So8res comments on On saving the world - Less Wrong

101 Post author: So8res 30 January 2014 08:00PM

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Comment author: christopherj 31 January 2014 02:00:16AM 0 points [-]

But what if the best method to save the world involves government after all? After all, government is how humans coordinate our resources toward our goals. Our current government is also working on the AI project, and there are decent odds that it will be solved by either our espionage or military research branches. Meanwhile, the individuals and groups working on the Friendly aspect of the AI project are poorly coordinated and poorly funded. Perhaps there is a way you could use your old expertise on your new goal?

Comment author: So8res 31 January 2014 02:13:41AM *  1 point [-]

But what if the best method to save the world involves government after all?

It may well. I know not absolutes. I merely play the probabilities.

To be clear, though, my goals did not include "become a powerful politician". The goals were more along the lines of convincing lots of people that, hey, remember when people spent a long time thinking about better ways to run a government, and then founded America, and it turned out pretty good? What if we did that again, only on a regular basis on small scales, preferably non-territoriality, all of the time?

It's unlikely that I'll be able to convince a few million people to succeed from their nations (without invoking the ire of their tax collectors) anytime soon.

Perhaps there is a way you could use your old expertise on your new goal?

Hopefully, yeah. Much of my expertise is transferable between domains (resolve, passion, productivity, intelligence, etc.) -- I actually don't have much of a specific advantage in societal reform. That which I do have is trumped by the relative importance of AI risk -- sunk cost fallacy, and all that.

Comment author: Strange7 09 February 2014 05:29:33AM 0 points [-]

The goals were more along the lines of convincing lots of people that, hey, remember when people spent a long time thinking about better ways to run a government, and then founded America, and it turned out pretty good? What if we did that again, only on a regular basis on small scales, preferably non-territoriality, all of the time?

Strictly speaking, all the people who actually remember that time period are long dead. Accordingly you may be underestimating the amount of work involved in re-thinking literally everything about how to run a government. It's a lot easier to convince somebody to put in as many hours as it takes to assemble a house using only a hand-axe and a forest when the alternative is being rained on while they sleep and eventually eaten by a bear, compared to the situation where they already have a semi-adequate house.

Comment author: VAuroch 31 January 2014 10:16:26PM 0 points [-]

It's unlikely that I'll be able to convince a few million people to succeed from their nations (without invoking the ire of their tax collectors) anytime soon.

So seasteading?

Comment author: BloodyShrimp 06 February 2014 09:43:27PM *  0 points [-]

While this is also what came to my mind, the next thing that came to my mind was that this is exactly what the kind of communication failure So8res was worried about would look like.