Many of the specific points in the post do seem to be copied from Moldbug/Yarvin’s recent work, more so than you might guess if you’re not familiar with it, and only saw Yarvin listed along with Alexander/Hanania/Sullivan/Shor at the end—not just the idea of the executive shutting down entrenched bureaucracies, but the framing of the Lincoln and Roosevelt administrations as once-in-70-years de facto regime changes, and the specific citation of Roosevelt’s inaugural address as a primary source.
I think it does make sense to read it in that context. A casual reader might come away with the impression that (as ChristianKI puts it) Cummings is proposing “making the system more demoractic (as in, increasing the power of democratically legitimized people)”. Whereas if you know that Cummings is reading off of Yarvin’s playbook, it’s a lot clearer that being more democratic probably isn’t the point. (In Yarvin’s worldview, it’s about temporarily using the forces of democracy to install a king who will govern more competently than a distributed bureaucratic oligrachy.)
Analogously, if some article talked about alignment of present-day machine-learning systems and cited Yudkowsky as one of several inspirations, but the specific points in the essay look like they were ripped from Arbital (rather than proportionately from the other four authors listed as inspirations), you’d probably be correct to infer that the author has given some thought to superintelligent-singleton-ruling-over-our-entire-future-lightcone-forever scenarios, even if the article itself can’t cross that much inferential distance.
Yarvin advocates installing a king who not just controls the government but also institutions outside of the government.
Cummings proposes installing someone with a role like FDR. I do consider FDR to be democratically legitimated and his frequent reelection a sign that the population liked him governing the way he did.
Many of the specific points in the post do seem to be copied from Moldbug/Yarvin’s recent work, more so than you might guess if you’re not familiar with it, and only saw Yarvin listed along with Alexander/Hanania/Sullivan/Shor at the end—not just the idea of the executive shutting down entrenched bureaucracies, but the framing of the Lincoln and Roosevelt administrations as once-in-70-years de facto regime changes, and the specific citation of Roosevelt’s inaugural address as a primary source.
I think it does make sense to read it in that context. A casual reader might come away with the impression that (as ChristianKI puts it) Cummings is proposing “making the system more demoractic (as in, increasing the power of democratically legitimized people)”. Whereas if you know that Cummings is reading off of Yarvin’s playbook, it’s a lot clearer that being more democratic probably isn’t the point. (In Yarvin’s worldview, it’s about temporarily using the forces of democracy to install a king who will govern more competently than a distributed bureaucratic oligrachy.)
Analogously, if some article talked about alignment of present-day machine-learning systems and cited Yudkowsky as one of several inspirations, but the specific points in the essay look like they were ripped from Arbital (rather than proportionately from the other four authors listed as inspirations), you’d probably be correct to infer that the author has given some thought to superintelligent-singleton-ruling-over-our-entire-future-lightcone-forever scenarios, even if the article itself can’t cross that much inferential distance.
Yarvin advocates installing a king who not just controls the government but also institutions outside of the government.
Cummings proposes installing someone with a role like FDR. I do consider FDR to be democratically legitimated and his frequent reelection a sign that the population liked him governing the way he did.