I don’t actually see very much of an argument presented for the extremely strong headline claim:
This post aims to show that, over the next decade, it is quite likely that most democratic Western countries will become fascist dictatorships—this is not a tail risk, but the most likely overall outcome.
You draw an analogy between the “by induction”/”line go up” AI risk argument, and the increase in far-right political representation in Western democracies over the last couple decades. But the “by induction”/”line go up” argument for AI risk is not the reason one should be worried; one should be worried for specific causal reasons that we expect unaligned ASI to cause extremely bad outcomes. There is no corresponding causal model presented for why fascist dictatorship is the default future outcome for most Western democracies.
Like, yes, it is a bit silly to see “line go up” and plug one’s fingers in one’s ears. It certainly can happen here. Donald Trump being elected in 2024 seems like the kind of thing that might do it, though I’d probably be happy to bet at 9:1 against. But if that doesn’t happen, I don’t know why you expect some other Republican candidate to do it, given that none of them seem particularly inclined.
This seems like a strange reaction. If an alien read this post and believed the claims, wouldn’t they think fascism was pretty likely very much on the rise? There’s global trends, and there’s a bunch of specific examples. Do you agree with that?
Maybe you have some reasons that this prima facie evidence isn’t actually strong evidence. What are those reasons?
But the “by induction”/”line go up” argument for AI risk is not the reason one should be worried; one should be worried for specific causal reasons that we expect unaligned ASI to cause extremely bad outcomes.
One should be worried because of a combination of specific causal reasons to expect ASI to be very bad for us, plus various lines (compute, capabilities, research investment, research insights, economic benefit) going way up. If the lines weren’t going up, there’d be no great reason to expect ASI in the next 50 years with significant probability. We know dictatorships are bad because we’ve seen it; and we have fascism lines going up.
I might agree with a more limited claim like “most people in our reference class underestimate the chances of western democracies turning into fascist dictatorships over the next decade”.
I don’t think someone reading this post should have >50% odds on >50% of western democracies turning into fascist dictatorships over the next decade or two, no. I don’t see an argument that “fascist dictatorship” is a stable attractor; as others have pointed out, even countries which started out much closer to that endpoint have mostly not ended up there after a couple of decades despite appearing to move in that direction.
Mike Pence risked his life to oppose Trump’s January 6th coup attempt, so even though he is an Christian evangelical Dominionist, and I vehemently disagree with him on policy, I’m going to count him as pro-democracy. I also couldn’t easily find any clear point by point evidence that he’s a fascist, separate from Trump. Mostly stuff like this which calls him one, but never backs it up:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thenation.com/article/politics/mike-pence-gridiron-january-6th/tnamp/
FWIW I’m not convinced by the article on Haley, having bad conservative policies != being an anti-democratic nut job who wants to rig elections and put all your opponents in jail. She’s super unlikely to win, though.
Because there’s a big difference between “has unsavory political stances” and “will actively and successfully optimize for turning the US into a fascist dictatorship”, such that “far right or fascist” is very misleading as a descriptor.
I don’t actually see very much of an argument presented for the extremely strong headline claim:
You draw an analogy between the “by induction”/”line go up” AI risk argument, and the increase in far-right political representation in Western democracies over the last couple decades. But the “by induction”/”line go up” argument for AI risk is not the reason one should be worried; one should be worried for specific causal reasons that we expect unaligned ASI to cause extremely bad outcomes. There is no corresponding causal model presented for why fascist dictatorship is the default future outcome for most Western democracies.
Like, yes, it is a bit silly to see “line go up” and plug one’s fingers in one’s ears. It certainly can happen here. Donald Trump being elected in 2024 seems like the kind of thing that might do it, though I’d probably be happy to bet at 9:1 against. But if that doesn’t happen, I don’t know why you expect some other Republican candidate to do it, given that none of them seem particularly inclined.
This seems like a strange reaction. If an alien read this post and believed the claims, wouldn’t they think fascism was pretty likely very much on the rise? There’s global trends, and there’s a bunch of specific examples. Do you agree with that?
Maybe you have some reasons that this prima facie evidence isn’t actually strong evidence. What are those reasons?
One should be worried because of a combination of specific causal reasons to expect ASI to be very bad for us, plus various lines (compute, capabilities, research investment, research insights, economic benefit) going way up. If the lines weren’t going up, there’d be no great reason to expect ASI in the next 50 years with significant probability. We know dictatorships are bad because we’ve seen it; and we have fascism lines going up.
I might agree with a more limited claim like “most people in our reference class underestimate the chances of western democracies turning into fascist dictatorships over the next decade”.
I don’t think someone reading this post should have >50% odds on >50% of western democracies turning into fascist dictatorships over the next decade or two, no. I don’t see an argument that “fascist dictatorship” is a stable attractor; as others have pointed out, even countries which started out much closer to that endpoint have mostly not ended up there after a couple of decades despite appearing to move in that direction.
I’m confused why you don’t expect some other Republican candidate to do it. Have you not paid attention to Gov. DeSantis’s actions in Florida? https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2023/05/05/commentary-is-ron-desantis-fascist/
I’m not familiar with Nikki Haley, but this article seems to indicate she is at least far right: https://www.newstatesman.com/quickfire/2023/02/nikki-haley-is-extremist-moderates-clothing-donald-trump
Mike Pence risked his life to oppose Trump’s January 6th coup attempt, so even though he is an Christian evangelical Dominionist, and I vehemently disagree with him on policy, I’m going to count him as pro-democracy. I also couldn’t easily find any clear point by point evidence that he’s a fascist, separate from Trump. Mostly stuff like this which calls him one, but never backs it up: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thenation.com/article/politics/mike-pence-gridiron-january-6th/tnamp/
So out of the 4 people Politico considers contenders for the Republican nomination, 3 are far right or fascist, and the 1 who is partially pro-democracy is considered not likely to win, but might be able to influence who does. https://www.politico.com/interactives/2023/republican-candidates-2024-gop-presidential-hopefuls-list/
FWIW I’m not convinced by the article on Haley, having bad conservative policies != being an anti-democratic nut job who wants to rig elections and put all your opponents in jail. She’s super unlikely to win, though.
Because there’s a big difference between “has unsavory political stances” and “will actively and successfully optimize for turning the US into a fascist dictatorship”, such that “far right or fascist” is very misleading as a descriptor.
There are reasons why Trump couldn’t do a successful coup even if he wanted to. He didn’t have the loyalty.
It seems that Trump’s strategy to get more loyalty for the next time was to use claims that the election was stolen as a loyalty test.
The other candidates are just going to hire the traditional Republican establishment in a similar way that Trump did in his first term.