There are so many nits I want to pick that it’s creating a stack overflow in my brain. Here’s some:
Sciencearchist
This is a terrible label. It gives off a strong whiff of scientism, but that’s not really what your manifesto is about.
Over 2000 years ago, the Greek philosopher, Plato, asked a simple question about the nature of democracy in Athens.
What did he ask? You never say.
To ensure that council men/women don’t simply institute those laws which profit them, we should pay them based solely on the amount of money they are willing to bet that their policy will work, i.e., we would institute a betting market (much like in Futarchy).
I seriously doubt most people know what Futarchy is. It would help to explain the term before you use it.
In this sense, under sciencearchy, there is no one who is ruler, not even the rule of some council, there is only the personailty-less rule of science.
One of the reasons that science is mostly apolitical is because scientists don’t make policy decisions. If you put them in power, this will quickly change. Also, ‘personality’ is misspelled.
Democracy seems absolutely insane when dealing with any other serious problem in life, whether it be stopping a meteor from hitting the earth, or figuring out what matter is made out of. Why this isn’t just as obvious to us in the case of politics remains a dark mystery for me.
False analogy. Except for extreme direct democracies, the populace doesn’t vote on specific policies—politicians make these decisions.
We must remember that sciencearchy is not a political position, it is a meta-poltical position; we are not proposing policies, we are proposing a method for how to propose and select policies.
The use of the term “meta-political” makes no sense. Democracy and authoritarianism also do these things, but they are referred to as political positions, not meta-political ones.
Overall, it seems like a bad idea. Organized science has optimized scientists for being good at working within the academic system, not for making coming up with policy suggestions. In fact, current political figures are probably much better at doing politics than even the most eminent scientists of today. I’d much prefer vanilla Futarchy to this.
ETA: I agree with beoShaffer—I don’t like this kind of political post.
Technocracy is a form of government where technical experts are in control of decision making in their respective fields. Engineers, scientists, health professionals, and those who have knowledge, expertise or skills would compose the governing body. In a technocracy, decision makers would be selected based upon how knowledgeable and skillful they are in their field.
Some states have provisions for referendums that are variously hard to meet and cover different subjects. So there are many dimensions here, not just a spectrum from from more to less extreme democracy.
I also call democracy and authoritarianism meta-political positions.
False analogy. Except for extreme direct democracies, the populace doesn’t vote on specific policies—politicians make these decisions.
Representative democracies with fast pace elections like ours quickly become more direct. And we still would not simply have patients vote on doctors to determine who the best doctor is, we would let their success rate decide.
Thanks for the spell check.
Scientists don’t make policy decisions, I think they should be making policy decisions.
I would prefer for people to look up Plato’s question in the first place. The same applies to futarchy, I don’t like summarizing things in texts I respect when i can reference them just as well, and possibly provide them with a second read. I don’t ask plato’s question, I say we should ask an analogous question, which I do ask.
Organized science has optimized scientists for being good at working within the academic system, not for making coming up with policy suggestions.
Accademic science has optimized scientists at WINNING! And figuring out what is going on, and on building extremely complicated functional machines! Political discourse optimizes politicians for BEING VOTED FOR, not BEING RIGHT. Science optimizes for understanding. It’s the best way to understand starting from where we are. WHat non-science magic are politicans preforming to understand and predict the effect of policies on markets and economies?
I’d much prefer vanilla Futarchy to this.
Please refrain from the political rhetoric. I asked above for feedback to be primarily non-political.
And down vote for this sillyness. Always encourage a young student in the art!:
There are so many nits I want to pick that it’s creating a stack overflow in my brain.
I would prefer for people to look up Plato’s question in the first place. The same applies to futarchy, I don’t like summarizing things in texts I respect when i can reference them just as well, and possibly provide them with a second read.
Sounds condescending and isn’t helpful. If you want to communicate an idea, you, not the reader, have the onus to pass the point through. Futarchy isn’t a well-known concept. Such things have to be either explained or omitted, whether you like it or not. You should at least introduce it by a short sentence like “there was a similar proposal named Futarchy introduced by Hanson”.
I also call democracy and authoritarianism meta-political positions.
This makes sense to me, but since most people don’t use the term “meta-political,” I still think removing it would be best, as it could be confusing.
Scientists don’t make policy decisions, I think they should be making policy decisions.
That’s what I mean—if they start doing so, they might succumb to the mind-killing that plagues politicians.
I would prefer for people to look up Plato’s question in the first place. The same applies to futarchy, I don’t like summarizing things in texts I respect when i can reference them just as well, and possibly provide them with a second read. I don’t ask plato’s question, I say we should ask an analogous question, which I do ask.
For a blog post that would be fine, but not for a pamphlet. People don’t like trivial inconveniences, they’re frustrating and off-putting.
Accademic science has optimized scientists at WINNING!
This simply isn’t true. Scientists are optimized for publishing papers in science journals and for working well within the academic system. They’re notsuper-rationalists who can solve any problem in any domain. Though political discourse does optimize politicians for being elected, this optimization does produce politicians who are good at listening to differing points of view from various interest groups, interpreting expert opinions from a wide variety of fields, negotiating with foreign dignitaries, and signalling competence and confidence (which is a more important skill for a leader than good decision-making, in many cases). It’s not clear to me that the rationality advantage scientists have over politicians would outweigh the fact that they’re doing something outside of their respective fields.
Apologies for my rudeness in the parent comment, and for any political rhetoric.
Certainly you are forgiven, I’ll even vote you up.
Scientists are certainly not super rationalists, but I do think they are the best rationalists we have to offer. I’m obviously not suggesting that we take biologists and put them in power here. I’m suggesting we take sociologists and economists and political science majors, and put them in a betting market. Let’s see how they do, bet ya they’d do better than congress. I think we should harness that predictive power. There are succesful economists that predict crashes and bubble bursts before they happen sometimes years ahead of time. Politicians are not talking to them.
