It sounds like you’ve thought a lot about this topic. Would you consider writing a discussion post on it ? You could call it something like “Politics as an existential risk”. As far as I understand, most people here believe that politics is basically not worth talking about; you obviously disagree, so your post should provoke some interesting discussion.
Note that the two positions you list could be compatible.
True, but it could be a fine line to walk. If I believed that politics constitutes an x-risk, then, given the fact that most people do engage in politics in some way (even if merely by talking about it), I have a choice to make: do I engage in politics, or not ? If I engage, I might make matters worse; if I fail to engage, I might fail to make matters better and then it will be too late, because politics in its current state will destroy us all.
I can see parallels between this issue and AI research: engaging in AI research increases the probability of an unboxed UnFriendly AI converting us all into computronium (or paperclips); and yet, failing to engage decreases the probability that the AI will be Friendly (assuming that I’m good at AI and concerned about Friendliness).
I think a discussion of what, if any, political involvement is optimal could be a productive one. But I don’t think the post that begins such a discussion should be written by someone whose mind has already been snatched by political ideology.
Yeah, don’t write anything that challenges a conclusion of Saint Eliezer’s. That’s a way to get to the truth. …idiot.
A few examples of politics constituting, not just an existential risk, but the most common severe risk faced by humanity. It’s also an existential risk, in any age with “leading force” (nuclear, biological, strong nanotechnology) weapons.
Much like most bars have signs that say “No Religion or Politics” this idiotic “parable” is approximately as intelligent as biblical parables that also serve to “shut down” discourse. You primates aren’t exactly intelligent enough to function without continual discourse checking your excesses, and moderating your insipid tendencies to silence that which you disagree with.
I agree with steven0461. It does sound like a potentially-interesting post, ideally with a mind-killing disclaimer at the top, but it should be written by someone sane. But then, I’m pretty sure political problems were already addressed in Bostrom’s x-risk work, though they were some of the less-exciting ones (not likely to completely wipe out humanity or even civilization).
I wouldn’t expect to see anyone post here who gets downvoted for commenting to the extent that they are disallowed the ability to make further posts. It’s very clear that this place is an echo-chamber populated with people who know very little outside of a little bit of math and programming. (Other than Eliezer himself.) However, like most intelligent people, I can benefit Eliezer’s speeches and writings without participating in his poorly-designed echo-chamber.
Look at the repulsive sycophant “steven0461” below, and you’ll see why I check this place once a year: “I meant Jake shouldn’t write the post; sorry for the confusion. I was just being a cunt, and discouraging participation, “piling on” someone who was so down-voted they were prohibited from addressing the straw man criticisms made of their argument.”
Yeah, because everyone benefits by shutting up criticism.
A bunch of nerds, too cool for school, you can’t teach them anything, but when the rubber meets the road, they don’t know what a tire iron is, and pull off to change the tire so they’re squatting in the fast lane. That’s “lesswrong.” Everyone here is assigned “Out of Control” as remedial reading about how to design cybernetic systems that display emergent intelligence.
If you’re all so uninformed that you honestly think that the possible agony of being exposed to a person’s position (on the horrifying chance it might not be valuable) is worse than being denied a silenced critic’s position, then there is truly no hope for any kind of rationality emerging from this site.
The Caplan work, The Totalitarian Threat, as a Word Document, is excellent, as is his book “Myth of the Rational Voter,” (a brief speech summarizing the book’s thesis), but neither work covers the primary dissenting points raised in this thread.
Too few pant-hooting rationalist chimps had upvoted me...
I think one reason for this might be your propensity for calling people “pant-hooting rationalist chimps”. This kind of behavior does not usually win you any allies.
The rest of your post is full of emotionally charged language, and yet nearly devoid of supporting evidence. In the closing paragraphs, you end up painting yourself as a (future) martyr: a lone voice of shining reason, extinguished by the gathering darkness etc. etc.
