If everyone internalized all the points in this post (especially #11, #18, and #30), I think the world would be a lot better place.
That said, for anyone overwhelmed by the prospect of keeping all these 37 points in mind, there’s a much simpler way to encapsulate most of them: Words are not the concepts they represent. That one simple fact people seem to need constant reminding of. Reflecting deeply on the unexpectedly far-reaching implications of this little reminder will probably yield all the rest of the points.
That said, for anyone overwhelmed by the prospect of keeping all these 37 points in mind, there’s a much simpler way to encapsulate most of them: Words are not the concepts they represent.
Amen! Most of this site and Overcoming Bias could be condensed with such advice, leaving room for (mostly) data analysis, charts, graphs, etc.
Instead, in order to discuss high-level political concepts, one has to start off with describing the defendant who has been sentenced to 10 years for a victimless crime crying, because he won’t see his little kids grow up, won’t get to make love to his wife, will be stuck inside a concrete cage that smells like human excrement, won’t have any freedom to do anything he wants, won’t be able to build a business or meet with clients, won’t be able to… (You might get the point.) So, in describing all of this suffering, then we can make a likely claim that jurors in a proper, constitutional system might have comprehended this suffering, and that their mirror neurons might have fired in sympathy with the defendant. Then, we can figure the prosecution’s odds as (percent of society that favors the law as a decimal)^12. Then we can analyze the prosecutor for the incentive data they have seemingly responded to, and the sensory and disincentive data that they seemingly have ignored, and come to the conclusion: they are sociopaths.
Then we can follow a similar thread for all politicians, providing meticulously collected data from the overwhelming universe of raw, mostly-uncollected data that exists.
Then we can note that cops, judges, prosecutors, and prohibitionist politicians don’t change, even if the “opposite” party is elected every single election. The perverse incentives apply to each group.
Then, after haggling more about high-level definitions such as “libertarian,” “austrian economics,” “oppression” and “selective enforcement” we’re ready to begin talking politics (replete with the screeching and finger-pointing).
Or, we can just admit that language does a “good enough” job for humans that are relatively smart, and that humans that are relatively stupid will purposefully misinterpret everything their perceived opposition does, with the intention of discrediting a straw man, and “defeating their enemy” (often for reasons of personal “conflict of interest”).
...But that’s fine, I can tie every argument back to undeserved suffering, because our sociopath-dominated government and society causes a mountain of such suffering every day, and most other governments worldwide are even worse.
Why, if I was a syntellect (superhuman synthetic intellect), I’d just kill all these “gad-damn dirty apes.”
Learning to distrust human servility and conformity is a liberal tradition. Without using terms like “liberal,” in the Hayekian sense, this evolutionary kludge is difficult to convey. No amount of logic will exorcise irrational bigotries and servility from someone who is a part of modern society. The sociopathic networks have “too many (‘educational’) hooks” sunk into such people. They have been educated with 1,000 ways that wrong words can be right, to combat EY’s 37 ways that words can be manipulated to be wrong, yet sound right.
At the end of the day, an appeal to the evidence is all that is possible, pointing to the cages we’ve built (in becoming the world’s number one jailor), and asking if we want to put everyone inside of them (except for our public masters, of course) or if we want to “tear down the walls.”
The jury is an institution designed (by dint of the unanimity requirement) to give liberals (and anarchists, and libertarians, and people resentful of government power, and people who are religious, and people who are overly emotional, and people who are confused) the ability to overpower the servile masses and their sociopath overlords. The jury is not just a “feature” of western civilization, it is the enabler of western civilization’s “market predictability under the rule of law.” Together with jury trials (enabled empathy), and markets, western civilization has outperformed state collectivism.
But it’s over now: juries worldwide have been carefully eliminated by
1) voir dire
2) high stakes plea bargaining combined with “cruel and unusual punishments”
3) wrongful judicial instruction
4) bar-licensing of lawyers (in service of the elimination of high-hierarchical-level defense speech)
5) “contempt of court” threatening of defendant (in service of the elimination of defense speech that might arouse empathy or logic from the jury—such as high-hierarchical-level arguments)
So, although “mind-killed” as I may be, I have very thick skin, and I also have a WORKABLE solution to the problem of UNFRIENDLY HUMANITY.
I view solving the problem of unfriendly humanity as a necessary precursor to developing Friendly Artificial General Intelligence (FAGI?). …One more reason to call AGI “Synthetic General Intelligence.”
Perhaps if we can get the SGIs to see that not all humans are sociopaths worthy of destruction, we can prevent the extermination of the human race based on the fruit our sociopath-captured governments have borne.
