I think avoiding polarization is a fool’s game. Polarization gets half the population in your favor, and might well set up a win upon next year’s news. And we’ve seen how many days are a year, these days.
Having half of the population in our favor would be dangerously bad—it would be enough to make alignment researchers feel important, but not enough to actually accomplish the policy goals we need to accomplish. And it would cause the same sort of dysfunctional social dynamics that occur in environmentalist movements, where people are unwilling to solve their own problem or advocate for less protean political platforms because success would reduce their relevance.
If one wants to avoid polarization, what are examples of a few truly transversal issues to use as a model? I almost can’t think of any. Environmentalism would be one that makes sense, either side can appreciate a nice untouched natural landscape, but alas, it’s not.
They’re hard to think of because if everyone genuinely agrees, then society goes their way and they become non-issues that nobody talks about anymore. For example, “murder should be illegal” is an issue that pretty much everyone agrees on.
Something like “the state should have the right to collect at least some taxes” also has strong enough support that there’s very little real debate over it, even if there are some people who disagree.
I suppose I meant more issues where there is no established norm yet because they’re new (which would be a good analogue to AI) or issues where the consensus has shifted across the spectrum so that change is likely to be imminent and well accepted even though it goes against inertial. Drug legalisation may be a good candidate for that, but there are still big holdouts of resistance on the conservative side.
You mean, it would flood us with sheep instead of tigers?
Environmentalism has people unwilling to solve environmental issues because their livelihood depends on them? Would you expect the same to happen with a movement to prevent a nuclear exchange?
I think avoiding polarization is a fool’s game. Polarization gets half the population in your favor, and might well set up a win upon next year’s news. And we’ve seen how many days are a year, these days.
Having half of the population in our favor would be dangerously bad—it would be enough to make alignment researchers feel important, but not enough to actually accomplish the policy goals we need to accomplish. And it would cause the same sort of dysfunctional social dynamics that occur in environmentalist movements, where people are unwilling to solve their own problem or advocate for less protean political platforms because success would reduce their relevance.
If one wants to avoid polarization, what are examples of a few truly transversal issues to use as a model? I almost can’t think of any. Environmentalism would be one that makes sense, either side can appreciate a nice untouched natural landscape, but alas, it’s not.
They’re hard to think of because if everyone genuinely agrees, then society goes their way and they become non-issues that nobody talks about anymore. For example, “murder should be illegal” is an issue that pretty much everyone agrees on.
Something like “the state should have the right to collect at least some taxes” also has strong enough support that there’s very little real debate over it, even if there are some people who disagree.
I suppose I meant more issues where there is no established norm yet because they’re new (which would be a good analogue to AI) or issues where the consensus has shifted across the spectrum so that change is likely to be imminent and well accepted even though it goes against inertial. Drug legalisation may be a good candidate for that, but there are still big holdouts of resistance on the conservative side.
You mean, it would flood us with sheep instead of tigers?
Environmentalism has people unwilling to solve environmental issues because their livelihood depends on them? Would you expect the same to happen with a movement to prevent a nuclear exchange?
Yes.