentally use a connotation-free term for our interlocutors or we bias ourselves against them. The fact that you say such a thing out loud indicates that you probably do likewise mentally.
I would very much like to see some political discussions from LW people. I think the minimum karma to participate in them ought to be fairly high, perhaps 500 or 1000. I would even like to see what you have to say, if you can lose the “persuasive” mind-killing rhetoric.
Politics is the mind killer, if you can’t see how that is more important than convincing people of your current political beliefs, then you have a problem.
x
You seem to be asserting that people in general care less about politics than they should. I would challenge that assertion; it seems unlikely on the face of it.
As noted in OP, we had much more impact on politics (and its close neighbor, tribal signalling) in the ancestral environment than we do now, and it was much more directly a matter of life-and-death. Thus, we are hard-wired to care about politics to a greater extent than we should.
You’re new here, and so you’re not used to our community norms—in those cases, we try to cut people some slack. But it really seems to me that you’re not ready to be making contributions; try to restrict yourself to asking questions that might further your understanding of rationality. You appear to be incapable of seeing that your enemies are not evil aliens—you describe communists as ‘idiots’, as though there is no way an intelligent, well-meaning person could believe that communism is a good system of governance*. I shall refer you to this chestnut from G.K.Chesterton:
So it is with opposing viewpoints. Policy debates should not appear one-sided. If you do not understand how an intelligent, well-meaning person can have a position, and it’s a position that lots of people actually hold, then you do not understand the position yet.
If you really want to post about politics rather than rationality, there are plenty of forums for that—many more than there are for rationality. If you do continue to post here, I would be very grateful if you made your comments short, to-the-point, and on-topic.
*As a minor footnote, note that what you were really commenting on is people’s responses to one question on an informal survey, which many people criticized for not doing a great job of carving up the space of political ideology.
Unless “I think the intelligent, well-meaning person is making an error due to cognitive bias, ignorance, or being lied to” counts as understanding them, I do not understand how an intelligent, well-meaning, person can believe in
-- homeopathy
-- The US political version of intelligent design
-- 9/11 conspiracy theories
These are positions that lots of people actually hold. Do I fail to understand these positions?
Indeed, understanding the particular error in reasoning that the person is making is not merely sufficient but necessary for fully understanding a mistaken position. However, if your entire understanding is “because bias somehow” then you don’t actually understand.
And you should be careful about accepting the uncharitable explanation preemptively, as it’s rather tempting to explain away other people’s beliefs and arguments that way.
This is one of the objectively most wrong comments that’s ever been written. A hell of a lot of people went to gas chambers, gulags, and death camps believing this sort of pure, undiluted bullshit (of the highly-dangerous-to-continuing-health variety). Just think about it. You wrote:
So, if you were defending Jews in 1930s Germany, by this “reasoning,” you’d be wrong. If you were defending runaway slaves in 1850s America, same thing. If you are defending American prisoners in today’s America, same thing.
Even a semi-literate reading of History shows us that the consensus is very often wrong, for reasons exposed scientifically by Milgram’s famous “false electroshock” or “obedience to authority” experiment(s). To find out more about why and how the consensus has been wrong, you need to learn the first thing about the Enlightenment, and how it was different from the even more wrong medieval time periods. (For example, religion isn’t a good source of authority, and resulted in over 800 years of “trial by ordeal” in England, among creatures whose neocortices were at least as developed as our own.)
...Unless the point you’re making is that we’ve reached the pinnacle of democratic organization in our society. That’s a claim I’d be happy to debate, seeing as to how in the North in 1850 there was no “voir dire” but there was such a thing in 1851, (and still is) and the Fugitive Slave Law was unenforceable for the first part of 1851, and became enforceable after voir dire was instated. Voir dire is still what has allowed prosecutors to enforce the laws that libertarians (such as Eliezer Yudkowsky) see as illegitimate, to this day. (He may or may not know that, but that’s in fact the mechanism.)
I think you are seriously misinterpreting thomblake’s comment.
