EDIT: I assumed “politics” as most people take the meaning of the word, carlJ means something more sensible and general. I suggest different terminology or at least explicit clarification.
You missed the important part:
Given that we have very plausible explanation of your desire to talk about politics that doesn’t at all require the hypothesis that politics is actually important, what reason do you have to believe that politics is an important subject?
Let me start you out with some things that don’t answer this question:
“Politics is important because a lot of value is at stake”. This is true but for it to follow that I should talk about politics, I need enough leverage on that value, relative to other opportunities. Why do you think an individual has enough leverage? Perhaps you have some reason, but before arguing this, consider that your leverage over politics has shrunk drastically since EEA times, so it would be suspicious if you still argued that politics is important with the same conviction.
“You can have large leverage because you can just X”, where X is creating a successful ideology, organizing people, convincing people, etc. X is hero work. People vary in ability. If you assume you are in the upper end of ability such that you can do X, the opportunities open to you have just drastically increased and now you have to show that politics is better than starting a $100M business, doing great intellectual work, and so on.
“You have a lot of leverage because of TDT-style superrationality.” The scope of this is at most LW. We are different enough here that we could make our decision independent of the population at large. I doubt even most of LW is superrational, but I wouldn’t want to be convincing of that, for obvious reasons.
“The massive altruistic payout outweighs the tiny leverage.” This might be true, but I want to see a good argument for it. Take into account that other altruistic targets like malaria or x-risk reduction may have much higher return. It would be suspicious again if the politics instinct happens to get the right answer, unless you can show that there are reasons to expect the political payout to be roughly invariant between EEA and here. Also, being essentially a long-shot gamble like pascals wager, you have to do it blind, with little idea of whether your particular intervention is doing good in expectation, hence little chance to learn and improve. Humans are good at learning but bad at getting it right a-priori.
This is true but for it to follow that I should talk about politics,I need large leverage on that value.
No, that doesn’t follow at all. To conclude that one should talk about politics, all that’s needed is that you have equal or greater leverage than you do in other arenas. You’re advocating the superhero fallacy: that unless you can personally save the planet from impending doom, nothing’s worth doing. In the real world, there are no superheroes; and it is a perfectly valid choice to be one of many thousands or millions of people working toward a valuable goal.
“valuable goals” break down in a lot of different types but the key difference here is: If you work toward the valuable goal of keeping people from starving, and you do some work but don’t fix the problem, at least you’ve fed SOME concrete people. If you work toward creating a political ideology and fail, you’ve done nothing of any use to anybody. Politics, like celebrity and sports are zero sum, the more famous you are the LESS famous someone else is. There are already millions of people working to achieve fame and power through politics, and importantly, they want to do it at your expense, they want you not to have that power. This means that unless you have large leverage on politics, the time you spend on it will simply be wasted.
and you do some work but don’t fix the problem, at least you’ve fed SOME concrete people.
Really not true at all. At least in the US, there aren’t a lot of starving people down the street for you to feed.
If you work on fixing “the problem” of starving people, you can spend endless hours designing a “fix”, organizing other people, “consciousness raising”, fund raising, and organizing logistics without ever feeding a single person a single meal.
This means that unless you have large leverage on politics, the time you spend on it will simply be wasted.
Oh no. You’ll gain power and connections with a group of people bent on power and connections. That’s not a waste.
Politics may or may not be worth one’s while to pursue. The model I’m building will be used to determine if there are any such actions or not, so my full answer to your question will be just that model and after it is built, my ideology which will be constructed by it.
I also have a short answer, but before giving it, I should say that I may be using a too broad definition of politics for you. That is, I would regard getting together to reduce a certain existential risk as a political pursuit. Of course, if one did so alone, there is no political problem to speak of. But one probably needs the support of others to do so. So, if this model would suggest me to engage only in making money and giving to charity, then that would be my political strategy. I believe that it’s unlikely that will be the only thing to do, however.
One reason is because politics is somewhat ubiquitous and potentially cheap to engage in for most. Discussing politics—how well they like/dislike the current political leader, if policy X is good or bad, how wrong someone is to support the opposing team—is normal for at least 70% of the adult population, I’d guess. So for most people, they will have ample chance to discuss politics and if they can get one sentence across for every conversation that might be a part of their political strategy as well. Another low-cost strategy is just to announce one’s political views and otherwise be a friendly character, unless someone asks for one’s opinion.
Another reason is that for some, politics is rewarding in itself. A few will naturally seek to become specialists in politics, just as a hobby.
I agree with you on the issue of politics being very different today than what it was on the savannah, or wherever these instincts evolved. Politics requires a lot more people, more coordination than in the past, it would seem. But, even though it is different, that doesn’t mean there is no goal that a lot of people can accomplish by acting in concert. That is, just because we’re primed to believe that it is much easier to do than it really is and to believe that any old strategy will work, one shouldn’t believe it cannot be done. One shouldn’t start believing in it either, of course.
I feel a moral obligation to be an informed voter. I am aware that I do not have leverage, and that there are more altruistic uses of my time, but my idealism can’t get over the fact that if a large number or people were both political and at least a little bit rational, it would make a difference. We do not have anywhere near that number, but I want to contribute to the potential solution, even if it doesn’t work. I don’t think that being an informed voter is a terminal value, but I think that that kind of idealism is a terminal value for me.