Notice I said this will require good science, not moderate or allright science, I mean really good science, the kind of thing EY would have us do.
Being good at “interpreting expert opinions from a wide variety of fields” does not get you more votes! “negotiating with foreign dignitaries” well does not get you more votes. Signalling competence and confidence certainly does get you more votes, but doesn’t suggest that you should be confident nor that you are competent. Democracy selects for popular people with lots of money. Nothing else is really important, all you have to be able to do is get your face in the public and be more popular than that other guy. THis does not select for experts in anything except being popular.
If we get scientists to start proposing policies, they might start to suck. But If we get them to bet on policies working, we might not get that sort of result.
There are so many nits I want to pick that it’s creating a stack overflow in my brain. Here’s some:
This is a terrible label. It gives off a strong whiff of scientism, but that’s not really what your manifesto is about.
What did he ask? You never say.
I seriously doubt most people know what Futarchy is. It would help to explain the term before you use it.
One of the reasons that science is mostly apolitical is because scientists don’t make policy decisions. If you put them in power, this will quickly change. Also, ‘personality’ is misspelled.
False analogy. Except for extreme direct democracies, the populace doesn’t vote on specific policies—politicians make these decisions.
The use of the term “meta-political” makes no sense. Democracy and authoritarianism also do these things, but they are referred to as political positions, not meta-political ones.
Overall, it seems like a bad idea. Organized science has optimized scientists for being good at working within the academic system, not for making coming up with policy suggestions. In fact, current political figures are probably much better at doing politics than even the most eminent scientists of today. I’d much prefer vanilla Futarchy to this.
ETA: I agree with beoShaffer—I don’t like this kind of political post.
Re: Sciencearchy is a terrible label:
Why not Technocracy?
Wikipedia says:
Not bad, is missing the betting market, but sounds about right.
You may also want to look into the history of technocracy, so you can see how it worked where is was actually attempted. (HINT: not very well.)
sciencocracy then maybe
Some states have provisions for referendums that are variously hard to meet and cover different subjects. So there are many dimensions here, not just a spectrum from from more to less extreme democracy.
You’re right, good point. I had representative democracy in mind and wasn’t thinking of referendums.
I also call democracy and authoritarianism meta-political positions.
Representative democracies with fast pace elections like ours quickly become more direct. And we still would not simply have patients vote on doctors to determine who the best doctor is, we would let their success rate decide.
Thanks for the spell check.
Scientists don’t make policy decisions, I think they should be making policy decisions.
I would prefer for people to look up Plato’s question in the first place. The same applies to futarchy, I don’t like summarizing things in texts I respect when i can reference them just as well, and possibly provide them with a second read. I don’t ask plato’s question, I say we should ask an analogous question, which I do ask.
Accademic science has optimized scientists at WINNING! And figuring out what is going on, and on building extremely complicated functional machines! Political discourse optimizes politicians for BEING VOTED FOR, not BEING RIGHT. Science optimizes for understanding. It’s the best way to understand starting from where we are. WHat non-science magic are politicans preforming to understand and predict the effect of policies on markets and economies?
Please refrain from the political rhetoric. I asked above for feedback to be primarily non-political.
And down vote for this sillyness. Always encourage a young student in the art!:
Sounds condescending and isn’t helpful. If you want to communicate an idea, you, not the reader, have the onus to pass the point through. Futarchy isn’t a well-known concept. Such things have to be either explained or omitted, whether you like it or not. You should at least introduce it by a short sentence like “there was a similar proposal named Futarchy introduced by Hanson”.
You’re right. Updated.
This makes sense to me, but since most people don’t use the term “meta-political,” I still think removing it would be best, as it could be confusing.
That’s what I mean—if they start doing so, they might succumb to the mind-killing that plagues politicians.
For a blog post that would be fine, but not for a pamphlet. People don’t like trivial inconveniences, they’re frustrating and off-putting.
This simply isn’t true. Scientists are optimized for publishing papers in science journals and for working well within the academic system. They’re not super-rationalists who can solve any problem in any domain. Though political discourse does optimize politicians for being elected, this optimization does produce politicians who are good at listening to differing points of view from various interest groups, interpreting expert opinions from a wide variety of fields, negotiating with foreign dignitaries, and signalling competence and confidence (which is a more important skill for a leader than good decision-making, in many cases). It’s not clear to me that the rationality advantage scientists have over politicians would outweigh the fact that they’re doing something outside of their respective fields.
Apologies for my rudeness in the parent comment, and for any political rhetoric.
Certainly you are forgiven, I’ll even vote you up.
Scientists are certainly not super rationalists, but I do think they are the best rationalists we have to offer. I’m obviously not suggesting that we take biologists and put them in power here. I’m suggesting we take sociologists and economists and political science majors, and put them in a betting market. Let’s see how they do, bet ya they’d do better than congress. I think we should harness that predictive power. There are succesful economists that predict crashes and bubble bursts before they happen sometimes years ahead of time. Politicians are not talking to them.
Notice I said this will require good science, not moderate or allright science, I mean really good science, the kind of thing EY would have us do.
Being good at “interpreting expert opinions from a wide variety of fields” does not get you more votes! “negotiating with foreign dignitaries” well does not get you more votes. Signalling competence and confidence certainly does get you more votes, but doesn’t suggest that you should be confident nor that you are competent. Democracy selects for popular people with lots of money. Nothing else is really important, all you have to be able to do is get your face in the public and be more popular than that other guy. THis does not select for experts in anything except being popular.
If we get scientists to start proposing policies, they might start to suck. But If we get them to bet on policies working, we might not get that sort of result.