The argument rests on that assumption, mostly clearly shown in the quote:
“People who voted for Trump are unrealistically optimists, thinking that civilization is robust, the current state is bad, …”
If we are stuck in a locally optimal valley, then a high-variance candidate is more likely to push us out of it and into another valley. Whether that’s a good idea depends on if our current state is overall good or bad.
Personally I think we should be taking more chances and trying to find a better equilibrium. That means occasionally rocking the boat, but if you never do it you’re condemning yourself to stagnation.
Whether that’s a good idea depends on if our current state is overall good or bad.
No, it depends on whether random changes to our current state are an improvement or aren’t.
If you would make a change that requires all high level government burocrates to be superforcasters in their domains of expertise, it would likely be a huge improvement and you could speak of the resulting government as being good and the present one as bad.
That doesn’t mean that randomly breaking things and creating change improves the bad current state.
A lot of possible changes lead to WW3 or otherwise end civilisation.
I think you are missing the point. If I have a random variable between 0 and 10, than “random” changes will cause a regression to the mean. Thus, if the current state is bad, say 1, a many “random” changes are likely to be an improvement.
More simply, if our state is bad, we should take more risks.
The model of a scalar between 0 and 10 is bad because it doesn’t show the high dimensional nature with many different scenario that real world society has.
We have a huge decline in violence in the post-WWII are. The mean of history has a lot more violence as Steven Pinker lays out in “The Better Angels of Our Nature”.
The argument rests on that assumption, mostly clearly shown in the quote:
If we are stuck in a locally optimal valley, then a high-variance candidate is more likely to push us out of it and into another valley. Whether that’s a good idea depends on if our current state is overall good or bad.
Personally I think we should be taking more chances and trying to find a better equilibrium. That means occasionally rocking the boat, but if you never do it you’re condemning yourself to stagnation.
No, it depends on whether random changes to our current state are an improvement or aren’t.
If you would make a change that requires all high level government burocrates to be superforcasters in their domains of expertise, it would likely be a huge improvement and you could speak of the resulting government as being good and the present one as bad.
That doesn’t mean that randomly breaking things and creating change improves the bad current state.
A lot of possible changes lead to WW3 or otherwise end civilisation.
I think you are missing the point. If I have a random variable between 0 and 10, than “random” changes will cause a regression to the mean. Thus, if the current state is bad, say 1, a many “random” changes are likely to be an improvement.
More simply, if our state is bad, we should take more risks.
The model of a scalar between 0 and 10 is bad because it doesn’t show the high dimensional nature with many different scenario that real world society has.
We have a huge decline in violence in the post-WWII are. The mean of history has a lot more violence as Steven Pinker lays out in “The Better Angels of Our Nature”.