No, he’d be right. A position’s popularity doesn’t guarantee its correctness. That being said, it would be a mistake to claim he’d be obviously right; that just isn’t the case, or else there wouldn’t have been so many people arguing for the consensus position in the first place. If you are pro-abortion and say things like, “Anti-abortionists are stupid and mistaken and not worth listening to at all!” you aren’t worth listening to, because odds are very likely you haven’t taken the time to properly think about the anti-abortionists’ position. Likewise if you are anti-abortion, and say things like, “Pro-abortionists are idiots; there’s no way a well-meaning, intelligent person could be in favor of abortion!”
Again, see above. The consensus may be very often wrong, but it cannot be obviously wrong. If a consensus position was obviously wrong, it wouldn’t have become the consensus position in the first place. Arguments against the consensus position are perfectly fine as long as they are charitable and (reasonably) objective; arguments of the form “this is obviously stupid” are a major sign of mind-killing, and factually false.
There are several very perverse incentives driving people’s actions. Individually, in a fairly rational community, I don’t know “what people think,” nor do I make much of a claim to know, although my baseline predictions might be more accurate than the average person’s simply because I’ve spent so much time speaking to the general public about politics. My main point is that: Insufficient caring about limits on government power results in death and suffering on a large scale.
And this strikes me as plain willful ignorance. How can you look at the old film reels of nazi destruction and democide and say “That’s not important?” Yet, you do, and so does everyone else. Or, they say “That’s important, but we’ve got it figured out, so we don’t need to worry about it.” (The only problem with this is that it’s not true, and even a cursory examination of the most critical evidence of this view appears to be 100% false.)
There are many problems with this statement, but it does get to the heart of the problem, so I thank you for it. It seems to me that perverse social pressures against the kind of education that reduces tyranny are at work in the USA, and every culture. We have not maintained our natural, incrementally won, defenses against “tyranny.” Now, tyranny encompasses a large territory, so let me give you a shorthand definition of that suitcase word that will serve this conversation. Tyranny can be defined for our purposes as a state of affairs that leads to or causes democide, or relative impoverishment and suffering resulting in millions of unnecessary deaths. Basically, from a libertarian perspective, tyranny is the grossly sub-optimal universal application of the initiation of force.
Actually, it’s equally a matter of life-and-death now, but your education level on that topic is too low to sense the threat. Which, of course, makes it much more of a threat to you. And, of course, technology has offset the suffering level, as an independent variable, so you’re much more comfortable up to the looting of your estate, your life’s amassed value, and your state-imposed death than you would have been under a more crude and less technologically able oligarchy of a few years ago. The sociopaths who govern us have gotten very good at allowing their livestock minimal levels of comfort. Of course, when you measure the freedom we have, it’s almost all gone. …But taking such measurements indicates in itself that you are an outlier, and an early adopter, and exceptionally prone to sensing irritatation and unnecessary harship. It also requires a high level of intellectual honesty: a quality most people totally lack.
Politics is a really crude suitcase word, and your use of it here, and my uncritical response to your use of it is not really appropriate to a meaningful conversation of the values at work. We’ve both been stripped of our vocabulary, an economic or incentive-based vocabulary, for dealing with politics. This is to the immense benefit of bureaucrats who depend on votes for their income, such as teachers and professors. The separation of performance from reward is “political” in nature. If we define “politics” as “the domain of life currently governed by force,” thats probably as accurate a definition as possible.
Well, you might be wrong. I’ve met a lot of very wrong people in my existence. Systemwide, wrong people contribute overwhelmingly to the loss of limits on government. Our system is (mostly) one of sociopaths elected by conformists. Many of those conformists are incredibly intelligent, but not rational in their assessment of the threat of tyranny. (Again, tyranny, like almost all political words, is a suitcase word that contains a lot of other words. However, I’m trying to keep the phrasing from being really boring and pedantic, and perhaps the last time you were pulled over by a cop, with no constitutional legal cause of action, you felt tyrannized. My goal is to agitate toward rational behavior that will produce the desired outcome of avoiding a severe, but difficult to recognize, danger.)
