Politics Discussion Thread September 2012

Multiheaded

The last thread didn't fare too badly, I think; let's make it a monthly tradition. (Me, I'm more interested in thinking about real-world policies or philosophies, actual and possible, rather than AI design or physics, and I suspect that many fine, non-mind-killed folks reading LW also are - but might be ashamed to admit it!)

Quoth OrphanWilde:

Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.
In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.

Let's try to stick to those rules - and maybe make some more if sorely needed.

Oh, and I think that the "Personal is Political" stuff like gender relations, etc also belongs here.

Quoth OrphanWilde:

Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.
In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.

Let's try to stick to those rules - and maybe make some more if sorely needed.

Oh, and I think that the "Personal is Political" stuff like gender relations, etc also belongs here.

I used to have political views like this:

"Due to the diminishing marginal value of money and other factors, I expect greater total and average utility to result from greater wealth equality than is currently found in the United States."

Now I have political non-views like this:

"I expect greater total and average utility (over the next few decades) to result from greater wealth equality than is currently found in the United States, but it looks like the utility of x-risk reduction might trump basically everything else, and I doubt that "good for x-risk reduction" reliably tracks with "good for humans over the next few decades," so until I spend some serious time thinking about what political and economic policies are best for x-risk reduction, I'm not sure I have any reflectively-endorsed political views.

But somehow I never get around to thinking much about which political and economic policies are best for x-risk reduction. I wish somebody else (somebody who knows their shit) would do so.

Sure, there's the obvious stuff like "Engage in differential intellectual progress to reduce x-risk," but I'm not sure what to think about economic and political policies that aren't so directly related to x-risk. Would letting the Bush tax cuts expire increase or decrease x-risk? Fuck if I know.

Well, I suspect one of the largest effects is that it's good to have a class of people with excess cash that they can afford to donate to speculative X-risk reduction projects.

1Athrelon14y

Also worth knowing: what incremental, actually-achievable political change would most reduce x-risk, and what is the ROI of lobbying or investing in projects to bring such a change about?

7[anonymous]14y

This post single-handedly made me think this entire thread was a good idea. [...] A sequence on this would be of high value. But I wish we had more recent articles on economics on this site period. Considering how closely related that field is to the study of rationality it is surprising we explicitly say as little as we do on it, nor do we provide anything like an introduction for new readers. Actually on second thought it isn't that surprising since we needed a long time to give game theory the latter treatment. More economics related links in discussion, posts and book reviews are something that would be easier for us to do right away. Perhaps that would help attract the right cluster of people interested in the topic and capable of contributing to the site? I thinks the results (even in this early stage) of the writing and networking that happened around effective charity show that growing the community in useful directions can be a good way to make progress on such questions.