What are you talking about? Of course we know how to locate other optimums, experimentation. We just need to be systematic and small scale about it. If first world populations would tolerate new undemocratic charter cities or city states or seasteading colonies and help build them we could soon get as good or better data set as Aristotle had when doing political science.
Western governments, NGOs, the UN and all sorts of other insitutions have already done experiments by “promoting democracy” in places like Somalia or Rwanda with terrible results. Even outright invading countries and engagin in “nation building”. The bad outcomes don’t cause an outcry, because democracy and modernization and development are the same thing in the mind of the average educated Western person and to talk against them will get you nasty looks. You can maybe get away with hiding behind pacifism. That doesn’t fix Rwanda or Libera though.
So you see we are already doing risky experiments with the lives of millons, we are just doing bad experiments. I propose smaller scale, systematic and actually designed experiments. From a uitlitarian perspective it is pretty darn hard to argue against it.
And if anyone scoffs at the positive reference to Aristotle’s political science, then I should remind the reader he had a data set of hundreds of histories and constitutions of Mediteranean city states, descended from basically the same founding ethnic stock and similar religious practices. It is harder to judge why Jamaica diverged from Hong Kong in GDP per capita since the 1950s than why say East and West Germany did. Was it because of policy differences? Institutions? Different ethnic mix? Dominant religion? Culture?
Good point, though it’s not obvious to me that the system that works best in a town with population 40,000 is necessarily also the system that works best in a subcontinent with population 1 billion.
If we see the small scale governments outperforming the more conventional larger ones by a wide enough margin but want to play it safe, maybe the take away is that the subcontinent shouldn’t be under a single government.
Ok, but the analogy presupposes a lot about the nature of government (there is a single coherent function being optimised, there are other achievable and better optimums, we have any meaningful influence on where on the curve we are) without really adding anything new.
What does discussion of optimums say other than ‘there might be a system better than the current system?’
What does discussion of optimums say other than ‘there might be a system better than the current system?’
It reminds people that it exist and that we should be spending some resources searching for it. Recall that “democratic” is the original applause light that Eliezer chose to explain the concept of the applause light.
As to the idea that it is unikely other acheivable and better optimums exist, are you seriously suggesting that mankind stumbeled upon the best possible or even a very good form of government built out of humans so early in its history? After what 200 years of experimentation? Monarchy has a track record of millenia that isn’t obviously worse or better than democracy but that at least demonstrates long term compatibility with civilization and stability. Democracy has much weaker evidence in this regard.
Yet here we are loving democracy and despising monarchy without anyone giving it much thought. I have heard several explanations for this, but the one that I find fits best is that we where told as children that Democracy exists and is good. I’m not claiming with certainty we weren’t told that for good reasons, certainly I bet we where told that by people with the best of intentions, but maybe the reasons, despite the intentions, weren’t good. Its not like that never happens.
Whats your point? I like optimums.
Global optimums are better, local optimums can be pretty sucky even compared to other local optimums.
Yeah, but if you don’t know how to locate other optimums, it can be risky to venture away from the one you’re on.
What are you talking about? Of course we know how to locate other optimums, experimentation. We just need to be systematic and small scale about it. If first world populations would tolerate new undemocratic charter cities or city states or seasteading colonies and help build them we could soon get as good or better data set as Aristotle had when doing political science.
Western governments, NGOs, the UN and all sorts of other insitutions have already done experiments by “promoting democracy” in places like Somalia or Rwanda with terrible results. Even outright invading countries and engagin in “nation building”. The bad outcomes don’t cause an outcry, because democracy and modernization and development are the same thing in the mind of the average educated Western person and to talk against them will get you nasty looks. You can maybe get away with hiding behind pacifism. That doesn’t fix Rwanda or Libera though.
So you see we are already doing risky experiments with the lives of millons, we are just doing bad experiments. I propose smaller scale, systematic and actually designed experiments. From a uitlitarian perspective it is pretty darn hard to argue against it.
And if anyone scoffs at the positive reference to Aristotle’s political science, then I should remind the reader he had a data set of hundreds of histories and constitutions of Mediteranean city states, descended from basically the same founding ethnic stock and similar religious practices. It is harder to judge why Jamaica diverged from Hong Kong in GDP per capita since the 1950s than why say East and West Germany did. Was it because of policy differences? Institutions? Different ethnic mix? Dominant religion? Culture?
Good point, though it’s not obvious to me that the system that works best in a town with population 40,000 is necessarily also the system that works best in a subcontinent with population 1 billion.
If we see the small scale governments outperforming the more conventional larger ones by a wide enough margin but want to play it safe, maybe the take away is that the subcontinent shouldn’t be under a single government.
Ok, but the analogy presupposes a lot about the nature of government (there is a single coherent function being optimised, there are other achievable and better optimums, we have any meaningful influence on where on the curve we are) without really adding anything new.
What does discussion of optimums say other than ‘there might be a system better than the current system?’
It reminds people that it exist and that we should be spending some resources searching for it. Recall that “democratic” is the original applause light that Eliezer chose to explain the concept of the applause light.
As to the idea that it is unikely other acheivable and better optimums exist, are you seriously suggesting that mankind stumbeled upon the best possible or even a very good form of government built out of humans so early in its history? After what 200 years of experimentation? Monarchy has a track record of millenia that isn’t obviously worse or better than democracy but that at least demonstrates long term compatibility with civilization and stability. Democracy has much weaker evidence in this regard.
Yet here we are loving democracy and despising monarchy without anyone giving it much thought. I have heard several explanations for this, but the one that I find fits best is that we where told as children that Democracy exists and is good. I’m not claiming with certainty we weren’t told that for good reasons, certainly I bet we where told that by people with the best of intentions, but maybe the reasons, despite the intentions, weren’t good. Its not like that never happens.
So why not try to have a good crisis of faith over it?