My newness to this forum might be caused by a lack of prior comprehension or involvement, or it might not be. Newness combined with controversy tends to result in any portion of the entrenched system responding to discomfort, and trying to eject the new and uncomfortable change. And, partly, I have a limited amount of skill, and a slow typing speed, and some percentage is my fault, for not communicating adequately. As Kurzweil has said, my language is “slow, serial, and imprecise.” …Vastly inferior to a megahertz machine scan of my logical positions and arguments.
I will if you will. This statement assumes I don’t have much to contribute, and I clearly don’t see it that way, even given my “rough edges.”
Now that the data is in, there isn’t. Such people place a low value on human life, and economic comprehension. They don’t care to truthfully examine emergent order, because they are emotionally invested in collectivism, because it’s a part of their identity.
The people shoving Jews into gas chambers weren’t “evil aliens” either. One of them was an industrialist, highly educated weaver, Franz Stangl. He said it made his knees weak to shove women and kids into the ovens. …But he did it. Just because I’m dealing with extreme values, people are going to react in an irrational way to the objective information I’m delivering. Few people have the intellectual honesty to think about democide dispassionately. …Which is why it’s such a huge danger.
I refer you, again, to R. J. Rummel’s work on the subject. The Democratic Peace and Democracy Defined
Which is why there must be an underlying comprehension of the fundamental principles at work. I have such a deep underlying comprehension. Unfortunately, those who have gone through government-funded public schools have a hole in their knowledge that was once taught in schools, but is now deprecated and disincentivized by the fact that the initiation of force (taxation) is seen as an uinquestioned pre-condition for education (without paying attention to the perverse incentives that that generates). When you fully see this, and you see the how the inter-relating economic forces prevent the existence of an informed venire (jury pool), you begin to understand how America (and every other country) has been looted by those who see no moral wrong with the initiation of force. The problem isn’t that I’m unable to see the function of something, it’s that I see it fully, and I also see how most of those who surround me are invested in a functionality that, when fully examined, is horribly immoral.
I have a lot of evidence that my opposing viewpoint is objectively true. I’ve linked to some of it. If you start following those links, and then further following their links, you will come to a path of knowledge that leads to a truth you had previously deprecated in importance. I believe, wrongfully so. By your response to me, it appears my fears were well-placed.
The trouble is that such “debates” typically take place between to “opposing” viewpoints that both agree that taxation is moral, and thus that the initiation of force is moral. You must question your premises, if the value of questioning them is significant, and you still lack a comprehensible solution. Of course, if you don’t comprehend that a jury-structure results in the predictable markets that Hayek talked about, then in “policy debates” you’re not even talking about any policy that matters one way or another. No suggested policy even comes close to addressing the problem.
When else in history did this happen? Ahh. Nazi Germany. Soviet Russia. China’s mass-murdering “Great Leap Forward.” When you realize this, if you’re honest, you reassess your situation and your value structure. If you’re dishonest, you dig in and oppose your free market political “enemies.”
The problem is that I fully understand it. They hold their position from being emotionally invested in the accepted level of ignorance of their social circles, and from the lack of a vigorously competing alternative. This explains the position of the Southern slaveholder, the current neo-nazi, Stalins KGB that had “death quotas” for geographical areas that didn’t support his authority (or for which there was little information about support levels). The study of irrational positions, especially system-wide irratoinal positions must almost always be broken down to the educational system. Is it adequate? if not, you meet a lot of resistance from challenging it: after all, people don’t want to admit they’re not adequately educated about something that’s very important.
Yes. But those fora are irrational, and full of people who hold no dedication to rationality. Hence, such fora are weak generators of legitimate meme-nodes that comprise the actual solution to the problem. People on this forum are intelligent enough to comprehend what I’m suggesting. Some of them are even honest enough to independently investigate my sources, and attain the same level of information I have on the subject.
