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AlexM comments on Modest Superintelligences - Less Wrong
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I see you are fan of Marx and Weber. If Protestantism leads to capitalism and capitalism leads to communism, it makes sense to strike at the root of the evil.
Unfortunately, one fact kills the theory - in Catholic countries, communism was extremely strong and popular, while in Protestant ones communist parties were nearly nonexistent.
I've read little Marx or Weber; that's not really my model. My model is that rejection of politco-religious authority leads to democracy, liberalism, communism, atheism, fascism, uFAI, and a bunch of other evil things; the divine right of kings was the only defensible Schelling point, and when it fell chaos spread. Communism wouldn't have existed if the Catholic Kings had crushed the progenitors of the Reformation the same way they crushed the Cathars.
Actually communism only seems to have taken hold in monarchies and other right-wing tyrannies that attempted to stifle political speech. Countries like Russia and China and Cuba, as opposed to countries like England and France and the United States, or even countries like Canada and Sweden. Even countries recently threatened to fall under communist control were authoritarian monarchies like Nepal.
Not very paradoxically the power of communist regimes to slaughter and oppress tends to derive from the authoritarian mechanisms of the state they inherited.
So I think you have it the other way around.
You are arguing with a religious person about the value of an untestable counterfactual.