See, you’re ignoring the qualifier ‘sane’ again. I do not consider suicide bombers sane. Suicide bombers are extreme outliers, and they kill negligible numbers of people. Last time I checked they kill less people per year on average than diseases I had never heard of. Quite frankly, they are a non-issue when you actually look at the numbers.
It is not obvious to me that heroic responsibility implies that a thing should be done without cost/benefit analysis or at any cost.
Of course it depends on the values systems involved, I just happen to be fine with most values systems. I’ll rephrase normal values systems to be more clear: People will on average end up with an average range of value systems. The majority will probably be somewhat acceptable to me, so in aggregate I’m fine with it.
Is there a specific mechanism by which reducing government power would do good? What countries have been improved when that path has been taken? It seems like it would just shift power to even less accountable companies.
Well, would you like to define it, then? I am not sure I understand your use of this word. In particular, does it involve any specific set of values?
It is not obvious to me that heroic responsibility implies that a thing should be done without cost/benefit analysis or at any cost.
Things done on the basis of cost-benefit analysis are just rational things to do. The “heroic” part must stand for something, no?
I just happen to be fine with most values systems.
Ahem. Most out of which set? Are there temporal or geographical limits?
Is there a specific mechanism by which reducing government power would do good?
That’s a complicated discussion that should start with what is meant by “good” (we’re back to value systems again), maybe we should take it up another time...
I’ll put this in a separate post because it is not to do with heroic responsibility and it has been bugging me. What evidence do you have that your favoured idea of reducing political power does what you want it to do? Are there states which have switched to this method and benefited? Are there countries that have done this and what happened to them? Why do you believe what you believe?
Well, before we wade into mindkilling territory, let me set the stage and we’ll see if you find the framework reasonable.
Government power is multidimensional. It’s very common to wish for more government power in one area but less in another area. Therefore government power in aggregate is a very crude metric. However if you try to imagine government power as an n-dimensional body in a high-dimensional space, you can think of the volume of that n-dimensional body as total government power and that gives you a handle on what that means.
Government power, generally speaking, has costs and benefits. Few people prefer either of the two endpoints—complete totalitarianism or stateless anarchy. Most arguments are about which trade-offs are advantageous and about where the optimal point on the axis is located. To talk about optimality you need a yardstick. That yardstick is people’s value system. Since people have different value systems, different people will prefer different optimal points. If you consider the whole population you can (theoretically) build a preference distribution and interpret one of its centrality measures (e.g. mean, median, or mode) as the “optimal” optimal point, but that needs additional assumptions and gets rather convoluted rather fast.
There are multiple complicating factors in play here. Let me briefly list two.
First, the population’s preferences do not arise spontaneously in a pure and sincere manner. They are a function of local culture and the current memeplex, for example (see the Overton window), and are rather easily manipulated. Manipulating the political sentiments of the population is a time-honored and commonplace activity, you can assume by default that it is happening. There are multiple forces attempting the manipulation, of course, with different goals, so the balance is fluid and uncertain. Consider the ideas of “manufacturing consent” or the concept of “engines of consent”—these ideas were put forward by such diverse people as, say, Chomsky and neoreactionaries.
Second, the government, as an organization, has its own incentives, desires, and goals. The primary among them is to survive, then to grow which generally means become more powerful. Governments rarely contract (willingly), most of the time they expand. This means that without a countervailing force governments will “naturally” grow too big and too powerful past that optimal point mentioned above. Historically that has been dealt with by military conquests, revolutions, and internal coups, but the world has been quite stable lately...
I’ll stop before this becomes a wall of text, but does all of the above look reasonable to you?
All of it looks reasonable to me apart from the last paragraph. I can see times when governments do willingly contract. There are often candidates who campaign on a platform of tax cuts, the UK had one in power from 1979-1990 and the US had one in power from 2001-2009.
Tax cuts necessarily require eventual reductions in government spending and thus the power of government, agreed?
Tax cuts necessarily require eventual reductions in government spending and thus the power of government, agreed?
If they’re sustained long enough, yeah. But a state has more extensive borrowing powers than an individual does, and an administration so inclined can use those powers to spend beyond its means for rather a long time—certainly longer than the term in office of a politician who came to power on a promise of tax cuts. The US federal budget has been growing for a long time, including over the 2001-2009 period, and the growth under low-tax regimes has been paid for by deficit spending.
(Though you’d really want to be looking at federal spending as a percentage of GDP. There seems to be somedisagreement over the secular trend there, but the sources I’ve found agree that the trend 2001-2009 was positive.)
Yes, I was going to comment on how a clever politician could spend during their own term to intentionally screw over the next party to take power, but I wanted to avoid the possible political argument that could ensue.
They don’t necessarily have to, but generally do. For instance during austerity measures spending is generally reduced in most areas. Police forces have less funding and thus lose the ability to have as great an effect on an area, that is they have less power. Unless you’re talking about power as a state of laws instead of a state of what is physically done to people?
Well, yes, it was all over the news. This feels like a trick question. Are you about to tell me that spending went up during the recession or something?
Then what was all that stuff on the news about cutting government jobs, trying desperately to ensure frontline services weren’t effected and so on about?
Edit: I knew it! No wonder I felt so confused. It would seem the reduction in spending just took a while to come into effect. Take a look at the years after 2011 that your chart is missing. Unfortunately it’s not adjusted for inflation but you still get the idea. If you change category to protection and the subcategory to ‘police’, ‘prisons’ or ‘law courts’, you can see the reduction in police funding over the course of the recession.
Take a look at the years after 2011 that your chart is missing.
So, my trap backfired? Ouch. :-( I guess I should be more careful about where I dig them :-) But I shall persevere anyway! :-D
First, let me point out that the UK public spending contracted for a single year (2013) and 2014 is already projected to top all previous years. That’s not a meaningful contraction.
