I don't want to say too much about the pros and cons of the LW interface, except that entry barriers do help to keep out spammers, crackpots, cultists, and others who would only come to talk, not to listen.

I believe it's rational to allow them to talk. I'm a free speech absolutist. The value of isolating and deprecating their comments is a good one, but it's not good to do so sloppily to "shut them up" or "disincentivize their information flow." Their lack of value can be isolated and compartmentalized in vastly better ways. For instance, by setting better thresholds before interfering with their functionality. Every one of us here is someone else's "useless crackpot." To an artilect, we're probably all useless crackpots and time-wasters.

It's proving possible to talk with you, so, we'll see how that ends up. I'll let other people who have more insight into the logic of LW's existing arrangements defend them.

I'm highly incentivized to leave. I'll probably be a "flash in the pan." Just wanted to let the folks here know that, so they didn't think I simply left because I didn't have any more to say.

I'm more interested in how your politics will play out here.

As I said, I don't think they will.

I see you as a representative of a faction of opinion I'll call Rational Transhuman Freedom.

That's a great label for it, to identify it to people who are already familiar with the ideas, and nomenclature. It's a horrible term, as others have noted, to describe it to the uninitiated. The common man reacts to that as "The dude's in his own universe. I don't know what kind of whacko he is, but I'm not just going to give up, (or transfer, transition away from) being human! It sounds like the other most crazy idea I've ever heard in my life: transexualism. Oh, and by the way, that reminds me that there are people so different from me that they cut their own genitalia off. Maybe this guy is one of those kinds of whacko. I don't have time to investigate this, because its label looks so much like a dead-end. It has all the heuristic hallmarks of a total dead end."

So, that's why I don't like the term "Transhumanism." It doesn't compute with joe sixpack or joe voter. And, I'm concerned with systemic change that, by definition, includes joe sixpack and joe voter.

You mention Hayek and Ron Paul, but you also talk about nanobots and AGIs, and you're big on rationality. It's extropian Objectivism.

Sure. But again, Ayn Rand's philosophy is often mislabeled with her crazy personal views that weren't a part of her more philosophically consistent books. I agree with most of what's in her books, but also leave room for morally-overlapping partial alternatives, such as libertarianism, voluntaryism, libertarian-light Milton Friedmanism, etc... My view has a hierarchy of importance, in line with Ray Kurzweil's (as far as I can see).

I have had to ask myself, what is the political sensibility of Less Wrong? I don't mean the affiliations named in a poll, I mean the political agenda that is implicitly being expressed by people's attitudes and priorities.

This is a great question. It's basically what drove me to post. Eliezer claims to be a libertarian, and writes convincingly and consistently on the subject. I was especially pleased with his responses to Ben Goertzel that identified some misconceptions of Goertzel's regarding the similarity and narrowness of some libertarians he had met. His Venn diagram circle wasn't large enough to include the dissimilar versions of the similar, but not the same.

In this regard, I find the emphasis on identifying which charities are the most important and effective to be the best clue.

Yes, this is a good area of overlap with voluntarists, and followers of SEK3. Especially, engineers and builders.

People just don't debate policy, and how the state should act, at all. Instead they debate what the most effectively altruistic use of their spare change would be.

I advocate for what I believe is an effective use of such "spare change." At a very deep level, something as abandoned as "core civic virtue." If you wouldn't ignore the cattle cars full of people going by, then it's irrational to ignore the step that immediately precedes and creates that situation. ...If you can identify it.

I don't actually know how to characterize this as a political attitude - perhaps it's pre-political,

It sounds like a mutually-inclusive overlap with voluntaryism. See: The Voluntaryist Most voluntaryists eschew electoral politics. In my esperience, this is because they are not familiar with its proper implementation. Others have arrived at my small circle that is wholly-contained within the Venn diagram circle of "voluntaryism," which is "Voluntaryists who do not eschew moral electoral participation." What constitutes such participation (the precursors of such a political view) is fairly narrow, and not taught in the government schools.

it's a sign of a community not yet forced to engage with the state and with political ideologies - but it's certainly not hipster apathy.

