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Eugine_Nier comments on Link: Facing the Mind-Killer - Less Wrong
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My opinions are too abstract. If I tried to apply them to derive concrete policy proposals the is-ought problem is returned.
I have opinions about the role the relative costs of attack and defense have played in civilization. I have opinions about how financial innovation has affected war. I have opinions about contract law. I have opinions about demographic transitions. Do these opinions make me a democrat or republican? Um.
As for politics affecting my life? My life is affected by the possibility of natural disaster, but I don't get angry at earthquakes. You buy yourself an earthquake kit and try to live your life. How much you spend on the earthquake kit is based on your updates of their probability. For that you survey expert opinion every now and then. If a bunch of volcano experts with good prediction records tell you that your house will be covered in lava next week you pack up and move. If you told me that you were angry at the lava because you believed it maliciously destroyed your house I'd think you were a little dumb, but in a very usual way for humans; I wouldn't hold it against you.
I tried to rewrite this a few times to avoid looking like I'm trying to signal sophistication and aloofness but I did not entirely succeed. I don't regard weirdness as cool for the record. If I need to avoid signaling weirdness I will dance around some sort of toned down libertarianism that is fairly equally innocuous to most sorts of people.
Getting angry at earthquakes doesn't affect their behavior, getting angry at people does.
I disagree.
You don't believe that getting angry at someone affects how they will behave towards you in the future?
who should I get angry at in order to affect policy?
By itself, you getting angry will not affect politics much, although on a small scale it will affect how people treat you.
However, a group of like minded angry (and ideally at least minimally coordinated) people will have an affect on policy.
What actions can a group take to affect policy that is better than pursuing wealth generation for each individual member?
so this conversation doesn't continue indefinitely I'll jump to the end. If you aren't directly contributing to SENS, SIAI, etc you should probably be getting rich so you can throw money at them. I have a limited amount of time and resources, I'm devoting them to increasing my own wealth generation rather than political conflict. If there is a policy that will have a direct effect on this avenue (such as say stem cell legislation) that is something I will be interested in. You have to pick your battles.
Making sure the government doesn't pursue economic policies that make this all but impossible for starters.
sure, and that is one of the points of agreement between all economists. but economic policy is affected by nobel prize winners and billions upon billions of dollars. in contrast existential risk management is a multimillion (and in the low millions) dollar project all told. I'm picking my battles. tech, especially transhumanist tech, helps move the goalposts.
see: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/05/policy_tugowar.html