This is pretty straightforwardly not true, there are plenty of academics (for example) who are as smart as rationalists but don’t do very broad instrumental reasoning.
Fair point, I was generalizing too much here.
I agree with the literal claim that plenty of people don’t fantasize about becoming all-powerful dictators, but I’d say the percentage of people who don’t fantasize (including in their heads and not speaking about it) becoming dictators or don’t believe that an all-powerful dictator is necessary to solve problems/have a good future is much closer to 25-30% than 90% or more here, and this is more of an upper bound than a lower bound.
The reasons for why this is the case partially delve into politics that would cause way more heat than light if I discussed it on here, but one of the reasons for this is that for a lot of citizens, they don’t want to get involved in politics and want someone else to solve their problems for them, and one of the unique traits of a lot of non-dictatorial systems of government is that the average person has to be more involved with politics, and lots of people hate doing this.
An all-powerful dictator where average citizens make none of the decisions in a new world order doesn’t require them to pay attention to their government/politicians, and a lot of people genuinely want the ability to not care about politics at all.
Fair point, I was generalizing too much here.
I agree with the literal claim that plenty of people don’t fantasize about becoming all-powerful dictators, but I’d say the percentage of people who don’t fantasize (including in their heads and not speaking about it) becoming dictators or don’t believe that an all-powerful dictator is necessary to solve problems/have a good future is much closer to 25-30% than 90% or more here, and this is more of an upper bound than a lower bound.
The reasons for why this is the case partially delve into politics that would cause way more heat than light if I discussed it on here, but one of the reasons for this is that for a lot of citizens, they don’t want to get involved in politics and want someone else to solve their problems for them, and one of the unique traits of a lot of non-dictatorial systems of government is that the average person has to be more involved with politics, and lots of people hate doing this.
An all-powerful dictator where average citizens make none of the decisions in a new world order doesn’t require them to pay attention to their government/politicians, and a lot of people genuinely want the ability to not care about politics at all.