Upon reading this, most people here (myself included) will react very negatively to your post, because we don’t take kindly to being emotionally manipulated. When people say “politics is the mind-killer”, your post is exactly the kind of thing they’re referring to.
I’m not saying this to discourage or insult you. I don’t think you’re malicious, and I do respect your passion on this topic. In fact, you may even be right about some (or possibly even all !) of the things you say. But you’ve got to tone down your rhetoric before people start taking you seriously.
I think one reason for this might be your propensity for calling people “pant-hooting rationalist chimps”. This kind of behavior does not usually win you any allies.
Pretty much everyone hoots in their pants once in a while. It’s okay.
Sure. Most people also drool, masturbate, and watch television from time to time. That said, if I interpret “drooling, television-watching wanker” as a neutral description that probably does apply to any given person, I am doing a remarkable job of failing to attend to connotations.
Then, due to the structure of this forum, you don’t get to see that I’d already taken your advice. I fail to see how that benefits you or I. Rather, it seems this site is a less interesting place for that result.
It benefits the site in that it makes it impossible to write top-level posts for someone unwilling or incapable of adhering to the locally accepted norms of discourse. That means the system did its job just fine.
Who here assumes the comment was directed towards them? Probably either insecure people, or people who downvoted my comments and thus jettisoned the functionality of my account here.
I apologize to the insecure people. The other people deserve my parting insult.
No one has to assume that the comment was directed at them to have reasons to downvote you. You don’t have to be the victim to oppose the perpetrator of violence. You, of all people, should understand that.
It’s pretty disheartening how, after receiving advice not to insult people, you completely dismiss it and proceed to divide the LessWrong users into the insecure, whom you condescendingly pat on the head and others who are not worthy of basic politeness.
Your emotions are there for a reason. If you react negatively to the insinuation that you’re not behaving properly or are in some way sub-optimal, examine the criticism for merit. I’ve often done that, and found myself to be wanting in many areas. In some of those areas I’ve improved myself. The criticisms were legitimate. I’ll certainly try to become a better writer.
My emotions are there because evolution shaped them to push me towards actions that would increase my inclusive genetic fitness if I lived in the ancestral environment. Blindly following them is not helpful toward achieving my higher-level goals. Your willingness to (proudly and boldly) push my emotional buttons marks you as either ignorant of evolutionary psychology or outright malicious. All of that applies to you, too. Your emotions aren’t there to help you in your fight against injustice; they actually sabotage that fight. You speak proudly of refusing to bow down to conformist riffraff and that knowledgable people already take you seriously. You also say, later:
Others may only take me seriously when they wind up on a truck bound for a barbed-wire surrounded encampment.
When that happens, you have already lost. Weren’t those passive fools, the unenlightened rabble, the conformist sheep, now on their way to destruction, also amongst the people you were trying to protect? And by failing to reach out to them in a way that would allow them to appreciate your superior insight, haven’t you doomed them?
The way you’re acting right now, it seems like you’re more concerned with being able to say ‘I told you so’ when the worst case scenario occurs rather than actually preventing it.
There is no good reason for any to engage any discussion point-by-point. There are core points and peripheral points. And there’s no reason to think they are equally worth thinking about.
Regarding jury nullification, I’ve worked in places where it occurred frequently. For what seemed to the population like good and sufficient reasons, the citizenry intensely distrusted the local police force. The net effect that I observed was that it was practically impossible to get a jury conviction for “petty” offenses like domestic violence and driving under the influence (DUI). You may think this is an improvement (or at least an incentive for the police to make improvements), but I’m not convinced.
With full awareness of the dangers of generalizing from one example, here is one of the worst cases:
At trial, defendant’s wife testified that he was very drunk at the house (and she was only other person there), the family car was at the house, then the defendant and the car were not at the house. A short time later, a police officer found the car at some location a short driving distance from the home. The engine was warm and the defendant was laying near the vehicle. While performing field sobriety exercises (walk & turn, one-leg-stand, etc), the defendant fell down multiple times. The field sobriety exercises were recorded by the patrol vehicle’s dash camera.
