Isn’t the obvious reason for this that if you were a dictator and committed much evil, that in the moment you were to repent, you would lose all of your allies, but you would of course not immediately gain forgiveness from your enemies?
So it seems like the only way to stay safe from your enemies is to not repent.
This is IMO what the idea of “saving face” is about. The thing we do see reasonably frequently is dictators and leaders backing down from reckless paths of action, but in a way that does not cause them to lose the support of their allies, which is necessary for defending them from attacks by the people they harmed.
I suspect it’d be high-EV to figure out generalized versions of “Dictator Island” and variations thereof such that currently-powerful people can be credibly promised that they don’t have to massively worry about safety or quality of life if they lose power struggles. There are deterrent and morale reasons to go for a more punitive/retributive method instead (eg try ppl for war crimes) but imo the arguments for that are worse, especially in the current moment.
Isn’t the obvious reason for this that if you were a dictator and committed much evil, that in the moment you were to repent, you would lose all of your allies, but you would of course not immediately gain forgiveness from your enemies?
So it seems like the only way to stay safe from your enemies is to not repent.
This is IMO what the idea of “saving face” is about. The thing we do see reasonably frequently is dictators and leaders backing down from reckless paths of action, but in a way that does not cause them to lose the support of their allies, which is necessary for defending them from attacks by the people they harmed.
I suspect it’d be high-EV to figure out generalized versions of “Dictator Island” and variations thereof such that currently-powerful people can be credibly promised that they don’t have to massively worry about safety or quality of life if they lose power struggles. There are deterrent and morale reasons to go for a more punitive/retributive method instead (eg try ppl for war crimes) but imo the arguments for that are worse, especially in the current moment.