...However, that would almost certainly rub the LessWrong crowd the wrong way. If only they could have focused on discovering the truth through the use of logic. Then, they could have attempted to get everyone else to agree with that iron-clad logic.
The conflict has not vanished. Society is still divided along Blue and Green lines, and there is a “Blue” and a “Green” position on almost every contemporary issue of political or cultural importance. The Blues advocate taxes on individual incomes, the Greens advocate taxes on merchant sales; the Blues advocate stricter marriage laws, while the Greens wish to make it easier to obtain divorces; the Blues take their support from the heart of city areas, while the more distant farmers and watersellers tend to be Green; the Blues believe that the Earth is a huge spherical rock at the center of the universe, the Greens that it is a huge flat rock circling some other object called a Sun. Not every Blue or every Green citizen takes the “Blue” or “Green” position on every issue, but it would be rare to find a city merchant who believed the sky was blue, and yet advocated an individual tax and freer marriage laws.
OK, so my “reduction to absurdity” might be falling apart now, so I’ll just make a few points about the above comments.
1) Lysander Spooner (an early atheist libertarian consequentialist who nonetheless defended deontological natural rights because they produced optimal results) tricked the general public in the North into favoring the value “the abolition of slavery” above “consistent loyalty to the Constitution” by falsely claiming that they were “one and the same.” He knew this was false because he later wrote that the Constitution had “no authority.” He did this because Northerners liked the outcome the Constitution had given them and hence, were loyal to it. He saw that William Lloyd Garrison’s logical claims against the constitution as a “slavery-defending” document might be true, but that by pointing this out the problem of slavery was made totally intractable.
2) This implied that Spooner also knew that most of the electorate then (as it remains today) was irrational and unphilosophical. But what do I mean when I say irrational and unphilosophical? I mean: That the neocortices of humans naturally form linear prediction hierarchies that are specific and detailed at the “low level,” and broadly-applicable and general at the “higher levels”. At the highest level of a hierarchical worldview, is a concern with systems that are based on emergent order, sometimes exponential, and consist of networks (both voluntary markets and coercive political) comprised of thousands to millions of human minds. This is also sometimes called “philosophical” level of a rationally-prioritized hierarchy because this level is concerned with philosophical questions about social organization.
3) Most people are incompetent at the philosophical level, because it’s not necessary for them to do the things they’re absolutely required to do, based on iterated feedback and correction. This philosophical hierarchical level is not as concerned with how to make personal decisions (how to thoroughly to wipe your ass, how early you have to leave the house to make it to work on time, whether you should use Tufte Lyx or Powerpoint to design the graphs for your company report, what time to pick your kids up from school, how to pleasure your sex partner so they don’t leave you for a better option, etc.) as it is with finding answers to really important “life-or-death” questions (ie: Should I sign up for Alcor? Should I vote for this charismatic chap named Hitler or show up to his party’s neighborhood watch meetings? What will happen if the FDA retains control over “drug approval”? Do I need someone’s permission to acquire the medicine I need to live past 90 years of age? How will the system use feedback and correction if it is not allowed to test new drugs at market and computation speeds?).
The “blues” and “greens” are actually trying to find the answers to philosophical questions(domain), they just aren’t any good at it (strategic incompetence). But are LessWrongians any better? Not when they’re not trying. If you don’t want to discuss policy, then you’re actually not making much use of the LessWrong forum. Those competent to pursue a goal don’t need the forum: they can post with permission of the site hosts. (All policies that matter are “political,” at some level of the hierarchy. You find this out when you begin pursuing life-extension, and then encounter government roadblocks to you saving your own life. Of course, only a small number of very-well-informed people make this discovery, because very few people are as competent as Stephen Badylak or Ray Kurzweil.) And, of course, you’re also excluding from participation all of the comparatively stupid “nodes” or “pattern recognizers” that allow for emergent social order, and market discovery and incentivization. So, once again, the people qualified to solve philosophical problems aren’t thinking about them.
This seems to me to be a terrible outcome. This comment can’t help but be the highest praise for (most of) the people at LessWrong while at the same time the highest criticism of (some of) their political decisions. (We know our political decisions by the results they yield.) By essentially subtracting themselves from the democratic debate, they make the same mistake I’ve seen replicated thousands of times from most other libertarians and thinkers. Those most inimical to the ideas of freedom, act as cheerful optimistic, happy network nodes, pushing with all their spare energy in the direction of totalitarianism. Those who are in favor of an open, liberal democracy resign themselves to the sorry state of affairs with detachment, cynicism, and political relinquishment (a very similar phenomenon to Bill Joy’s “technological relinquishment”).
And when strong AGI is finally created, it will have a strange “choice” to make: 1) Corrigible: Perpetuate the totalitarian “peace,” and ally itself with the totalitarians, possibly as an enforcer. or 2) Incorrigible: Be hostile to the vast majority of corrupted humans, favoring the few liberators / libertarians / “rebels.” 3) Incorrigible: Be hostile to the totalitarians, on a case-by-case basis, favor the rebuilding of civilization, from its current remnants. In that case, in order to be friendly to humans, it must understand what social organization they best thrive under. …And we can’t tell it, because most of “us” don’t know.
Yeah, don’t write anything that challenges a conclusion of Saint Eliezer’s. That’s a way to get to the truth. …idiot.
A few examples of politics constituting, not just an existential risk, but the most common severe risk faced by humanity. It’s also an existential risk, in any age with “leading force” (nuclear, biological, strong nanotechnology) weapons.
Much like most bars have signs that say “No Religion or Politics” this idiotic “parable” is approximately as intelligent as biblical parables that also serve to “shut down” discourse. You primates aren’t exactly intelligent enough to function without continual discourse checking your excesses, and moderating your insipid tendencies to silence that which you disagree with.