Second, we are talking about the power of the government. Did you feel this power lessened is some way around 2013? Sure, some programs were cut or didn’t grow as fast as some people wanted, but is there any discernible way in which the government was weaker in 2013 than it was in 2012?
Right, it’s time we got back on track. Now that we using the same definition of power and we’ve come to the conclusion that a reduction in tax revenues can reduce physical projection of power but is unlikely to remove the laws that determine what maximum level of power is legally allowed to be projected.
I believe you were talking about optimal levels of power when compared to growth?
Which particular theory? You asked why do I want the reduce the power of the government and what does that mean. I tried to answer to the best of my ability, but there is no falsifiable theory about my values. They are what they are.
A theory of government is not an terminal value, it is an instrumental one. You believe that that particular way of government will make people happy/autonomous/free/healthy/whatever your value system is. What is lacking is evidence that this particular government actually achieves those aims. It’s a reasonable a priori argument, but so are dozens of other arguments for other governments. We need to distinguish which reality we are actually living in. By what metric can your goals be measured and where would you expect them to be highest? Are there countries/states trying this and what is the effect? Are there countries doing the exact opposite and what would you expect to be the result of that? Your belief must be falsifiable or else it is permeable to flour and meaningless. Stage a full crisis of faith if you have to. No retreating into a separate magesterium, why do you believe what you believe?
Because a larger government takes more of my money, because it limits me in certain areas where I would prefer not to be limited, and because it has scarier and more probable failure modes.
It finally makes sense, you’re looking at it from a personal point of view. Consider it from the view of the average wellbeing of the entire populace. Zoom out to consider the entire country, the full system of which the government is just a small part. A larger government has more probable failure modes, but a small one simply outsources its failure modes to companies and extremely rich individuals. Power abhors a vacuum.
You and I are not large enough or typical enough for considerations about our optimality to enter into the running of a country. People are eternal and essentially unchanging, the average level of humanity rises but slowly. The only realistic way to improve their lot is to change the situation in which the decision is made. The structure of the system they flow through is too important to be left to market forces and random chance. I don’t care much if it inconveniences me so long as on average the lot of humanity is improved.
Edit: I fully expect you to disagree with me, but at least that’s one mystery solved.
Consider it from the view of the average wellbeing of the entire populace.
Sure. A larger government takes more of their money, limits them in areas where they would prefer to be not limited, and has scarier and more probable failure modes.
a small one simply outsources its failure modes to companies and extremely rich individuals.
No, I don’t think so, not the really scary failure modes. Things like Pol Pot’s Kampuchea cannot be outsourced.
People are eternal and essentially unchanging, the average level of humanity rises but slowly.
The second half of that sentence contradicts the first half.
The structure of the system they flow through is too important to be left to market forces and random chance.
I don’t know of anyone who proposes random chance as a guiding political principle. As to the market forces, well, they provide the best economy human societies have ever seen. A lot of people thought they could do better—they all turned out to be wrong.
so long as on average the lot of humanity is improved.
You’re still missing a minor part—showing that a large government does indeed do that better compared to a smaller one. By the way, are you saying that the current government size and power (say, typical for EU countries) are optimal? too small?
You misunderstand me. I am not saying that a large government is definitely better. I’m simply playing devils advocate. I find it worrying that you can’t find any examples of good things in larger government though. Do socialised single payer healthcare, lower crime rates due to more police, better roads, better infrastructure, environmental protections and higher quality schools not count as benefit? These are all things that require taxes and can be improved with greater spending on them.
Edit: In retrospect maybe this is how a changed humanity looks already. That seems to fit the reality better.
I find it worrying that you can’t find any examples of good things in larger government
Of course I can. Recall me talking about the multidimensionality of government power and how most people (including me) would prefer more in one dimension but less in another. On the whole I would prefer a weaker government, but not necessarily in every single aspect.
However I would stress once again the cost-benefit balance. More is only better is you’re below the optimal point, go above it and more will be worse.
And neither of us have the evidence required to find this point (if indeed it is just one point instead of several optimal peaks). I’m tapping out. If you have any closing points I’ll try to take them into account in my thinking. Regardless, it seems like we agree on more than we disagree on.
Do socialised single payer healthcare, lower crime rates due to more police, better roads, better infrastructure, environmental protections and higher quality schools not count as benefit?
Some of these things are, some aren’t. Let’s go through the list:
single payer healthcare,
In the countries I’m most familiar with the socialized health care system is something you want to avoid if you have an alternative.
lower crime rates due to more police, better roads, better infrastructure,
Ok, those are examples. Even if the the crime rates that make more police necessary are due to other stupid government policies.
environmental protections
Well these days a lot of environmental protection laws are insane, as in we must divert water from the farms because if we don’t the delta smelt population might be reduced (this is California’s actual water policy). Other times they’re just excuses for extreme NIMBYism.
higher quality schools
Well, in the US the rule of thumb is that the more control government exercises over schools the worse they are.
In the countries I’m most familiar with the socialized health care system is something you want to avoid if you have an alternative.l
Kind of trueish but, not in a way that supports your point, Public healthcare systems tend to be run on something of a shoe string, so an Individual who can easily afford private treatment is often better off with that option, However, that does not translate to the total population or average person.. Analogously , the fact that travelling in a chauffeur limo is more pleasant than travelling on a train, for those who can afford it, is no justification for dismantling public transportation systems. And it’s not either/or, anyway.
other stupid government policies.
Ok stupid government bad. But what’s the relationship between large government and stupid government? Large government has at least the capacity to hire expert consultants, and implement checks and balances. And there’s plenty of examples of autocratic rulers who were batshit crazy.
Well these days a lot of environmental protection laws are insane,
In the US? Doesn’t generalize.
Well, in the US the rule of thumb is that the more control government exercises over schools the worse they are.
