When you say you glorify Democracy though, I think you mean something much closer to what I would call Coherent Extrapolated Volition than it is to what I would call Democracy. Something radically novel that hasn’t ever been tried, or even specified in enough detail to call it a proposal without some charity.
As a factual matter, I would suggest that the systems of government that we call Democracies in the US may typically be a bit further in the CEV direction than those we typically call dictatorships, but if they are, its a weak tendency, like the tendency of good painters to be good at basketball or something. You might detect it statistically, if you had properly operationalized it first, or vaguely suspect its there based on intuitive perception, but you couldn’t ever be very confident it was there.
It’s obviously wrong to overturn cultural traditions which have been questioned but not refuted. Such traditions have some information value, if only for anthropic reasons, and more importantly, they are somewhat correlated with your values. In this particular case, if you limit your options under consideration to ‘fight against invaders or do nothing’ I have no objections. Real life situations usually present more options, but those weren’t specified.
As an off-the-cuff example, I think its obvious that a person who fought against the NAZIs in WWII was doing something better than they would by staying home even though the NAZIs didn’t invade the US and even valuing their lives moderately more highly than those of others. OTOH, the marginal expected impact of a soldier on the expected outcome of the war was surely SO MUCH less than the marginal expected impact of an independent person who put in serious effort to be an assassin, while the risk was probably not an order of magnitude smaller, so I think its fair to say that they were still being irrational, judged as altruists, and were in most cases, well, only following orders. If they valued victory enough to be a soldier they should have done something more effective instead. (have I just refuted Yossarian or confirmed him?)
I think that they should definitely sleep at night. Should feel happy and proud even… but in their shoes I wouldn’t.
When you say you glorify Democracy though, I think you mean something much closer to what I would call Coherent Extrapolated Volition than it is to what I would call Democracy. Something radically novel that hasn’t ever been tried, or even specified in enough detail to call it a proposal without some charity.
As a factual matter, I would suggest that the systems of government that we call Democracies in the US may typically be a bit further in the CEV direction than those we typically call dictatorships, but if they are, its a weak tendency, like the tendency of good painters to be good at basketball or something. You might detect it statistically, if you had properly operationalized it first, or vaguely suspect its there based on intuitive perception, but you couldn’t ever be very confident it was there.
It’s obviously wrong to overturn cultural traditions which have been questioned but not refuted. Such traditions have some information value, if only for anthropic reasons, and more importantly, they are somewhat correlated with your values. In this particular case, if you limit your options under consideration to ‘fight against invaders or do nothing’ I have no objections. Real life situations usually present more options, but those weren’t specified.
As an off-the-cuff example, I think its obvious that a person who fought against the NAZIs in WWII was doing something better than they would by staying home even though the NAZIs didn’t invade the US and even valuing their lives moderately more highly than those of others. OTOH, the marginal expected impact of a soldier on the expected outcome of the war was surely SO MUCH less than the marginal expected impact of an independent person who put in serious effort to be an assassin, while the risk was probably not an order of magnitude smaller, so I think its fair to say that they were still being irrational, judged as altruists, and were in most cases, well, only following orders. If they valued victory enough to be a soldier they should have done something more effective instead. (have I just refuted Yossarian or confirmed him?)
I think that they should definitely sleep at night. Should feel happy and proud even… but in their shoes I wouldn’t.
Whole thread voted up BTW.
Thanks! Wholeheartedly agree, btw.