What about the first probability—the probability of emergence of Plutonia? There are many options, some are more likely, some are less. In my opinion, Russia is seriously likely to turn into Plutonia in the next decade, and it was going in that direction last 20 years. The alternative would be a democratic transformation, and, looking at similar cases, I would estimate the chance less than 50%.
How would “democratic transformation” solve that? Do you think current Russian government is the only reason behind things getting more tense on that front?
Have you considered Russian perspective on that issue?
For example, there’s at least one country that has made quite a history invading other countries, for made up reasons. That same country happens to spend almost half of entire Russian GDP on their military every year.
What would happen to Russia in a world without nuclear weapons?
It’s not about knowledge.
With all the truth-seeking that goes around here it’s easy to forget that knowledge is not the ultimate value agreed upon by everyone and used as foundation for every other value. Not even close, and for good reasons.
Knowledge is not the goal behind most things we do. Yes, studying and research happen. Lots of other, not knowledge-focused activities happen aswell.
Knowledge is the byproduct of practically any activity. Whatever you do, it’s hard to avoid gaining some knowledge in the process. And that is precisely why “I’ll have more knowledge” is not a good argument to justify any activity. Picture the worst immoral action you can think of. If you perform it, you will be more knowledgeable about the world (probably in more ways that you can currently imagine).
“Reversed stupidity is not intelligence” is an idea that needed to be stated because it is counter-intuitive. We naturally tend to look for 2 matching opposite ideas that can be mapped onto “good-bad” intensity scale. Pick any pair of antonyms for simple example, or any pair of virtues and sins for example more relevant to this particular discussion. Because whatever is associated with an outgroup feels like sin and whatever is associated with ingroup feels like virtue.
But what is it about?
It’s mainly about associations.
The outgroup is bad. There are beliefs and behaviors associated with the outgroup.
Therefore these beliefs and behaviors are bad. If I show any of these beliefs and behaviors people might think I’m bad.
Yes this is flawed logic, but it’s not something people think about logically in the first place. That’s just how we normally feel.
And it’s important to remember that there can be consequences for signalling or lack of signalling.
And people tend to care about these consequences way more than they care about abstract knowledge.
But of course your examples of it being harmful are valid
The opposite is also true, I’ve known some people who seriously neglected their health because they associated exercise with not-so-bright folks. Notice how it has the same process behind it, but it’s not related to knowledge the same way your example was. And I do agree that this is not a good basis for decision-making.
It’s just it’s not always quite as simple as in these examples.
But should it be that way?
Maybe not. Maybe some people can transcend all the arbitrary norms, and avoid forming their own arbitrary norms, and find a way to interact with everyone else without signalling, and not end up practically exiled, but I’m not hopeful.
It’s something fairly difficult to do in practice and I’m yet to see examples of people succeeding at it long term.