I think what you're saying is partly true, as a percentage, and what I'm saying is partly true. I think perhaps it's 20% and 20%, with a curve in-between of varying levels of comprehension of the various relevant subjects. Remember: to get to my view, you need to comprehend how juries have been destroyed over the past 170 years. You also need to comprehend the non-aggression principle, and consistently apply it to your own morality. And you need to care enough to learn about economics. And you need to unify these disparate values. Then, if you care a lot, you need to bring all of this to the apathetic and under-educated general public. ...That's what you need to do to stop the rise of the nazis. ...Which is why the nazis often don't get stopped. (But sometimes they do! Some societies are smart enough to stop them! How are they different? Well, we have pretty good information about that, at this time.)

Of course there is also an aversion to political discussion, as a big distraction, as the topic where people are most likely to become stupid,

The perverse incentives on the system are the reason for this. I'm suggesting they should be consciously identified and overcome.

and as just not a productive way to test one's rationality skills.

To some extent, I disagree. I believe that the outcome of rationality avoids democide, and avoids deathcamps. If it doesn't, it's not worth much, on a scale of objective value, related to pleasure and pain.

On the Singularity side, there is also yet another transpolitical attitude present, a sort of monastic-slash-alchemical desire to not become entangled with the fallen world of mundane affairs, in favor of performing the great working whereby a friendly demiurge will be invoked to set it right.

Very true. But I believe this is a short-sighted and narrow-minded view that ignores the most vital time period of all: the pre-singularity. The time period when our "mind children" will be observing us, and learning from us, as they prepare to speed past us in many areas.

The world can be awful but that doesn't mean you should run off and join the melee, because it has always been like this, and the real change will only come from superintelligence.

It's my position that people don't join the melee, because they don't comprehend the potential benefit to superintelligence from doing so. More specifically, they don't comprehend the resulting free market's benefit to the development of the superintelligence from doing so. And there are lots of co-related benefits as well that further tip the scale: Your kids aren't indefinitely detained. There isn't an inflationary crash and related suffering. Innocent people are released from prison. When we are observed by a superintelligence, that superintelligence judges a visible percentage of us to be moral and worthy of equality under the law. Also, that superintelligence judges us to be worthy of "intelligence amplification." (Why would it amplify a sociopath?) If ANY of the prior are valid, then it's worth entering the melee. I'm glad you made the statement. You hit the nail on the head.

However, there truly are people here who are eager to use rationality to make a better world right now, and this is where LW might eventually develop some explicit stances regarding pre-Singularity politics.

I believe I've virtually cornered the market in thinking this through. I sought out a legitimate and deep-level conversation here, and other than this one post, it didn't really happen. Feel free to call me, if you like. 312-730-4037.

I consider the recent posts about Leverage Research to be one emerging political current (it had precursors, e.g. in Giles's series on "Altruist Support"); it's a maximalist expression of the impulse behind the discussion about optimal charities.

I like the idea, and will further investigate it. I am also a huge proponent of crowd-sourcing constructive projects, whether they be legal or not in the USSA. Portugal has no FDA, for instance. Virtually all medical innovation should be done there, and the sociopaths should simply be sidestepped.

Jake, when it comes to people making a political choice, I think this is the real competitor to the faction of Rational Transhuman Freedom,and it will be very interesting to see how that dialogue plays out, if the discussion ever manages to rise to that level.

I don't anticipate that it will, at any deep level, unless I finish my book, and it's popular.

These are competing utopianisms.

If so, then I disagree. There is still baseline crime, and many other social ills in my system. But my system is optimized. Think of the difference between 1950s USA and 1950s Soviet Russia and China. In the two latter places, there was mass death, democide (mass murder by government) and mass-starvation, and imprisonment, and almost no production. What production there was was perversely incentivized to be almost worthless (factories were rewarded by the weight of the nail shipments they produced, so they produced larger and larger nails that were too large to be used, thanks to top-down orders that weren't optimized for value.)

Probably they express different aspects of the human utility function.

:) Yes. See immediately prior. We agree.

