Strange7 comments on On saving the world - Less Wrong

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

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (166)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

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.