I actually watched the debate video, and Moldbug came across as ridiculous. He has these broad theoretical criticisms of futarchy, and when Hanson tried to offer empirical evidence against the assumptions underlying those criticisms, he rejected the value of empirical evidence. Then he basically revealed that he thinks science is a very bad tool for acquiring knowledge about anything other than the specific system being studied, and that a priori argumentation is a much better tool. On the basis of a priori philosophy (and, I guess, some amount of inspiration from European history and Steve Jobs) he has decided that some form of monarchy (on the model of corporate governance, I take it) is the best way to do things.
Nothing I saw in the video makes him seem like someone whose ideas I want to spend time exploring. (The essay quoted above is better, but still not all that impressive.) Is the debate with Hanson representative of Moldbug’s style of argumentation, or is it somewhat of an aberration?
Monarchy is clearly the best form of government for appropriate value of variable monarch. What else is FAI rearranging matter in the light cone after all?
Monarchy is clearly the best form of government for appropriate value of variable monarch. What else is FAI rearranging matter in the light cone after all?
An entirely different form of singleton. Even presidents and dictators don’t qualify as “Monarchs” and they are a whole lot more similar to a King than an FAI is.
Where does it say your absolute ruler needs to be human? :P
Jest aside, you are right, the kind of AI’s people normally talk about when discussing FAI are sufficiently different from any human mind or even what we may intuitively imagine a mind to be, for the comparison to be grossly misleading. Talking about a ruler or supreme judge is a much worse comparison than say the old theological comparisons of YHWH to this, since ironically he was likley to be much more anthropomorphic in many respects than a FAI would be.
The statement was a bit tongue in cheek, I just wanted to point out that monarchy gets various ick feelings from us because we are mostly anti-authoritarian, but a supreme AI is the ultimate authoritarian form of government since anything it sets to do, it will do.
The reason I wanted to point to this bias was that I’ve been considering that there may be other (local) maxima on the graph of the function good (concentration of power, trustworthiness) for lesser values of concentrated power and trustworthiness.
Moldbug has his own idea for best possible government ever (TM) and is biased in its favour, he tries to find what he can to criticizes futarchy because I think he’s spooked on some level it could do as well as his own proposal and may be easier to implement. Being a big fan of the formal power structure matching the actual power structure in a country (something that probably appeals to the non-neurotpyical especially strongly), the common human bias of someone manipulating the market to gain informal power probably seems a unusually disturbing possibility, to the point of him wanting to avoid it on aesthetic grounds and seeking rationalizations to justify it.
I think Robin Hanson clearly won that debate, though lets remember that Robin Hanson is pretty good at winning debates (according to audience polls he generally beats EY too). Moldbug is a bit out of his league, his writing is in my opinion much better.
He is good at diagnosing the state of modern democracies and is probably also reliable on the history of ideas, his proposed treatments, or in other words, what to do about it, are much less impressive. For example he puts hope in the internet being a game changers wanting to build a better truth seeking mechanism than academia (something like a super reliable wikipedia with original research allowed). When people see how much better its predictions are it is supposed to start to replace academia. Consider just how naive such an attitude is in light of his otherwise cheerily cynical attitude—people do not value truth that much, even when its very useful they won’t like it if bad signalling accompanies it, and who has the biggest influence on signaling game among the educated? The very same class he calls the iron polygon of power or “The Cathedral”. The multi-headed beast that unites and is a cross-section of the Ivy Leagues, the Media, the State and those now fashionably called the 1%, will eat up anything as quaint as a unusually good description of reality up as an appetizer on the way to real problems that might threaten it.
If not earlier academia will direct its legitimacy granting or damaging attention to his revipedia project when it will be trusted and starts doing what Moldbug really hopes it will do. It is supposed to simply one day announce what the best form of government according to the information available is, and all other forms will lose legitimacy. Naturally the best form of government will turn out to be neocamerialism.
I think it probably would outperform modern democracies in quality of life, but something as radical as an actually reliable reality mapping institution or process, that directly affects public opinion and policy, would probably come up with something different. Moldbug has an above average map of reality for someone who’s interested in politics, he’s just bad at navigating it and won’t accept that there may be a no win scenario here.
I actually watched the debate video, and Moldbug came across as ridiculous. He has these broad theoretical criticisms of futarchy, and when Hanson tried to offer empirical evidence against the assumptions underlying those criticisms, he rejected the value of empirical evidence. Then he basically revealed that he thinks science is a very bad tool for acquiring knowledge about anything other than the specific system being studied, and that a priori argumentation is a much better tool. On the basis of a priori philosophy (and, I guess, some amount of inspiration from European history and Steve Jobs) he has decided that some form of monarchy (on the model of corporate governance, I take it) is the best way to do things.
