Aleksei_Riikonen comments on On saving the world - Less Wrong

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

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Comment author: Aleksei_Riikonen 31 January 2014 10:11:30AM 0 points [-]

Thank you. I can relate to much of what you said, as isn't terribly rare here.

And the most enjoyable of the feelings evoked in me (as has happened on several occasions already), is seeing a young one being better and more promising than me.

(Though my enjoyment at being superseded is dangerous in the sense that such may be associated with laziness, so you are very welcome to not enjoy yours -- or enjoy, however you wish.)

The actual reason why I started to comment at all, however, is that it's amusing to note how I'm in a sense in the reverse of your situation. I found MIRI/SIAI over 10 years ago (and am almost that much older than you), started contributing to them then, but have recently refocused, of all things, on political system-building. Just what you left behind!

It would be complex and unnecessary to discuss here why I have done so, but let it be said that it's not because I wouldn't still consider MIRI's work to be of paramount importance. I do, but there are circumstances that I feel influence me towards a differing personal focus, among them certainly being a degree of laziness that I've come to joyfully accept of myself, after being more demandind earlier. Also, not putting all eggs in one basket.

Anyway, studying what's currently termed neoreaction (and associated things) is what I'm doing. For the heck of it, here's some early comments I recently wrote regarding that stuff.

(Also let it be noted that the difficult part in fixing politics is devising the ways in which one can actually get to implementing the bright ideas. The class of bright political ideas that would be a clear improvement is surprisingly large and easy to pick examples out of, but the class of ideas that one is likely to be able to implement is much more constrained.)

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 31 January 2014 12:46:11PM *  5 points [-]

The class of bright political ideas that would be a clear improvement is surprisingly large

But it doesn't include bringing back Kings.

This is why examples are important. You can't coclude "the world just doesn't want to listen to ideas, however, good" if the ideas , are in fact, terrible.

Comment author: Aleksei_Riikonen 31 January 2014 01:11:52PM 1 point [-]

As a Brit, you already have a king/queen in your country.

Details are important as well as examples, and I'm not in the business of simply bringing back empowered kings. In the system I discussed the role mostly is about being a cool figurehead, not so terribly different from what you have now (though the king would be elected from among the re-invented Aristocracy in a meritocratic way, and therefore be better at the role than what you have now -- and it is of course true that the discussed system would be about bringing back the nobility in a genuinely empowered way).

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 31 January 2014 02:14:12PM 0 points [-]

As a Brit, you already have a king/queen in your country.

And it's not paradise on Earth.

hough the king would be elected from among the re-invented Aristocracy in a meritocratic way,

How does that work? If an aristocrat's offpsring are crap, do they get thrown out of the aristocracy? If so, how does that differ from meritocracy?

Comment author: Aleksei_Riikonen 31 January 2014 02:21:42PM 2 points [-]

I believe this comment thread is not the proper place to discuss the details of my proposal.

(Also I believe the page linked earlier answers those specific questions.)

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 31 January 2014 02:28:29PM -1 points [-]

I've read it, and I believe it doesn't..

Comment author: Aleksei_Riikonen 31 January 2014 02:37:51PM 4 points [-]

Regardless, I wish to not take over (a part of) this comment thread by discussing this thing in detail.

If further comments from me on the matter are in demand, contacting me through some other means is a better option.