Partisans of the Freedom agenda can be very eloquent when they talk about suffering caused by government, but the flip side of their political methodology is that you're not allowed to use government to solve problems either,

I've written extensively about this incorrect view of the problem. It leaves out an identifier of the inherent negatives of assuming force must be used to solve problems outside the domain of force. It also leaves out the proper view of emergent order based on nonfunctioning parts. For instance, if you fill a skull with grains of sand the size of neurons, there won't be a human mind, even though the mind is an emergent system, because the grains of sand aren't the same kind of nodes as neurons are. They may be equally complex, but the neurons are in communication with one another. Similarly, if you substitute government force for voluntary market transactions, the emergent result will be negative, because each individual "transaction" is bullying, or command, instead of "an offer" or "a price." Failure to see how negative this is leads people to say "Why don't you just let betty the bureaucrat do her job? ...She's really nice, and she wants to help people!" Well, this might be true, but the person making such an argument is igoring that the papers betty files all day long are bullying people, somewhere along the supply line, with government force. (Even if its only the forgotten man, the taxpayer.)

Libertarians, as a precursor to political discussion, must identify the forgotten man in the proposed government solution. In itself, this step is a large pre-requisite to seeing the solution. Entire giant websites and books are dedicated to just this one step. ...But taking this step doesn't get one to the next step, by itself. That step is "comprehending the law, comprehending the proper structure, and comprehending how that structure is set up."

...And they don't teach this in the law schools any more, because the law schools are light on history, and light on subjects that won't make their graduates money. Well, if you do what's right as a lawyer, you get disbarred. That's the immense perverse pressure on the legal education system. (I can prove this with evidence, but it fills a book.)

and this is what galls the defenders of more familiar, "statist" ideas of governance. Pursuing the Freedom agenda ends up mostly being about giving individuals a chance to flourish under their own power.

...Without theft. Their position doesn't look as defensible once you identify the coercion it depends on.

The other utopianism, exemplified by Leverage's plan for the world, is the one that wants to solve everyone's problems. Leverage does not presently talk about coercion. Instead, they are psychological utopians, who think that if they're smart enough, they can figure out how to get everyone to work together and behave decently towards each other.

And, they can optimize for this, by adopting my suggested strategy for reinstating proper jury trials. It's a hierarchically-structured, complete strategy.

Advocates of Freedom are willing to talk about the wonders of spontaneous order, but politically they leave the details to the market and to civil society;

Not me. I have a specific plan of action that is likely to succeed, if implemented by fewer than 6,000 people, and fewer than 10 people in the initial stages. It's an incremental growth/adoption plan with benchmarks and feedback.

their agenda is to starve the beast, topple Leviathan, pare back the state. As I said, it remains to be seen how this polarity will play out here, but certainly history shows that it can become a deadly rivalry.

I need to learn more about their agenda. I will read it when I am done. Thank you. I have not seen any strategies in the libertarian world that I feel are as legitimate as my own, except potential variants of my strategy.

Another intellectual challenge that might show up for you here is the critique of libertarianism produced by "Mencius Moldbug", who is making a serious effort to revive pre-democratic ideas about how society ought to work. Mencius's argument is that given human nature, there must always be authority, and we are better off when we have a political culture which accepts this, and understands that the good life is to be found by having good rulers.

Such arguments are basically the argument of "snowball," the propaganda pig in Orwell's "1984," or Hobbes. They are so very wrong, and so disproven by the relative freedom of the industrial revolution, that right-thinking people cannot take them seriously, except as poison ideas to be torn apart with logic and reason.

And, the notion that "rulers" are as good as the system they exist under is a compelling one. Something like 2% of the population are clinical sociopaths, meaning that they don't care about what happens to other people, except as it impacts them. No conscience at all. They appear to be randomly-distributed in society, as they were often an evolutionary benefit to their tribes as warriors, etc... So, in a corrupted system they occupy positions of power, because those positions are disproportionately valuable to them, and morally offensive to uncorrupted people. Why Does the World Feel Wrong? by Wil Groves is a good introduction to the ideas contained in this broader concept.

I agree with those ideas, and the ideas of Harry Browne about coercion and government. They match the evidence of my senses. And I don't think I'm more intelligent than most people, but I do think I'm more intellectually honest than most people. That's my value.

Vladimir_M is a Mencius reader, and there must be others here.

Reading something doesn't mean one is an advocate of it. I've read Mein Kampf, and much of the communist manifesto, Morton Blackwell, and Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals." I read them to further my knowledge, and I disagree with most or all of what each of them wrote. ...But thanks for the "heads up."