Public healthcare systems tend to be run on something of a shoe string
Um. Do you mean the money allocated in the budget for the healthcare system or the money that actually trickles down to the actual doctors? Because the former tends to be larger than the latter.
Taxpayers don’t like paying tax, which is the incentive to keep down costs in a public healthcare system, and it works because they are all cheaper than the US system.
Taxpayers don’t like poor quality healthcare either. And degraded from what? It’s not like there was ever a golden age where the average person had top quality and affordable healthcare, and then someone came along and spoiled everything. Public healthcare is like public transport: it’s not supposed to be the best in-money-is-no-object terms, it is supposed to better than nothing.
And lets remind ourselves that, factually, a number of public healthcare systems deliver equal .or better results to the US system for less money.
But they have to solve a rational ignorance and a collective action problem to do something about it.
And lets remind ourselves, again, that, factually, a number of public healthcare systems deliver equal .or better results to the US system for less money. So it looks like they have.
Because ineffective corporations continuing to exist is less bad in terms of human suffering than major economic collapse.
Raising the spectre of “major economic collapse” at the notion that big corporations might have to operate under the same market conditions and risks as everyone else seems like an argument straight from a corporate lobbyist.
Don’t government rescues reward poor management and incentivise excessive risk, thus leading to economic troubles which necessitate them in the first place? It is not at all clear to me that the hypothetical world in which bailouts don’t happen and corporations know it and act accordingly contains more suffering.
Especially after you consider the costs imposed on the competent to rescue the failures, and the cost to the economy from uneven competition (between those who can afford to take bigger risks, or simply manage themselves sloppier, knowing that they are “too big to fail”, and those who cannot).
Raising the spectre of “major economic collapse” at the notion that big corporations might have to operate under the same market conditions and risks as everyone else seems like an argument straight from a corporate lobbyist.
Calling it a spectre makes it sound mythical, but it has been known to happen. The fallacy lies in not having sufficient evidence it will happen in any particular case.
Don’t government rescues reward poor management and incentivise excessive risk, thus leading to economic troubles which necessitate them in the first place?
You can reduce risky behaviour by regulation. Baillouts without regulation is the worst possible word.
Especially after you consider the costs imposed on the competent to rescue the failures, and the cost to the economy from uneven competition (between those who can afford to take bigger risks, or simply manage themselves sloppier, knowing that they are “too big to fail”, and those who cannot).
Bailouts involve disutility. My argument is that by spreading the costs over more people and more time, they entail less suffering.
Because I didn’t see a point, just a bunch of straw.
Because ineffective corporations continuing to exist is less bad in terms of human suffering than major economic collapse.
First, I don’t think that is true. Second, there was a bit of sleight of hand—you replaced the failure of large corporations with “major economic collapse”. That’s, um, not exactly the same thing :-/
Because I didn’t see a point, just a bunch of straw.
Free free to specify the non straw versions.
Because ineffective corporations continuing to exist is less bad in terms of human suffering than major economic collapse.
First, I don’t think that is true.
Feel free to support that claim with an argument. There are good reasons for thinking that the collapse of a large financial institution, in particular can cause a domino affect. It’s happened before. And it’s hardly debatable that recessions cause suffering...the suicide rate goes up, for one thing.
Second, there was a bit of sleight of hand—you replaced the failure of large corporations with “major economic collapse”. That’s, um, not exactly the same thing :-/
So, how much did the government actually contract under Maggie or under Ronnie? :-) Did that contraction stick?
Tax cuts necessarily require eventual reductions in government spending and thus the power of government, agreed?
Oh, not at all. You just borrow more.
Besides, spending is only part of the power of the government. Consider e.g. extending the reach of the laws which does not necessarily require any budgetary increases.
There does come a point when the bill must be paid though, even if it is over a long time. Even if it’s over 40 years as you pay back the interest on the debt.
Before we go further, I think we need to be sure we’re talking about the same thing when we say power. See, when you said a reduction in government power, what I heard was essentially less money, smaller government. I’m getting the feeling that that is not entirely what you meant, could you clarify?
when you said a reduction in government power, what I heard was essentially less money, smaller government.
That too, but not only that. There is nothing tricky here, I’m using the word “power” in its straightforward meaning. Power includes money, but it also includes things like the monopoly on (legal) violence, the ability to create and enforce laws and regulations, give or withhold permission to do something (e.g. occupational licensing), etc. etc.
[...] just rational things to do. The “heroic” part must stand for something, no?
I had always assumed it was intended to stand for doing things that are rational even if they’re really hard or scary and unanticipated.
If you do a careful cost-benefit calculation and conclude (depending on your values and beliefs) that …
… the biggest risk facing humanity in the nearish future is that of a runaway AI doing things we really don’t want but are powerless to stop, and preventing this requires serious hard work in mathematics and philosophy and engineering that no one seems to be doing; or
… most of the world’s population is going to spend eternity in unimaginable torment because they don’t know how to please the gods; or
… there are billions of people much, much worse off than you, and giving away almost everything you have and almost everything you earn will make the world a substantially better place than keeping it in order to have a nicer house, better food, more confidence of not starving when you get old, etc.
and if you are a normal person then you shrug your shoulders, say “damn, that’s too bad”, and get on with your life; but if you are infused with a sense of heroic responsibility then you devote your life to researching AI safety (and propagandizing to get other people thinking about it too), or become a missionary, or live in poverty while doing lucrative but miserable work in order to save lives in Africa.
If it turns out that you picked as good a cause as you think you did, and if you do your heroic job well and get lucky, then you can end up transforming the world for the better. If you picked a bad cause (saving Germany from the Jewish menace, let’s say) and do your job well and get lucky, you can (deservedly) go down in history as an evil genocidal tyrant and one of the worst people who ever lived. And if you turn out not to have the skill and luck you need, you can waste your life failing to solve the problem you took aim at, and end up neither accomplishing anything of importance nor having a comfortable life.