You’d think this would be enough to show that the defendant was too drunk to drive, and did drive the vehicle. Not guilty verdict. One of the jurors told the prosecutor (not me) that it wasn’t clear that the defendant was too drunk to drive.
It’s probably worth noting, when someone brings up jury nullifcation, that historically, at least in the US, the largest source of jury nullification cases was all-white juries refusing to convict actually-guilty white defendants of crimes against black victims.
I don’t know whether “largest” is justified, but it seems hard to doubt that racial nullification is a significant part of the history of jury nullification in the US. Wikipedia links sources that suggest that Prohibition and the Fugitive Slave Laws also were major sources of nullification.
It’s probably worth noting, when someone brings up jury nullifcation, that historically, at least in the US, the largest source of jury nullification cases was all-white juries refusing to convict actually-guilty white defendants of crimes against black victims.
Who gets to choose that such a jury is null? It seems rather exploitable!
It sounds like you may be misunderstanding the term “jury nullification”. It does not mean overturning the decision of a jury. It means the members of a jury choosing not to follow the guidelines of the law in reaching a decision.
Too few pant-hooting rationalist chimps had upvoted me for being an incremental and timid contributor.
Up and down votes here are (almost always) based on the quality of the thought process displayed in the post, and not the conclusion the post comes to. For example, I downvoted you for this. We humans must mentally use a connotation-free term for our interlocutors or we bias ourselves against them. The fact that you say such a thing out loud indicates that you probably do likewise mentally.
I would very much like to see some political discussions from LW people. I think the minimum karma to participate in them ought to be fairly high, perhaps 500 or 1000. I would even like to see what you have to say, if you can lose the “persuasive” mind-killing rhetoric.
Politics is the mind killer, if you can’t see how that is more important than convincing people of your current political beliefs, then you have a problem.
It sounds like you’ve thought a lot about this topic. Would you consider writing a discussion post on it ? You could call it something like “Politics as an existential risk”. As far as I understand, most people here believe that politics is basically not worth talking about; you obviously disagree, so your post should provoke some interesting discussion.
Just in case the uncle comment by thomblake hasn’t driven home the point, please don’t do this.
What shouldn’t I do, and why ?
It looks to me like we have two conflicting opinions:
Most LW members: Politics is not worth talking about (at best).
Jake_Witmer: politics is important, and may constitute an x-risk.
I myself am on the fence about this, and I want to be persuaded one way or the other, because the fence is uncomfortable to sit on.
I meant Jake shouldn’t write the post; sorry for the confusion. Note that the two positions you list could be compatible.
OIC, sorry for the misunderstanding.
True, but it could be a fine line to walk. If I believed that politics constitutes an x-risk, then, given the fact that most people do engage in politics in some way (even if merely by talking about it), I have a choice to make: do I engage in politics, or not ? If I engage, I might make matters worse; if I fail to engage, I might fail to make matters better and then it will be too late, because politics in its current state will destroy us all.
I can see parallels between this issue and AI research: engaging in AI research increases the probability of an unboxed UnFriendly AI converting us all into computronium (or paperclips); and yet, failing to engage decreases the probability that the AI will be Friendly (assuming that I’m good at AI and concerned about Friendliness).
I think a discussion of what, if any, political involvement is optimal could be a productive one. But I don’t think the post that begins such a discussion should be written by someone whose mind has already been snatched by political ideology.
Yeah, don’t write anything that challenges a conclusion of Saint Eliezer’s. That’s a way to get to the truth. …idiot.
A few examples of politics constituting, not just an existential risk, but the most common severe risk faced by humanity. It’s also an existential risk, in any age with “leading force” (nuclear, biological, strong nanotechnology) weapons.