Nothing I saw in the video makes him seem like someone whose ideas I want to spend time exploring. (The essay quoted above is better, but still not all that impressive.) Is the debate with Hanson representative of Moldbug’s style of argumentation, or is it somewhat of an aberration?
Here’s how the discussion between Moldbug and Hanson went:
M: Decision markets won’t work well if P, and we don’t know that ~P.
H: We have data from lab and field experiments, and we always find ~P.
M: Well, induction is useless. Why should I believe ~P for a system you haven’t experimented on?
H: Well, here are some theoretical arguments suggesting ~P.
M: Oh, I don’t deny that often ~P. But how do you know that always ~P?
H: Is there any kind of evidence I could present that would convince you that ~P in the relevant cases?
M: Nope. The problem is, you’re thinking like a social scientist. You need to think like a philosopher.
H: Okay.… so what does thinking like a philosopher reveal?
M: We need a monarch.
Monarchy is clearly the best form of government for appropriate value of variable monarch. What else is FAI rearranging matter in the light cone after all?
An entirely different form of singleton. Even presidents and dictators don’t qualify as “Monarchs” and they are a whole lot more similar to a King than an FAI is.
Where does it say your absolute ruler needs to be human? :P
Jest aside, you are right, the kind of AI’s people normally talk about when discussing FAI are sufficiently different from any human mind or even what we may intuitively imagine a mind to be, for the comparison to be grossly misleading. Talking about a ruler or supreme judge is a much worse comparison than say the old theological comparisons of YHWH to this, since ironically he was likley to be much more anthropomorphic in many respects than a FAI would be.
The statement was a bit tongue in cheek, I just wanted to point out that monarchy gets various ick feelings from us because we are mostly anti-authoritarian, but a supreme AI is the ultimate authoritarian form of government since anything it sets to do, it will do.
The reason I wanted to point to this bias was that I’ve been considering that there may be other (local) maxima on the graph of the function good (concentration of power, trustworthiness) for lesser values of concentrated power and trustworthiness.
That is an amusing and not too inaccurate summary. Up voted!
Moldbug has his own idea for best possible government ever (TM) and is biased in its favour, he tries to find what he can to criticizes futarchy because I think he’s spooked on some level it could do as well as his own proposal and may be easier to implement. Being a big fan of the formal power structure matching the actual power structure in a country (something that probably appeals to the non-neurotpyical especially strongly), the common human bias of someone manipulating the market to gain informal power probably seems a unusually disturbing possibility, to the point of him wanting to avoid it on aesthetic grounds and seeking rationalizations to justify it.
I think Robin Hanson clearly won that debate, though lets remember that Robin Hanson is pretty good at winning debates (according to audience polls he generally beats EY too). Moldbug is a bit out of his league, his writing is in my opinion much better.
He is good at diagnosing the state of modern democracies and is probably also reliable on the history of ideas, his proposed treatments, or in other words, what to do about it, are much less impressive. For example he puts hope in the internet being a game changers wanting to build a better truth seeking mechanism than academia (something like a super reliable wikipedia with original research allowed). When people see how much better its predictions are it is supposed to start to replace academia. Consider just how naive such an attitude is in light of his otherwise cheerily cynical attitude—people do not value truth that much, even when its very useful they won’t like it if bad signalling accompanies it, and who has the biggest influence on signaling game among the educated? The very same class he calls the iron polygon of power or “The Cathedral”. The multi-headed beast that unites and is a cross-section of the Ivy Leagues, the Media, the State and those now fashionably called the 1%, will eat up anything as quaint as a unusually good description of reality up as an appetizer on the way to real problems that might threaten it.
If not earlier academia will direct its legitimacy granting or damaging attention to his revipedia project when it will be trusted and starts doing what Moldbug really hopes it will do. It is supposed to simply one day announce what the best form of government according to the information available is, and all other forms will lose legitimacy. Naturally the best form of government will turn out to be neocamerialism.
I think it probably would outperform modern democracies in quality of life, but something as radical as an actually reliable reality mapping institution or process, that directly affects public opinion and policy, would probably come up with something different. Moldbug has an above average map of reality for someone who’s interested in politics, he’s just bad at navigating it and won’t accept that there may be a no win scenario here.