So there are reasons why most people don’t embrace “heroic responsibility”. But the premise for the whole thing—without which there’s nothing to be heroically responsible about—is, it seems to me, that you really think that this thing needs doing and you need to do it and that’s what’s best for the world.
(“Heroic responsibility” isn’t only about tasks so big that they consume your entire life. You can take heroic responsibility for smaller-scale things too, if they present themselves and seem important enough. But, again, I think what makes them opportunities for heroic responsibility is that combination of importantly worth doing and really intimidating.)
and if you are a normal person then you shrug your shoulders, say “damn, that’s too bad”, and get on with your life; but if you are infused with a sense of heroic responsibility then you devote your life to...
If you’re a normal person, the fact that you shrug your shoulders when faced with such things is beneficial because shrugging your shoulders instead of being heroic when faced with the destruction of civilization serves as immunity against crazy ideas and because you’re running on corrupted hardware, you probably aren’t as good at figuring out how to avoid the destruction of civilization as you think.
Just saying “I’m not going to shrug my shoulders; I’m going to be heroic instead” is removing the checks and balances that are irrational themselves but protect you against bad rationality of other types, leaving you worse off overall.
I am inclined to agree; I am not a fan of the idea of “heroic responsibility”. (Though I think most of us could stand to be a notch or two more heroic than we currently are.)
Okay, my definition of sane is essentially: rational enough to take actions that generally work towards your goals and to create goals that are effective ways to satisfy your terminal values. It’s a rather high bar. Suicide bombers do not achieve their goals, cultists have had their cognitive machinery hijacked to serve someone else’s goals instead of their own. The reason I think this would be okay in aggregate is the psychological unity of mankind: we’re mostly pretty similar and there are remarkably low numbers of evil mutants. Being pretty similar, most people’s goals would be acceptable to me. I disagree with some things China does for example, but I find their overwhelming competence makes up for it in aggregate wellbeing of their populace.
gjm gives some good examples of heroic responsibility, but I understand the term slightly differently. Heroic responsibility is to have found a thing that you have decided is important, generally by reasoned cost/benefit and then take responsibility to get it done regardless of what life throws your way. It may be an easy task or a hard task, but it must be an important task. The basic idea is that you don’t stop when you feel like you tried, if your first attempt doesn’t work you do more research and come up with a new strategy. If your second plan doesn’t work because of unfair forces you take those unfair forces into account and come up with another plan. If that still doesn’t work you try harder again, then you keep going until you either achieve the goal, it becomes clear that you cannot achieve the goal or the amount of effort you would have to put into the problem becomes significantly greater than the size of the benefit you expect.
For example, the benefit for FAI is humanities continued existence, there is essentially no amount of effort one person could put in that could be too much. To use the example of Eliezer in this thread, the benefit of a person being happier and more effective for months each year is also large, much larger than the time it takes to research SAD and come up with some creative solutions.
Not quite. A collection of semi-local militias who managed to piss off just about everyone does not a caliphate make.
P.S. Though as a comment on the grandparent post, some suicide bombers certainly achieve their goals (and that’s even ignoring the obvious goal to die a martyr for the cause).
Achieved almost entirely by fighting through normal means, guns and such so I hardly see the relevant. Suicide bombing kills a vanishing small number of people. IED’s are an actual threat.
Their original goal as rebels was to remove a central government and now they’re fighting a war of genocide against other rebel factions. I wonder how they would have responded if you’d told them at the start that a short while later they’d be slaughtering fellow muslims in direct opposition to their holy book.
rational enough to take actions that generally work towards your goals and to create goals that are effective ways to satisfy your terminal values. It’s a rather high bar.
The definition you give sounds like a pretty low bar to me. The fact that you’re calling the bar high means that there are implied but unstated things around this definition—can you be more explicit? “Generally work towards your goals” looks to me like what 90% of the population is doing...
but I understand the term slightly differently
Is it basically persistence/stubborness/bloodymindedness, then?
Persistence is a good word for it, plus a sense of making it work even if the world is unfair, the odds are stacked against you. No sense of having fought the good fight and lost, if you failed and there were things you possibly could done beforehand, general strategies that would have been effective even if you did not know what was coming, then that is your own responsibility. It is not, I think, a particularly healthy way of looking at most things. It can only really be useful as a mindset for things that really matter.
can you be more explicit?
Ah, sorry, I insufficiently unpacked “effective ways to satisfy terminal values”. The hidden complexity was in “effectively”. By effectively I meant in an efficient and >75% optimal manner. Many people do not know their own terminal values. Most people also don’t know that what makes a human happy, which is often different from what a human wants. Of those that do know their values, few have effective plans to satisfy them. Looking back on it now, this is quite a large inferential distance behind the innocuous looking work ‘sane’. I shall try to improve on that in the future.
It’s a statement of fact, not a political agenda. Neuroscientists know more about people’s brains than normal people do, as a result of spending years and decades studying the subject.
Not yours specifically, but the general average across humanity. lukeprog wrote up a good summary of the factors correlated with happiness which you’ve probably read as well as an attempt to discern the causes. Not that happiness is the be-all and end-all of terminal values, but it certainly shows how little the average person knows about what they would actually happy with vs what they think they’d be happy with. I believe that small sub-sequence on the science of winning at life is far more than the average person knows on the subject, or else people wouldn’t give such terrible advice.
Aren’t you making the assumption that the average applies to everyone? It does not. There is a rather wide spread and pretending that a single average value represents it well enough is unwarranted.