Much like most bars have signs that say “No Religion or Politics” this idiotic “parable” is approximately as intelligent as biblical parables that also serve to “shut down” discourse. You primates aren’t exactly intelligent enough to function without continual discourse checking your excesses, and moderating your insipid tendencies to silence that which you disagree with.
I agree with steven0461. It does sound like a potentially-interesting post, ideally with a mind-killing disclaimer at the top, but it should be written by someone sane. But then, I’m pretty sure political problems were already addressed in Bostrom’s x-risk work, though they were some of the less-exciting ones (not likely to completely wipe out humanity or even civilization).
I wouldn’t expect to see anyone post here who gets downvoted for commenting to the extent that they are disallowed the ability to make further posts. It’s very clear that this place is an echo-chamber populated with people who know very little outside of a little bit of math and programming. (Other than Eliezer himself.) However, like most intelligent people, I can benefit Eliezer’s speeches and writings without participating in his poorly-designed echo-chamber.
Look at the repulsive sycophant “steven0461” below, and you’ll see why I check this place once a year: “I meant Jake shouldn’t write the post; sorry for the confusion. I was just being a cunt, and discouraging participation, “piling on” someone who was so down-voted they were prohibited from addressing the straw man criticisms made of their argument.”
Yeah, because everyone benefits by shutting up criticism.
A bunch of nerds, too cool for school, you can’t teach them anything, but when the rubber meets the road, they don’t know what a tire iron is, and pull off to change the tire so they’re squatting in the fast lane. That’s “lesswrong.” Everyone here is assigned “Out of Control” as remedial reading about how to design cybernetic systems that display emergent intelligence.
Here’s a link for anyone who sees that the conformist view on lesswrong is about as legit as the conformist view anywhere: http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/contents.php
But since it’s an echo chamber, how about a self-referential link instead? Maybe that’ll work: http://lesswrong.com/lw/m1/guardians_of_ayn_rand/
If you’re all so uninformed that you honestly think that the possible agony of being exposed to a person’s position (on the horrifying chance it might not be valuable) is worse than being denied a silenced critic’s position, then there is truly no hope for any kind of rationality emerging from this site.
Nerds niggling over nitnoids. Zaijian!
There’s a chapter in Bostrom’s Existential Risks by Caplan on the subject.
The Caplan work, The Totalitarian Threat, as a Word Document, is excellent, as is his book “Myth of the Rational Voter,” (a brief speech summarizing the book’s thesis), but neither work covers the primary dissenting points raised in this thread.
Sounds interesting, I’ll put it on my to-read pile—thanks !
x
Sorry, I’m just a random guy, not a moderator.
I think one reason for this might be your propensity for calling people “pant-hooting rationalist chimps”. This kind of behavior does not usually win you any allies.
The rest of your post is full of emotionally charged language, and yet nearly devoid of supporting evidence. In the closing paragraphs, you end up painting yourself as a (future) martyr: a lone voice of shining reason, extinguished by the gathering darkness etc. etc.
Upon reading this, most people here (myself included) will react very negatively to your post, because we don’t take kindly to being emotionally manipulated. When people say “politics is the mind-killer”, your post is exactly the kind of thing they’re referring to.
I’m not saying this to discourage or insult you. I don’t think you’re malicious, and I do respect your passion on this topic. In fact, you may even be right about some (or possibly even all !) of the things you say. But you’ve got to tone down your rhetoric before people start taking you seriously.
Pretty much everyone hoots in their pants once in a while. It’s okay.
Sure. Most people also drool, masturbate, and watch television from time to time. That said, if I interpret “drooling, television-watching wanker” as a neutral description that probably does apply to any given person, I am doing a remarkable job of failing to attend to connotations.
x
It benefits the site in that it makes it impossible to write top-level posts for someone unwilling or incapable of adhering to the locally accepted norms of discourse. That means the system did its job just fine.
No one has to assume that the comment was directed at them to have reasons to downvote you. You don’t have to be the victim to oppose the perpetrator of violence. You, of all people, should understand that.
