The watchmen publish their work publicly, people read the writeups and check that they make sense, pretty much anyone can become a watchman if they want. (The whole idea is that the writeups can be private during low-key-fundraising periods but public afterwards so it’s easier to sanity-check. Also, during the lowkey periods, there can be private mailing lists for discussion)
The answer to “who watches the watchmen” is “distributed spotchecks by readers.” Will that be perfect? No. It just has to be good enough to be make it worth making a lot more political donations at scale.
It feels like you’re a) assuming I’m more absolutist about this than I am, b) that I haven’t thought about the stuff you mention here, and I don’t really know why.
I think this might explain the difference in framing? From the quote below, I assumed you were trying to come up with a fully general solution to the problem you specify:
What I think Wat Do is, figure out how to build a political network that is powerful enough to have leverage, but, is still based on a solid foundation of epistemic trust.
But I see now that you were taking the existence of a community of sane, reasonable, and mostly value-aligned participants as a given, and instead focusing on a framework which could make their interaction with the wider political process saner.
The uncharitable reading is that you are assuming a can opener, but, from reading your other writing, evidently the better reading is that you do have a model for producing/widening this community elsewhere (inter alia).
taking the existence of a community of sane, reasonable, and mostly value-aligned participants as a given
Yeah. I’d phrase it as “reasonably sane, reasonably reasonable, and reasonably value-aligned.” I don’t think the LW commentariat is perfect, but, I think they are within a basin where “aiming for a sane political coalition” is a reasonble aspirational goal. (and, while I’d like to succeed at the most ambitious version of the thing, all it needs to succeed at is “be a better use of people’s time/attention than other things” (given that there are pretty compelling alternatives).
I know a lot of people around here with similar-ish political goals, and similar-ish ideals of what you might hope a rationalist political bloc to look like, such that “okay, translate that into implementation details” feels like the right step.
The watchmen publish their work publicly, people read the writeups and check that they make sense, pretty much anyone can become a watchman if they want. (The whole idea is that the writeups can be private during low-key-fundraising periods but public afterwards so it’s easier to sanity-check. Also, during the lowkey periods, there can be private mailing lists for discussion)
The answer to “who watches the watchmen” is “distributed spotchecks by readers.” Will that be perfect? No. It just has to be good enough to be make it worth making a lot more political donations at scale.
It feels like you’re a) assuming I’m more absolutist about this than I am, b) that I haven’t thought about the stuff you mention here, and I don’t really know why.
I think this might explain the difference in framing? From the quote below, I assumed you were trying to come up with a fully general solution to the problem you specify:
But I see now that you were taking the existence of a community of sane, reasonable, and mostly value-aligned participants as a given, and instead focusing on a framework which could make their interaction with the wider political process saner.
The uncharitable reading is that you are assuming a can opener, but, from reading your other writing, evidently the better reading is that you do have a model for producing/widening this community elsewhere (inter alia).
Yeah. I’d phrase it as “reasonably sane, reasonably reasonable, and reasonably value-aligned.” I don’t think the LW commentariat is perfect, but, I think they are within a basin where “aiming for a sane political coalition” is a reasonble aspirational goal. (and, while I’d like to succeed at the most ambitious version of the thing, all it needs to succeed at is “be a better use of people’s time/attention than other things” (given that there are pretty compelling alternatives).
I know a lot of people around here with similar-ish political goals, and similar-ish ideals of what you might hope a rationalist political bloc to look like, such that “okay, translate that into implementation details” feels like the right step.