I’m not sure. I’ll have to give this more thought.
I guess my concerns in the immediate aftermath of this election are based on how much misinformation and ignorance are involved in the process. People know almost nothing about anything (or believe lots of things that are easily proven false), and yet they have strong opinions that inform their decision on who to vote for. And then they (basically) directly elect the President.
Keep in mind that all the empirical data on the basis of which we conclude that democracy is an okay political system comes from reality which includes stupid and ignorant electorates.
On a purely theoretical level (which is fun to talk about so I think worth talking about) I would like to see one of the high status and respected members of the rationalist movement (Yudowsky, Hanson etc) in power. They’d become corrupt eventually, but do a lot of good before they did.
On a practical level, our choices are the traditional establishment (which has shown its major flaws), backing Trump, or possibly some time in the future backing Sanders. Unless somebody here has a practical way to achieve something different, that’s all we have.
(EDIT: For what it’s worth, I base my trust on their works, somewhat on their theories on rationality, and the fact that reviewing ideas in far mode for so long has them “nailed” to policies. Without, say, an implacable Congress in their way, I think they’d do enough good to outweigh their inevitable corruption)
I couldn’t trust the average American voter to make a good decision about who should make decisions about the complex issues facing the U.S. gov’t.
Well then, is there someone or someones you could trust to make such a decision? And what do you base your trust on?
I’m not sure. I’ll have to give this more thought.
I guess my concerns in the immediate aftermath of this election are based on how much misinformation and ignorance are involved in the process. People know almost nothing about anything (or believe lots of things that are easily proven false), and yet they have strong opinions that inform their decision on who to vote for. And then they (basically) directly elect the President.
Keep in mind that all the empirical data on the basis of which we conclude that democracy is an okay political system comes from reality which includes stupid and ignorant electorates.
A good question to keep in mind is how much real power the electorate has, as opposed to entrenched bureaucrats or de facto oligarchies.
On a purely theoretical level (which is fun to talk about so I think worth talking about) I would like to see one of the high status and respected members of the rationalist movement (Yudowsky, Hanson etc) in power. They’d become corrupt eventually, but do a lot of good before they did.
On a practical level, our choices are the traditional establishment (which has shown its major flaws), backing Trump, or possibly some time in the future backing Sanders. Unless somebody here has a practical way to achieve something different, that’s all we have.
(EDIT: For what it’s worth, I base my trust on their works, somewhat on their theories on rationality, and the fact that reviewing ideas in far mode for so long has them “nailed” to policies. Without, say, an implacable Congress in their way, I think they’d do enough good to outweigh their inevitable corruption)