There are certainly things biologically hardwired into human brains but not all of them are terminal values and for things that are (e.g. survival) you don’t need a neurobiologist to point that out. Frankly, I am at loss to see what neurobiologists can say about terminal values. It’s like asking Intel chip engineers about what a piece of software really does.
how little the average person knows about what they would actually happy with
I don’t know about that. Do you have evidence? If a person’s ideas about her happiness diverge from the average ones, I would by default assume that she’s different from the average, not that she is wrong.
See, you’re ignoring the qualifier ‘sane’ again. I do not consider suicide bombers sane. Suicide bombers are extreme outliers, and they kill negligible numbers of people. Last time I checked they kill less people per year on average than diseases I had never heard of. Quite frankly, they are a non-issue when you actually look at the numbers.
It is not obvious to me that heroic responsibility implies that a thing should be done without cost/benefit analysis or at any cost.
Of course it depends on the values systems involved, I just happen to be fine with most values systems. I’ll rephrase normal values systems to be more clear: People will on average end up with an average range of value systems. The majority will probably be somewhat acceptable to me, so in aggregate I’m fine with it.
Is there a specific mechanism by which reducing government power would do good? What countries have been improved when that path has been taken? It seems like it would just shift power to even less accountable companies.
Well, would you like to define it, then? I am not sure I understand your use of this word. In particular, does it involve any specific set of values?
Things done on the basis of cost-benefit analysis are just rational things to do. The “heroic” part must stand for something, no?
Ahem. Most out of which set? Are there temporal or geographical limits?
That’s a complicated discussion that should start with what is meant by “good” (we’re back to value systems again), maybe we should take it up another time...
I’ll put this in a separate post because it is not to do with heroic responsibility and it has been bugging me. What evidence do you have that your favoured idea of reducing political power does what you want it to do? Are there states which have switched to this method and benefited? Are there countries that have done this and what happened to them? Why do you believe what you believe?
Well, before we wade into mindkilling territory, let me set the stage and we’ll see if you find the framework reasonable.
Government power is multidimensional. It’s very common to wish for more government power in one area but less in another area. Therefore government power in aggregate is a very crude metric. However if you try to imagine government power as an n-dimensional body in a high-dimensional space, you can think of the volume of that n-dimensional body as total government power and that gives you a handle on what that means.
Government power, generally speaking, has costs and benefits. Few people prefer either of the two endpoints—complete totalitarianism or stateless anarchy. Most arguments are about which trade-offs are advantageous and about where the optimal point on the axis is located. To talk about optimality you need a yardstick. That yardstick is people’s value system. Since people have different value systems, different people will prefer different optimal points. If you consider the whole population you can (theoretically) build a preference distribution and interpret one of its centrality measures (e.g. mean, median, or mode) as the “optimal” optimal point, but that needs additional assumptions and gets rather convoluted rather fast.
There are multiple complicating factors in play here. Let me briefly list two.
First, the population’s preferences do not arise spontaneously in a pure and sincere manner. They are a function of local culture and the current memeplex, for example (see the Overton window), and are rather easily manipulated. Manipulating the political sentiments of the population is a time-honored and commonplace activity, you can assume by default that it is happening. There are multiple forces attempting the manipulation, of course, with different goals, so the balance is fluid and uncertain. Consider the ideas of “manufacturing consent” or the concept of “engines of consent”—these ideas were put forward by such diverse people as, say, Chomsky and neoreactionaries.
Second, the government, as an organization, has its own incentives, desires, and goals. The primary among them is to survive, then to grow which generally means become more powerful. Governments rarely contract (willingly), most of the time they expand. This means that without a countervailing force governments will “naturally” grow too big and too powerful past that optimal point mentioned above. Historically that has been dealt with by military conquests, revolutions, and internal coups, but the world has been quite stable lately...
I’ll stop before this becomes a wall of text, but does all of the above look reasonable to you?
All of it looks reasonable to me apart from the last paragraph. I can see times when governments do willingly contract. There are often candidates who campaign on a platform of tax cuts, the UK had one in power from 1979-1990 and the US had one in power from 2001-2009.
Tax cuts necessarily require eventual reductions in government spending and thus the power of government, agreed?
If they’re sustained long enough, yeah. But a state has more extensive borrowing powers than an individual does, and an administration so inclined can use those powers to spend beyond its means for rather a long time—certainly longer than the term in office of a politician who came to power on a promise of tax cuts. The US federal budget has been growing for a long time, including over the 2001-2009 period, and the growth under low-tax regimes has been paid for by deficit spending.
(Though you’d really want to be looking at federal spending as a percentage of GDP. There seems to be some disagreement over the secular trend there, but the sources I’ve found agree that the trend 2001-2009 was positive.)
Yes, I was going to comment on how a clever politician could spend during their own term to intentionally screw over the next party to take power, but I wanted to avoid the possible political argument that could ensue.
Yeah, the “starve the beast” strategy looked appealing in theory but rather spectacularly failed in practice...
Even if the tax cut are funded by reduction in government spending why would that imply a reduction of government power?
They don’t necessarily have to, but generally do. For instance during austerity measures spending is generally reduced in most areas. Police forces have less funding and thus lose the ability to have as great an effect on an area, that is they have less power. Unless you’re talking about power as a state of laws instead of a state of what is physically done to people?
Do you think UK had an austerity period recently?
Well, yes, it was all over the news. This feels like a trick question. Are you about to tell me that spending went up during the recession or something?
You have good instincts :-) Yes, this was a trap: behold.
Then what was all that stuff on the news about cutting government jobs, trying desperately to ensure frontline services weren’t effected and so on about?
Edit: I knew it! No wonder I felt so confused. It would seem the reduction in spending just took a while to come into effect. Take a look at the years after 2011 that your chart is missing. Unfortunately it’s not adjusted for inflation but you still get the idea. If you change category to protection and the subcategory to ‘police’, ‘prisons’ or ‘law courts’, you can see the reduction in police funding over the course of the recession.