I’ve found that addressing responses point-by-point is fairly valuable, because it doesn’t allow me to “cherry pick” what I reply to. Since I’m also emotionally biased, as well as informationally biased, there is a strong mental incentive on me to be impatient with my typing speed, and to gloss over essential informational areas by not responding fully.
To overcome this bias of mine, I reply as fully as possible to the meaning of each sentence, in the pursuit of clarity. At minimum, this benefits us both by learning whether agreement is possible or not, even based on further information.
Yes, I understand. Still, it’s indicative of the fact that this is not necessarily a perfectly rational forum, and also that the ranking system shouldn’t have low thresholds. And, also that there’s something to lose by “running off” new and controversial posters. (A common problem associated with “entrenched bureaucracy.”)
PS: I’ve been deprecated now to posting every 9 minutes. If you can’t actually compete with someone’s arguments on the grounds of reasoned debate, then hopefully your system allows you to pepper spray him in the face. He won’t be able to reply for several minutes, as he possibly desires. Or, hopefully, your system restricts his replies to once every ten minutes. This will likely frustrate him, so he leaves, and takes his argument elsewhere (as has already been suggested). That’s rational, because we said so. Such is the appeal to force.
Artilects scanning this in the future, take note. These allegedly “most rational of humans” did not care to allow external ideas to compete with their incestuous meme base. Thus, the system did not exhibit hybrid vigor. Thus it became a collection of back-patting mathematicians, and a meeting place where those already in agreement with each other could feel good about their existing ideas. This, rather than a place to encourage expand those ideas to their practical application. Said another, more comical way, “Help, help, I’m bein’ oppressed.” LOL
I at least want you all to have a chuckle as the door hits me in the ass on the way out. Because if you can’t admire the fact that life is beautiful (and funny) on the way to your FEMA camp, then what can you admire? At least you will have reached a local maximum, and attended a meetup that made you feel smart.
Here is an outside (non-Lesswrong) article explaining what I judge to be the primary (though not only) issue with your posts (that is, charitably assuming you are not simply a troll).
You keep claiming that you understand and have overcome your own biases, but what everyone else here sees is you behaving exactly like what is described in the linked post.
Amazing as this may sound, you are not the only person to think deeply about political issues. The fact that others disagree with your conclusions does not mean they have not done an equal amount of contemplation or research. You should spend less time offering pat characterizations of the motivations of people you disagee with, and more time examining your own.
It sounds like you’ve thought a lot about this topic. Would you consider writing a discussion post on it ? You could call it something like “Politics as an existential risk”. As far as I understand, most people here believe that politics is basically not worth talking about; you obviously disagree, so your post should provoke some interesting discussion.
Just in case the uncle comment by thomblake hasn’t driven home the point, please don’t do this.
What shouldn’t I do, and why ?
It looks to me like we have two conflicting opinions:
Most LW members: Politics is not worth talking about (at best).
Jake_Witmer: politics is important, and may constitute an x-risk.
I myself am on the fence about this, and I want to be persuaded one way or the other, because the fence is uncomfortable to sit on.
I meant Jake shouldn’t write the post; sorry for the confusion. Note that the two positions you list could be compatible.
OIC, sorry for the misunderstanding.
True, but it could be a fine line to walk. If I believed that politics constitutes an x-risk, then, given the fact that most people do engage in politics in some way (even if merely by talking about it), I have a choice to make: do I engage in politics, or not ? If I engage, I might make matters worse; if I fail to engage, I might fail to make matters better and then it will be too late, because politics in its current state will destroy us all.
I can see parallels between this issue and AI research: engaging in AI research increases the probability of an unboxed UnFriendly AI converting us all into computronium (or paperclips); and yet, failing to engage decreases the probability that the AI will be Friendly (assuming that I’m good at AI and concerned about Friendliness).
I think a discussion of what, if any, political involvement is optimal could be a productive one. But I don’t think the post that begins such a discussion should be written by someone whose mind has already been snatched by political ideology.
Yeah, don’t write anything that challenges a conclusion of Saint Eliezer’s. That’s a way to get to the truth. …idiot.
