Politics Discussion Thread February 2013

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.

As Multiheaded added, "Personal is Political" stuff like gender relations, etc also may belong here.

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.

As Multiheaded added, "Personal is Political" stuff like gender relations, etc also may belong here.

This could be the difference of an entire year that it takes an FAI to implement whatever changes to make society better.

You are not taking AI seriously. Is this intentional?

A superintelligence could likely take over the world in a matter of days, no matter what people thought. (They would think it was great, because the AI could manipulate them better than the best current marketing tactics, even if it couldn't just rewrite their brains with nano.)

It may not do this, for the sake of our comfort, but if anything was urgent, it would be done.

A superintelligence could likely take over the world in a matter of days, no matter what people thought. (They would think it was great, because the AI could manipulate them better than the best current marketing tactics, even if it couldn't just rewrite their brains with nano.)

While I wouldn't dismiss this possibility at all you seem a little overconfident. The best current marketing tactics can shift market share a percentage point or two or maybe make a half-percentage-point difference in a political campaign. Obviously better than the best is better... (read more)