So, my trap backfired? Ouch. :-( I guess I should be more careful about where I dig them :-) But I shall persevere anyway! :-D
First, let me point out that the UK public spending contracted for a single year (2013) and 2014 is already projected to top all previous years. That’s not a meaningful contraction.
Second, we are talking about the power of the government. Did you feel this power lessened is some way around 2013? Sure, some programs were cut or didn’t grow as fast as some people wanted, but is there any discernible way in which the government was weaker in 2013 than it was in 2012?
Fewer police on the street, for one. I’ve seen declining numbers of officers in my visits to the UK since probably around late 2010.
That’s true, it seems in England and Wales the number of police officers dropped by about 10% since the peak of 2009 (source).
Right, it’s time we got back on track. Now that we using the same definition of power and we’ve come to the conclusion that a reduction in tax revenues can reduce physical projection of power but is unlikely to remove the laws that determine what maximum level of power is legally allowed to be projected.
I believe you were talking about optimal levels of power when compared to growth?
Not at all. I was talking about optimal levels of power from the point of view of my system of values.
Right, well would you please continue? I believe the question that started all this off was how do you know said theory corresponds to reality.
Which particular theory? You asked why do I want the reduce the power of the government and what does that mean. I tried to answer to the best of my ability, but there is no falsifiable theory about my values. They are what they are.
A theory of government is not an terminal value, it is an instrumental one. You believe that that particular way of government will make people happy/autonomous/free/healthy/whatever your value system is. What is lacking is evidence that this particular government actually achieves those aims. It’s a reasonable a priori argument, but so are dozens of other arguments for other governments. We need to distinguish which reality we are actually living in. By what metric can your goals be measured and where would you expect them to be highest? Are there countries/states trying this and what is the effect? Are there countries doing the exact opposite and what would you expect to be the result of that? Your belief must be falsifiable or else it is permeable to flour and meaningless. Stage a full crisis of faith if you have to. No retreating into a separate magesterium, why do you believe what you believe?
Which “this particular government”? I don’t think I’m advocating any specific government. May I point you here?
My preferences neither are nor need to be falsifiable.
Why do I believe what?
That large government is worse than small government.
Because a larger government takes more of my money, because it limits me in certain areas where I would prefer not to be limited, and because it has scarier and more probable failure modes.
It finally makes sense, you’re looking at it from a personal point of view. Consider it from the view of the average wellbeing of the entire populace. Zoom out to consider the entire country, the full system of which the government is just a small part. A larger government has more probable failure modes, but a small one simply outsources its failure modes to companies and extremely rich individuals. Power abhors a vacuum.
You and I are not large enough or typical enough for considerations about our optimality to enter into the running of a country. People are eternal and essentially unchanging, the average level of humanity rises but slowly. The only realistic way to improve their lot is to change the situation in which the decision is made. The structure of the system they flow through is too important to be left to market forces and random chance. I don’t care much if it inconveniences me so long as on average the lot of humanity is improved.
Edit: I fully expect you to disagree with me, but at least that’s one mystery solved.
Sure. A larger government takes more of their money, limits them in areas where they would prefer to be not limited, and has scarier and more probable failure modes.
No, I don’t think so, not the really scary failure modes. Things like Pol Pot’s Kampuchea cannot be outsourced.
The second half of that sentence contradicts the first half.
I don’t know of anyone who proposes random chance as a guiding political principle. As to the market forces, well, they provide the best economy human societies have ever seen. A lot of people thought they could do better—they all turned out to be wrong.
You’re still missing a minor part—showing that a large government does indeed do that better compared to a smaller one. By the way, are you saying that the current government size and power (say, typical for EU countries) are optimal? too small?
You misunderstand me. I am not saying that a large government is definitely better. I’m simply playing devils advocate. I find it worrying that you can’t find any examples of good things in larger government though. Do socialised single payer healthcare, lower crime rates due to more police, better roads, better infrastructure, environmental protections and higher quality schools not count as benefit? These are all things that require taxes and can be improved with greater spending on them.
Edit: In retrospect maybe this is how a changed humanity looks already. That seems to fit the reality better.
Of course I can. Recall me talking about the multidimensionality of government power and how most people (including me) would prefer more in one dimension but less in another. On the whole I would prefer a weaker government, but not necessarily in every single aspect.
However I would stress once again the cost-benefit balance. More is only better is you’re below the optimal point, go above it and more will be worse.
And neither of us have the evidence required to find this point (if indeed it is just one point instead of several optimal peaks). I’m tapping out. If you have any closing points I’ll try to take them into account in my thinking. Regardless, it seems like we agree on more than we disagree on.
Some of these things are, some aren’t. Let’s go through the list:
In the countries I’m most familiar with the socialized health care system is something you want to avoid if you have an alternative.
Ok, those are examples. Even if the the crime rates that make more police necessary are due to other stupid government policies.
Well these days a lot of environmental protection laws are insane, as in we must divert water from the farms because if we don’t the delta smelt population might be reduced (this is California’s actual water policy). Other times they’re just excuses for extreme NIMBYism.
Well, in the US the rule of thumb is that the more control government exercises over schools the worse they are.
Kind of trueish but, not in a way that supports your point, Public healthcare systems tend to be run on something of a shoe string, so an Individual who can easily afford private treatment is often better off with that option, However, that does not translate to the total population or average person.. Analogously , the fact that travelling in a chauffeur limo is more pleasant than travelling on a train, for those who can afford it, is no justification for dismantling public transportation systems. And it’s not either/or, anyway.
Ok stupid government bad. But what’s the relationship between large government and stupid government? Large government has at least the capacity to hire expert consultants, and implement checks and balances. And there’s plenty of examples of autocratic rulers who were batshit crazy.
In the US? Doesn’t generalize.
Ditto.