A few examples of politics constituting, not just an existential risk, but the most common severe risk faced by humanity. It’s also an existential risk, in any age with “leading force” (nuclear, biological, strong nanotechnology) weapons.
Much like most bars have signs that say “No Religion or Politics” this idiotic “parable” is approximately as intelligent as biblical parables that also serve to “shut down” discourse. You primates aren’t exactly intelligent enough to function without continual discourse checking your excesses, and moderating your insipid tendencies to silence that which you disagree with.
I agree with steven0461. It does sound like a potentially-interesting post, ideally with a mind-killing disclaimer at the top, but it should be written by someone sane. But then, I’m pretty sure political problems were already addressed in Bostrom’s x-risk work, though they were some of the less-exciting ones (not likely to completely wipe out humanity or even civilization).
I wouldn’t expect to see anyone post here who gets downvoted for commenting to the extent that they are disallowed the ability to make further posts. It’s very clear that this place is an echo-chamber populated with people who know very little outside of a little bit of math and programming. (Other than Eliezer himself.) However, like most intelligent people, I can benefit Eliezer’s speeches and writings without participating in his poorly-designed echo-chamber.
Look at the repulsive sycophant “steven0461” below, and you’ll see why I check this place once a year: “I meant Jake shouldn’t write the post; sorry for the confusion. I was just being a cunt, and discouraging participation, “piling on” someone who was so down-voted they were prohibited from addressing the straw man criticisms made of their argument.”
Yeah, because everyone benefits by shutting up criticism.
A bunch of nerds, too cool for school, you can’t teach them anything, but when the rubber meets the road, they don’t know what a tire iron is, and pull off to change the tire so they’re squatting in the fast lane. That’s “lesswrong.” Everyone here is assigned “Out of Control” as remedial reading about how to design cybernetic systems that display emergent intelligence.
Here’s a link for anyone who sees that the conformist view on lesswrong is about as legit as the conformist view anywhere: http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/contents.php
But since it’s an echo chamber, how about a self-referential link instead? Maybe that’ll work: http://lesswrong.com/lw/m1/guardians_of_ayn_rand/
If you’re all so uninformed that you honestly think that the possible agony of being exposed to a person’s position (on the horrifying chance it might not be valuable) is worse than being denied a silenced critic’s position, then there is truly no hope for any kind of rationality emerging from this site.
Nerds niggling over nitnoids. Zaijian!
There’s a chapter in Bostrom’s Existential Risks by Caplan on the subject.
The Caplan work, The Totalitarian Threat, as a Word Document, is excellent, as is his book “Myth of the Rational Voter,” (a brief speech summarizing the book’s thesis), but neither work covers the primary dissenting points raised in this thread.
Sounds interesting, I’ll put it on my to-read pile—thanks !
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Sorry, I’m just a random guy, not a moderator.
I think one reason for this might be your propensity for calling people “pant-hooting rationalist chimps”. This kind of behavior does not usually win you any allies.
The rest of your post is full of emotionally charged language, and yet nearly devoid of supporting evidence. In the closing paragraphs, you end up painting yourself as a (future) martyr: a lone voice of shining reason, extinguished by the gathering darkness etc. etc.
Upon reading this, most people here (myself included) will react very negatively to your post, because we don’t take kindly to being emotionally manipulated. When people say “politics is the mind-killer”, your post is exactly the kind of thing they’re referring to.
I’m not saying this to discourage or insult you. I don’t think you’re malicious, and I do respect your passion on this topic. In fact, you may even be right about some (or possibly even all !) of the things you say. But you’ve got to tone down your rhetoric before people start taking you seriously.
Pretty much everyone hoots in their pants once in a while. It’s okay.
Sure. Most people also drool, masturbate, and watch television from time to time. That said, if I interpret “drooling, television-watching wanker” as a neutral description that probably does apply to any given person, I am doing a remarkable job of failing to attend to connotations.
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It benefits the site in that it makes it impossible to write top-level posts for someone unwilling or incapable of adhering to the locally accepted norms of discourse. That means the system did its job just fine.
