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dspeyer comments on We Don't Have a Utility Function - Less Wrong
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Can you describe the process by which you changed your view on authority? I suspect that could be important.
Read lots, think lots, do lots.
More specifically, become convinced of consequentialism so that pragmatic concerns and exceptions can be handled in a principled way, realize that rule by Friendly AI would be acceptable, attempt to actually run a LW meetup and learn of the pragmatic effectiveness of central decision making, notice major inconsistencies in and highly suspect origin of my non-authoritarian beliefs, notice aesthetic value of leadership and following, etc.
"Authority" isn't necessarily just one thing. For example, an all-powerful Friendly AI could choose to present itself in an extremely deferential way, and even conform exactly to it's human users' wishes. Being a central decisionmaker, projecting high status, having impressive accomplishments, having others feel instinctively deferential to you, and having others actually act deferential to you are all distinct but frequently related. I think at least some of these are worrisome (link).
If you increase the authority of a group's leader along all the dimensions of authority (which probably happens by default), I'd guess you get increased group coherence at the expense of decreased group rationality. You also run the risk of having the leader's preferences be satisfied at the expense of the group's preferences. In situations where it doesn't actually matter what you do much and it mostly just matters that everyone does it together in an orderly way, maybe this can be a good trade-off.
This is interesting. For some time, I've had my anti-authoritarianism (and anti-governmentism) sort of filed away in the back of my mind as "review this opinion when I think I can handle finding out I'm wrong" Sounds like you've been through the process already.
How much of your change of heart would you attribute to explicit reasoning, aesthetics, and personal experience respectively?
Good question. I wouldn't say it breaks up so nicely.
First of all, the aesthetic appreciation basically got uncovered when the big aversions went away. It was like, "ok authority can be practical a lot of the time, and oh, look, now that I'm not afraid of it, it's kind of beautiful after all."
The personal experience (having been an anarchist, running a LW meetup, etc) mostly just provided a bit of extra verification fuel once anti-authoritarianism was being seriously questioned.
The thing that actually got me to explicitly formulate the whole process was reading Moldbug. He pointed out some glitches in the matrix, so to speak.
I don't know how to weight the importance of these, or what that would mean. Is there a more specific question you're interested in?
I think you're failing to distinguish between authority one voluntarily submits to (potentially even reserving the right to reverse the decision), e.g., meetup organizer, and authority backed by a monopoly on violence, i.e., the modern conception of government.
That's much more of a qualitative difference based on how much say you have.