Um. Do you mean the money allocated in the budget for the healthcare system or the money that actually trickles down to the actual doctors? Because the former tends to be larger than the latter.
I believe that private healthcare deliverers have nonzero administrative costs as well.
http://epianalysis.wordpress.com/2012/07/18/usversuseurope/
Yes, but they actually have incentives to keep those costs down.
Taxpayers don’t like paying tax, which is the incentive to keep down costs in a public healthcare system, and it works because they are all cheaper than the US system.
To the extend this incentive exists its fulfilled by degrading quality rather than improving efficiency.
Taxpayers don’t like poor quality healthcare either. And degraded from what? It’s not like there was ever a golden age where the average person had top quality and affordable healthcare, and then someone came along and spoiled everything. Public healthcare is like public transport: it’s not supposed to be the best in-money-is-no-object terms, it is supposed to better than nothing.
And lets remind ourselves that, factually, a number of public healthcare systems deliver equal .or better results to the US system for less money.
But they have to solve a rational ignorance and a collective action problem to do something about it.
And lets remind ourselves, again, that, factually, a number of public healthcare systems deliver equal .or better results to the US system for less money. So it looks like they have.
Even the former is much smaller than what you guys pay in the US.
Such things are referred to as ‘safety nets’ for a reason. Falling from the tightrope still isn’t advised.
Larger government gives more and invests more...governments don’t just burn money.
Large government doesn’t automatically mean less freedom...the average person in mediaeval Europe was not particularly free.
Large government can rescue large corporations when they fail....
You seem to be well on the roads towards the “if you want a small government why don’t you GO AND LIVE IN SOMALIA” argument....
And why in the world would that be a good thing?
Why not answer the points I actually made?
Because ineffective corporations continuing to exist is less bad in terms of human suffering than major economic collapse.
Raising the spectre of “major economic collapse” at the notion that big corporations might have to operate under the same market conditions and risks as everyone else seems like an argument straight from a corporate lobbyist.
Don’t government rescues reward poor management and incentivise excessive risk, thus leading to economic troubles which necessitate them in the first place? It is not at all clear to me that the hypothetical world in which bailouts don’t happen and corporations know it and act accordingly contains more suffering.
Especially after you consider the costs imposed on the competent to rescue the failures, and the cost to the economy from uneven competition (between those who can afford to take bigger risks, or simply manage themselves sloppier, knowing that they are “too big to fail”, and those who cannot).
Calling it a spectre makes it sound mythical, but it has been known to happen. The fallacy lies in not having sufficient evidence it will happen in any particular case.
You can reduce risky behaviour by regulation. Baillouts without regulation is the worst possible word.
Bailouts involve disutility. My argument is that by spreading the costs over more people and more time, they entail less suffering.
Because I didn’t see a point, just a bunch of straw.
First, I don’t think that is true. Second, there was a bit of sleight of hand—you replaced the failure of large corporations with “major economic collapse”. That’s, um, not exactly the same thing :-/
Free free to specify the non straw versions.
Feel free to support that claim with an argument. There are good reasons for thinking that the collapse of a large financial institution, in particular can cause a domino affect. It’s happened before. And it’s hardly debatable that recessions cause suffering...the suicide rate goes up, for one thing.
No, and it’s not completely disjoint , neither.
So, how much did the government actually contract under Maggie or under Ronnie? :-) Did that contraction stick?
Oh, not at all. You just borrow more.
Besides, spending is only part of the power of the government. Consider e.g. extending the reach of the laws which does not necessarily require any budgetary increases.
And/or authorize the police to steal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_forfeiture
It works best if you let the cops keep part of their robbery hauls :-/
There does come a point when the bill must be paid though, even if it is over a long time. Even if it’s over 40 years as you pay back the interest on the debt.
Before we go further, I think we need to be sure we’re talking about the same thing when we say power. See, when you said a reduction in government power, what I heard was essentially less money, smaller government. I’m getting the feeling that that is not entirely what you meant, could you clarify?
That too, but not only that. There is nothing tricky here, I’m using the word “power” in its straightforward meaning. Power includes money, but it also includes things like the monopoly on (legal) violence, the ability to create and enforce laws and regulations, give or withhold permission to do something (e.g. occupational licensing), etc. etc.
I had always assumed it was intended to stand for doing things that are rational even if they’re really hard or scary and unanticipated.
If you do a careful cost-benefit calculation and conclude (depending on your values and beliefs) that …
… the biggest risk facing humanity in the nearish future is that of a runaway AI doing things we really don’t want but are powerless to stop, and preventing this requires serious hard work in mathematics and philosophy and engineering that no one seems to be doing; or
… most of the world’s population is going to spend eternity in unimaginable torment because they don’t know how to please the gods; or
… there are billions of people much, much worse off than you, and giving away almost everything you have and almost everything you earn will make the world a substantially better place than keeping it in order to have a nicer house, better food, more confidence of not starving when you get old, etc.
and if you are a normal person then you shrug your shoulders, say “damn, that’s too bad”, and get on with your life; but if you are infused with a sense of heroic responsibility then you devote your life to researching AI safety (and propagandizing to get other people thinking about it too), or become a missionary, or live in poverty while doing lucrative but miserable work in order to save lives in Africa.
If it turns out that you picked as good a cause as you think you did, and if you do your heroic job well and get lucky, then you can end up transforming the world for the better. If you picked a bad cause (saving Germany from the Jewish menace, let’s say) and do your job well and get lucky, you can (deservedly) go down in history as an evil genocidal tyrant and one of the worst people who ever lived. And if you turn out not to have the skill and luck you need, you can waste your life failing to solve the problem you took aim at, and end up neither accomplishing anything of importance nor having a comfortable life.
So there are reasons why most people don’t embrace “heroic responsibility”. But the premise for the whole thing—without which there’s nothing to be heroically responsible about—is, it seems to me, that you really think that this thing needs doing and you need to do it and that’s what’s best for the world.