EDIT: I assumed “politics” as most people take the meaning of the word, carlJ means something more sensible and general. I suggest different terminology or at least explicit clarification.
You missed the important part:
Given that we have very plausible explanation of your desire to talk about politics that doesn’t at all require the hypothesis that politics is actually important, what reason do you have to believe that politics is an important subject?
Let me start you out with some things that don’t answer this question:
“Politics is important because a lot of value is at stake”. This is true but for it to follow that I should talk about politics, I need enough leverage on that value, relative to other opportunities. Why do you think an individual has enough leverage? Perhaps you have some reason, but before arguing this, consider that your leverage over politics has shrunk drastically since EEA times, so it would be suspicious if you still argued that politics is important with the same conviction.
“You can have large leverage because you can just X”, where X is creating a successful ideology, organizing people, convincing people, etc. X is hero work. People vary in ability. If you assume you are in the upper end of ability such that you can do X, the opportunities open to you have just drastically increased and now you have to show that politics is better than starting a $100M business, doing great intellectual work, and so on.
“You have a lot of leverage because of TDT-style superrationality.” The scope of this is at most LW. We are different enough here that we could make our decision independent of the population at large. I doubt even most of LW is superrational, but I wouldn’t want to be convincing of that, for obvious reasons.
“The massive altruistic payout outweighs the tiny leverage.” This might be true, but I want to see a good argument for it. Take into account that other altruistic targets like malaria or x-risk reduction may have much higher return. It would be suspicious again if the politics instinct happens to get the right answer, unless you can show that there are reasons to expect the political payout to be roughly invariant between EEA and here. Also, being essentially a long-shot gamble like pascals wager, you have to do it blind, with little idea of whether your particular intervention is doing good in expectation, hence little chance to learn and improve. Humans are good at learning but bad at getting it right a-priori.
No, that doesn’t follow at all. To conclude that one should talk about politics, all that’s needed is that you have equal or greater leverage than you do in other arenas. You’re advocating the superhero fallacy: that unless you can personally save the planet from impending doom, nothing’s worth doing. In the real world, there are no superheroes; and it is a perfectly valid choice to be one of many thousands or millions of people working toward a valuable goal.
“valuable goals” break down in a lot of different types but the key difference here is: If you work toward the valuable goal of keeping people from starving, and you do some work but don’t fix the problem, at least you’ve fed SOME concrete people. If you work toward creating a political ideology and fail, you’ve done nothing of any use to anybody. Politics, like celebrity and sports are zero sum, the more famous you are the LESS famous someone else is. There are already millions of people working to achieve fame and power through politics, and importantly, they want to do it at your expense, they want you not to have that power. This means that unless you have large leverage on politics, the time you spend on it will simply be wasted.
Really not true at all. At least in the US, there aren’t a lot of starving people down the street for you to feed.
If you work on fixing “the problem” of starving people, you can spend endless hours designing a “fix”, organizing other people, “consciousness raising”, fund raising, and organizing logistics without ever feeding a single person a single meal.
Oh no. You’ll gain power and connections with a group of people bent on power and connections. That’s not a waste.
Politics may or may not be worth one’s while to pursue. The model I’m building will be used to determine if there are any such actions or not, so my full answer to your question will be just that model and after it is built, my ideology which will be constructed by it.
I also have a short answer, but before giving it, I should say that I may be using a too broad definition of politics for you. That is, I would regard getting together to reduce a certain existential risk as a political pursuit. Of course, if one did so alone, there is no political problem to speak of. But one probably needs the support of others to do so. So, if this model would suggest me to engage only in making money and giving to charity, then that would be my political strategy. I believe that it’s unlikely that will be the only thing to do, however.
One reason is because politics is somewhat ubiquitous and potentially cheap to engage in for most. Discussing politics—how well they like/dislike the current political leader, if policy X is good or bad, how wrong someone is to support the opposing team—is normal for at least 70% of the adult population, I’d guess. So for most people, they will have ample chance to discuss politics and if they can get one sentence across for every conversation that might be a part of their political strategy as well. Another low-cost strategy is just to announce one’s political views and otherwise be a friendly character, unless someone asks for one’s opinion.
Another reason is that for some, politics is rewarding in itself. A few will naturally seek to become specialists in politics, just as a hobby.
I agree with you on the issue of politics being very different today than what it was on the savannah, or wherever these instincts evolved. Politics requires a lot more people, more coordination than in the past, it would seem. But, even though it is different, that doesn’t mean there is no goal that a lot of people can accomplish by acting in concert. That is, just because we’re primed to believe that it is much easier to do than it really is and to believe that any old strategy will work, one shouldn’t believe it cannot be done. One shouldn’t start believing in it either, of course.
I feel a moral obligation to be an informed voter. I am aware that I do not have leverage, and that there are more altruistic uses of my time, but my idealism can’t get over the fact that if a large number or people were both political and at least a little bit rational, it would make a difference. We do not have anywhere near that number, but I want to contribute to the potential solution, even if it doesn’t work. I don’t think that being an informed voter is a terminal value, but I think that that kind of idealism is a terminal value for me.