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wedrifid comments on Rationality Quotes December 2011 - Less Wrong
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There were two characters to the comparison; I was talking about the other one - Gandalf.
From your replies and the downvote, it's clear that I failed to make myself clear. Here was the flow of the conversation:
I said "Every Sauron considers himself a Gandalf". Eugine_Nier pointed out that "Gandalf explicitly refuses the ring for fear he would find it useful and thus be corrupted by it." Sauron knew that Gandalf did this (IIRC), so I grant that Sauron wouldn't think that he's like Gandalf in this respect. So, I said, maybe Sauron thinks of himself like Gandalf (ie, working for the greater good), except that he (Sauron) is smart enough not to pass up such a powerful tool (for so he himself thinks it) for doing such good.
So, as you say, Gandalf considers the ring to be corrupting. But that isn't an objection to my point. That is just one of the ways in which I was saying that Sauron considers himself to be smarter.
Even from Sauron's point of view Sauron should not be making that evaluation - at least not about the ring in particular. While for Sauron the ring is particularly powerful and not-values-changing he knows that for Gandalf it is, in fact, corrupting and also that Gandalf doesn't get anywhere near the same power from the ring.
I think that part of Sauron's character is that he can't understand why Gandalf views the ring as corrupting. Maybe he should be able to figure this out, but I was describing how Sauron might think, not how he should think.
As for whether Gandalf would get power from the ring — It's true that the ring wouldn't give Gandalf as much power as it would give Sauron. But it would still give Gandalf a lot of power.
In some other essay, Tolkien speculates about who would win in a one-on-one fight between Gandalf-with-the-ring and Sauron-without. Unfortunately, I can't remember what Tolkien said the outcome would be, and I can't find a copy online at this moment[*]. However, I do remember that he said that it would be close, a lot closer than if neither had the ring.
Tolkien also says somewhere (in LOTR or in an essay) that the ring would make someone like Gandalf an effectively unstoppable military leader in some unspecified way (IIRC).
* ETA: Here's at least some excerpts from that "essay" (actually a letter): http://www.americanidea.org/handouts/06240110.htm Tolkien doesn't give a final verdict on who would win. The key passage:
Sauron knows that Gandalf has different values than Sauron, and knows that the nature of the ring is to alter its user's values to be more like Sauron's than Gandalf's. If, knowing those two things, he can't understand why Gandalf doesn't endorse using the ring, then he's simply not thinking clearly.
Sauron is probably a cynic. He probably thinks that "Every Gandalf is really a Sauron." That is, every do-gooder who seems to be guided only by virtuous principles is really a self-aggrandizing power-grabber trying to mask their power-grabbing behind a veil of pious slave-morality (as Nietzsche might put it). So (Sauron must figure), claiming the ring would actually be the best way for Gandalf to realize his own actual ends. But (Sauron must conclude) Gandalf must just be too stupid, or blinded by convention, or self-deluded, or something, to realize this.
I fail to see how this description is 'far worse' than Sauron. It seems to me far better than Sauron, who certainly wasn't ruling according to any conception of the good of his subjects.