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.
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.