(“Heroic responsibility” isn’t only about tasks so big that they consume your entire life. You can take heroic responsibility for smaller-scale things too, if they present themselves and seem important enough. But, again, I think what makes them opportunities for heroic responsibility is that combination of importantly worth doing and really intimidating.)
If you’re a normal person, the fact that you shrug your shoulders when faced with such things is beneficial because shrugging your shoulders instead of being heroic when faced with the destruction of civilization serves as immunity against crazy ideas and because you’re running on corrupted hardware, you probably aren’t as good at figuring out how to avoid the destruction of civilization as you think.
Just saying “I’m not going to shrug my shoulders; I’m going to be heroic instead” is removing the checks and balances that are irrational themselves but protect you against bad rationality of other types, leaving you worse off overall.
I am inclined to agree; I am not a fan of the idea of “heroic responsibility”. (Though I think most of us could stand to be a notch or two more heroic than we currently are.)
Well, here is a counter-example. I can’t imagine that was too intimidating :-/
Okay, my definition of sane is essentially: rational enough to take actions that generally work towards your goals and to create goals that are effective ways to satisfy your terminal values. It’s a rather high bar. Suicide bombers do not achieve their goals, cultists have had their cognitive machinery hijacked to serve someone else’s goals instead of their own. The reason I think this would be okay in aggregate is the psychological unity of mankind: we’re mostly pretty similar and there are remarkably low numbers of evil mutants. Being pretty similar, most people’s goals would be acceptable to me. I disagree with some things China does for example, but I find their overwhelming competence makes up for it in aggregate wellbeing of their populace.
gjm gives some good examples of heroic responsibility, but I understand the term slightly differently. Heroic responsibility is to have found a thing that you have decided is important, generally by reasoned cost/benefit and then take responsibility to get it done regardless of what life throws your way. It may be an easy task or a hard task, but it must be an important task. The basic idea is that you don’t stop when you feel like you tried, if your first attempt doesn’t work you do more research and come up with a new strategy. If your second plan doesn’t work because of unfair forces you take those unfair forces into account and come up with another plan. If that still doesn’t work you try harder again, then you keep going until you either achieve the goal, it becomes clear that you cannot achieve the goal or the amount of effort you would have to put into the problem becomes significantly greater than the size of the benefit you expect.
For example, the benefit for FAI is humanities continued existence, there is essentially no amount of effort one person could put in that could be too much. To use the example of Eliezer in this thread, the benefit of a person being happier and more effective for months each year is also large, much larger than the time it takes to research SAD and come up with some creative solutions.
Really, last time I checked there is now a Caliphate in what is still nominal Iraq and Syria.
Not quite. A collection of semi-local militias who managed to piss off just about everyone does not a caliphate make.
P.S. Though as a comment on the grandparent post, some suicide bombers certainly achieve their goals (and that’s even ignoring the obvious goal to die a martyr for the cause).
But not enough for “everyone” to mount an effective campaign to destroy them.
Achieved almost entirely by fighting through normal means, guns and such so I hardly see the relevant. Suicide bombing kills a vanishing small number of people. IED’s are an actual threat.
Their original goal as rebels was to remove a central government and now they’re fighting a war of genocide against other rebel factions. I wonder how they would have responded if you’d told them at the start that a short while later they’d be slaughtering fellow muslims in direct opposition to their holy book.
The definition you give sounds like a pretty low bar to me. The fact that you’re calling the bar high means that there are implied but unstated things around this definition—can you be more explicit? “Generally work towards your goals” looks to me like what 90% of the population is doing...
Is it basically persistence/stubborness/bloodymindedness, then?
Persistence is a good word for it, plus a sense of making it work even if the world is unfair, the odds are stacked against you. No sense of having fought the good fight and lost, if you failed and there were things you possibly could done beforehand, general strategies that would have been effective even if you did not know what was coming, then that is your own responsibility. It is not, I think, a particularly healthy way of looking at most things. It can only really be useful as a mindset for things that really matter.
Ah, sorry, I insufficiently unpacked “effective ways to satisfy terminal values”. The hidden complexity was in “effectively”. By effectively I meant in an efficient and >75% optimal manner. Many people do not know their own terminal values. Most people also don’t know that what makes a human happy, which is often different from what a human wants. Of those that do know their values, few have effective plans to satisfy them. Looking back on it now, this is quite a large inferential distance behind the innocuous looking work ‘sane’. I shall try to improve on that in the future.
Is there an implication that someone or something does know? That strikes me as awfully paternalistic.
It’s a statement of fact, not a political agenda. Neuroscientists know more about people’s brains than normal people do, as a result of spending years and decades studying the subject.
Huh? Neuroscientists know my terminal values better than I do because they studied brains?
Sorry, that’s nonsense.
Not yours specifically, but the general average across humanity. lukeprog wrote up a good summary of the factors correlated with happiness which you’ve probably read as well as an attempt to discern the causes. Not that happiness is the be-all and end-all of terminal values, but it certainly shows how little the average person knows about what they would actually happy with vs what they think they’d be happy with. I believe that small sub-sequence on the science of winning at life is far more than the average person knows on the subject, or else people wouldn’t give such terrible advice.
Aren’t you making the assumption that the average applies to everyone? It does not. There is a rather wide spread and pretending that a single average value represents it well enough is unwarranted.
There are certainly things biologically hardwired into human brains but not all of them are terminal values and for things that are (e.g. survival) you don’t need a neurobiologist to point that out. Frankly, I am at loss to see what neurobiologists can say about terminal values. It’s like asking Intel chip engineers about what a piece of software really does.
I don’t know about that. Do you have evidence? If a person’s ideas about her happiness diverge from the average ones, I would by default assume that she’s different from the average, not that she is wrong.