If everyone internalized all the points in this post (especially #11, #18, and #30), I think the world would be a lot better place.
That said, for anyone overwhelmed by the prospect of keeping all these 37 points in mind, there’s a much simpler way to encapsulate most of them: Words are not the concepts they represent. That one simple fact people seem to need constant reminding of. Reflecting deeply on the unexpectedly far-reaching implications of this little reminder will probably yield all the rest of the points.
Amen! Most of this site and Overcoming Bias could be condensed with such advice, leaving room for (mostly) data analysis, charts, graphs, etc.
Instead, in order to discuss high-level political concepts, one has to start off with describing the defendant who has been sentenced to 10 years for a victimless crime crying, because he won’t see his little kids grow up, won’t get to make love to his wife, will be stuck inside a concrete cage that smells like human excrement, won’t have any freedom to do anything he wants, won’t be able to build a business or meet with clients, won’t be able to… (You might get the point.) So, in describing all of this suffering, then we can make a likely claim that jurors in a proper, constitutional system might have comprehended this suffering, and that their mirror neurons might have fired in sympathy with the defendant. Then, we can figure the prosecution’s odds as (percent of society that favors the law as a decimal)^12. Then we can analyze the prosecutor for the incentive data they have seemingly responded to, and the sensory and disincentive data that they seemingly have ignored, and come to the conclusion: they are sociopaths.
Then we can follow a similar thread for all politicians, providing meticulously collected data from the overwhelming universe of raw, mostly-uncollected data that exists.
Then we can note that cops, judges, prosecutors, and prohibitionist politicians don’t change, even if the “opposite” party is elected every single election. The perverse incentives apply to each group.
Then, after haggling more about high-level definitions such as “libertarian,” “austrian economics,” “oppression” and “selective enforcement” we’re ready to begin talking politics (replete with the screeching and finger-pointing).
Or, we can just admit that language does a “good enough” job for humans that are relatively smart, and that humans that are relatively stupid will purposefully misinterpret everything their perceived opposition does, with the intention of discrediting a straw man, and “defeating their enemy” (often for reasons of personal “conflict of interest”).
...But that’s fine, I can tie every argument back to undeserved suffering, because our sociopath-dominated government and society causes a mountain of such suffering every day, and most other governments worldwide are even worse.
Why, if I was a syntellect (superhuman synthetic intellect), I’d just kill all these “gad-damn dirty apes.”
Learning to distrust human servility and conformity is a liberal tradition. Without using terms like “liberal,” in the Hayekian sense, this evolutionary kludge is difficult to convey. No amount of logic will exorcise irrational bigotries and servility from someone who is a part of modern society. The sociopathic networks have “too many (‘educational’) hooks” sunk into such people. They have been educated with 1,000 ways that wrong words can be right, to combat EY’s 37 ways that words can be manipulated to be wrong, yet sound right.
At the end of the day, an appeal to the evidence is all that is possible, pointing to the cages we’ve built (in becoming the world’s number one jailor), and asking if we want to put everyone inside of them (except for our public masters, of course) or if we want to “tear down the walls.”
The jury is an institution designed (by dint of the unanimity requirement) to give liberals (and anarchists, and libertarians, and people resentful of government power, and people who are religious, and people who are overly emotional, and people who are confused) the ability to overpower the servile masses and their sociopath overlords. The jury is not just a “feature” of western civilization, it is the enabler of western civilization’s “market predictability under the rule of law.” Together with jury trials (enabled empathy), and markets, western civilization has outperformed state collectivism.
But it’s over now: juries worldwide have been carefully eliminated by 1) voir dire 2) high stakes plea bargaining combined with “cruel and unusual punishments” 3) wrongful judicial instruction 4) bar-licensing of lawyers (in service of the elimination of high-hierarchical-level defense speech) 5) “contempt of court” threatening of defendant (in service of the elimination of defense speech that might arouse empathy or logic from the jury—such as high-hierarchical-level arguments)
So, although “mind-killed” as I may be, I have very thick skin, and I also have a WORKABLE solution to the problem of UNFRIENDLY HUMANITY.
I view solving the problem of unfriendly humanity as a necessary precursor to developing Friendly Artificial General Intelligence (FAGI?). …One more reason to call AGI “Synthetic General Intelligence.”
Perhaps if we can get the SGIs to see that not all humans are sociopaths worthy of destruction, we can prevent the extermination of the human race based on the fruit our sociopath-captured governments have borne.