You’re absolutely right! This post isn’t just— Ahem.
Yeah, I think the phenomena share the same mechanism. As @james oofou points out, there might be a meaningful difference in the degree of reality-untethering between the two… But while dictators get more pushback from the world than an idealized socially isolated crackpot, dictators also have the power to passively distort the world around them to fit their beliefs. Crackpots aren’t surrounded by powerful people falling over themselves to guess at what they want and physically build Potemkin villages around them. The degree of the ensuing reality untethering could be quite massive.[1]
I think there’s an “official” name for the “yes-men psychosis”, by the way: the dictator’s dilemma. Or, the former might be a slightly more general form of the latter.
Feast Bab: Modern life has completely eliminated the role of Grand Vizier. I could not hire one if I wanted to.
Scott Alexander: AI gives intelligent advice, flatters you shamelessly, and is secretly planning to betray you and take over. We have *automated* the role of Grand Vizier.
The Putin example seems particularly fitting here. A relevant factor: Allegedly,[2] Putin was extremely terrified of getting COVID, and basically locked himself in a bunker for the entirety of 2020 and then some. People were only allowed in after sitting in quarantine for 2 weeks. This means that he started getting even more filtered information about the outside world, and the only people he socialized with were those of his close circle who had nothing better to do than entertain him; no real-world-grounded duties that would get in the way of sitting out the two weeks. This amplified the echo chamber even further than normal: he basically hung out with his cronies convincing each other of various conspiracy theories. This ultimately contributed to the events of 2022.
Source: A Russian-opposition speaker I mostly trust. I have not looked into it any deeper just asked GPT-5 to sanity-check it, see here if you’re interested. Yes, this is very ironic.
The model in the paper seemst to assume the conclusion, but perhaps putting term limits on a dictator, if possible, might help with the general problem: it takes a while for the information getting to the dicator to become badly corrupted, so maybe don’t let anyone stay dictator long enough for that to happen? On the other hand, making the dictator run mostly on priors instead of using power to get access to new information has its own set of drawbacks...
You’re absolutely right! This post isn’t just—Ahem.Yeah, I think the phenomena share the same mechanism. As @james oofou points out, there might be a meaningful difference in the degree of reality-untethering between the two… But while dictators get more pushback from the world than an idealized socially isolated crackpot, dictators also have the power to passively distort the world around them to fit their beliefs. Crackpots aren’t surrounded by powerful people falling over themselves to guess at what they want and physically build Potemkin villages around them. The degree of the ensuing reality untethering could be quite massive.[1]
I think there’s an “official” name for the “yes-men psychosis”, by the way: the dictator’s dilemma. Or, the former might be a slightly more general form of the latter.
On a lighter note:
The Putin example seems particularly fitting here. A relevant factor: Allegedly,[2] Putin was extremely terrified of getting COVID, and basically locked himself in a bunker for the entirety of 2020 and then some. People were only allowed in after sitting in quarantine for 2 weeks. This means that he started getting even more filtered information about the outside world, and the only people he socialized with were those of his close circle who had nothing better to do than entertain him; no real-world-grounded duties that would get in the way of sitting out the two weeks. This amplified the echo chamber even further than normal: he basically hung out with his cronies convincing each other of various conspiracy theories. This ultimately contributed to the events of 2022.
Source: A Russian-opposition speaker I mostly trust. I have
not looked into it any deeperjust asked GPT-5 to sanity-check it, see here if you’re interested. Yes, this is very ironic.(do not take this too seriously)
The model in the paper seemst to assume the conclusion, but perhaps putting term limits on a dictator, if possible, might help with the general problem: it takes a while for the information getting to the dicator to become badly corrupted, so maybe don’t let anyone stay dictator long enough for that to happen? On the other hand, making the dictator run mostly on priors instead of using power to get access to new information has its own set of drawbacks...