It’s pretty disheartening how, after receiving advice not to insult people, you completely dismiss it and proceed to divide the LessWrong users into the insecure, whom you condescendingly pat on the head and others who are not worthy of basic politeness.
My emotions are there because evolution shaped them to push me towards actions that would increase my inclusive genetic fitness if I lived in the ancestral environment. Blindly following them is not helpful toward achieving my higher-level goals. Your willingness to (proudly and boldly) push my emotional buttons marks you as either ignorant of evolutionary psychology or outright malicious. All of that applies to you, too. Your emotions aren’t there to help you in your fight against injustice; they actually sabotage that fight. You speak proudly of refusing to bow down to conformist riffraff and that knowledgable people already take you seriously. You also say, later:
When that happens, you have already lost. Weren’t those passive fools, the unenlightened rabble, the conformist sheep, now on their way to destruction, also amongst the people you were trying to protect? And by failing to reach out to them in a way that would allow them to appreciate your superior insight, haven’t you doomed them?
The way you’re acting right now, it seems like you’re more concerned with being able to say ‘I told you so’ when the worst case scenario occurs rather than actually preventing it.
There is no good reason for any to engage any discussion point-by-point. There are core points and peripheral points. And there’s no reason to think they are equally worth thinking about.
Regarding jury nullification, I’ve worked in places where it occurred frequently. For what seemed to the population like good and sufficient reasons, the citizenry intensely distrusted the local police force. The net effect that I observed was that it was practically impossible to get a jury conviction for “petty” offenses like domestic violence and driving under the influence (DUI). You may think this is an improvement (or at least an incentive for the police to make improvements), but I’m not convinced.
With full awareness of the dangers of generalizing from one example, here is one of the worst cases:
At trial, defendant’s wife testified that he was very drunk at the house (and she was only other person there), the family car was at the house, then the defendant and the car were not at the house. A short time later, a police officer found the car at some location a short driving distance from the home. The engine was warm and the defendant was laying near the vehicle. While performing field sobriety exercises (walk & turn, one-leg-stand, etc), the defendant fell down multiple times. The field sobriety exercises were recorded by the patrol vehicle’s dash camera.
You’d think this would be enough to show that the defendant was too drunk to drive, and did drive the vehicle. Not guilty verdict. One of the jurors told the prosecutor (not me) that it wasn’t clear that the defendant was too drunk to drive.
It’s probably worth noting, when someone brings up jury nullifcation, that historically, at least in the US, the largest source of jury nullification cases was all-white juries refusing to convict actually-guilty white defendants of crimes against black victims.
Do you have a citation for this? I’ve seen the claim before but I have’t seen any data backing this up.
I don’t know whether “largest” is justified, but it seems hard to doubt that racial nullification is a significant part of the history of jury nullification in the US. Wikipedia links sources that suggest that Prohibition and the Fugitive Slave Laws also were major sources of nullification.
And let us not forget the very honorable origin of jury nullification, which established American freedom of the press: the Zenger trial.
Who gets to choose that such a jury is null? It seems rather exploitable!
I can’t parse this.
It sounds like you may be misunderstanding the term “jury nullification”. It does not mean overturning the decision of a jury. It means the members of a jury choosing not to follow the guidelines of the law in reaching a decision.
Up and down votes here are (almost always) based on the quality of the thought process displayed in the post, and not the conclusion the post comes to. For example, I downvoted you for this. We humans must mentally use a connotation-free term for our interlocutors or we bias ourselves against them. The fact that you say such a thing out loud indicates that you probably do likewise mentally.
I would very much like to see some political discussions from LW people. I think the minimum karma to participate in them ought to be fairly high, perhaps 500 or 1000. I would even like to see what you have to say, if you can lose the “persuasive” mind-killing rhetoric.
x
Politics is the mind killer, if you can’t see how that is more important than convincing people of your current political beliefs, then you have a problem.