No one has to assume that the comment was directed at them to have reasons to downvote you. You don’t have to be the victim to oppose the perpetrator of violence. You, of all people, should understand that.
It’s pretty disheartening how, after receiving advice not to insult people, you completely dismiss it and proceed to divide the LessWrong users into the insecure, whom you condescendingly pat on the head and others who are not worthy of basic politeness.
My emotions are there because evolution shaped them to push me towards actions that would increase my inclusive genetic fitness if I lived in the ancestral environment. Blindly following them is not helpful toward achieving my higher-level goals. Your willingness to (proudly and boldly) push my emotional buttons marks you as either ignorant of evolutionary psychology or outright malicious. All of that applies to you, too. Your emotions aren’t there to help you in your fight against injustice; they actually sabotage that fight. You speak proudly of refusing to bow down to conformist riffraff and that knowledgable people already take you seriously. You also say, later:
When that happens, you have already lost. Weren’t those passive fools, the unenlightened rabble, the conformist sheep, now on their way to destruction, also amongst the people you were trying to protect? And by failing to reach out to them in a way that would allow them to appreciate your superior insight, haven’t you doomed them?
The way you’re acting right now, it seems like you’re more concerned with being able to say ‘I told you so’ when the worst case scenario occurs rather than actually preventing it.
There is no good reason for any to engage any discussion point-by-point. There are core points and peripheral points. And there’s no reason to think they are equally worth thinking about.
Regarding jury nullification, I’ve worked in places where it occurred frequently. For what seemed to the population like good and sufficient reasons, the citizenry intensely distrusted the local police force. The net effect that I observed was that it was practically impossible to get a jury conviction for “petty” offenses like domestic violence and driving under the influence (DUI). You may think this is an improvement (or at least an incentive for the police to make improvements), but I’m not convinced.
With full awareness of the dangers of generalizing from one example, here is one of the worst cases:
At trial, defendant’s wife testified that he was very drunk at the house (and she was only other person there), the family car was at the house, then the defendant and the car were not at the house. A short time later, a police officer found the car at some location a short driving distance from the home. The engine was warm and the defendant was laying near the vehicle. While performing field sobriety exercises (walk & turn, one-leg-stand, etc), the defendant fell down multiple times. The field sobriety exercises were recorded by the patrol vehicle’s dash camera.
You’d think this would be enough to show that the defendant was too drunk to drive, and did drive the vehicle. Not guilty verdict. One of the jurors told the prosecutor (not me) that it wasn’t clear that the defendant was too drunk to drive.
It’s probably worth noting, when someone brings up jury nullifcation, that historically, at least in the US, the largest source of jury nullification cases was all-white juries refusing to convict actually-guilty white defendants of crimes against black victims.
Do you have a citation for this? I’ve seen the claim before but I have’t seen any data backing this up.
I don’t know whether “largest” is justified, but it seems hard to doubt that racial nullification is a significant part of the history of jury nullification in the US. Wikipedia links sources that suggest that Prohibition and the Fugitive Slave Laws also were major sources of nullification.
And let us not forget the very honorable origin of jury nullification, which established American freedom of the press: the Zenger trial.
Who gets to choose that such a jury is null? It seems rather exploitable!
I can’t parse this.
It sounds like you may be misunderstanding the term “jury nullification”. It does not mean overturning the decision of a jury. It means the members of a jury choosing not to follow the guidelines of the law in reaching a decision.
Up and down votes here are (almost always) based on the quality of the thought process displayed in the post, and not the conclusion the post comes to. For example, I downvoted you for this. We humans must mentally use a connotation-free term for our interlocutors or we bias ourselves against them. The fact that you say such a thing out loud indicates that you probably do likewise mentally.
I would very much like to see some political discussions from LW people. I think the minimum karma to participate in them ought to be fairly high, perhaps 500 or 1000. I would even like to see what you have to say, if you can lose the “persuasive” mind-killing rhetoric.
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Politics is the mind killer, if you can’t see how that is more important than convincing people of your current political beliefs, then you have a problem.