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Eugine_Nier comments on Counterfactual Coalitions - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (28)
I think you may have reversed cause and effect there.
Cause and effect are entangled in the history of human deeds, since anticipation of effects becomes the cause of deeds that produce those effects.
But to offer a counterexample to your belief, did Turkmenbashi's renaming of months and days increase the security of his power? Or did he rename them because he already had near-absolute power and it was his whim to control even further how people talked and thought? I think the latter.
Good point.
I think what Eugine_Nier meant is that people who already have an interest in controlling other's ideas are morelikely to seek out office in an autocratic government, as opposed to autocracy having some magical corrupting nature that makes people want to engage in arbitrary censorship. This would pose a practical problem that hypothetical advocates of might or might not be able to resolve in a satisfactory way. I should note that the marriage between freedom of speach and democracy hasn't always been all sunshine and daisies: it took less than a decade after the ratification of the first amendment for the US to pass the sedition act.
Eugine_Nier should then communicate more clearly what he meant.
And this wouldn't explain why hereditary absolute monarchs that did NOT seek out office are also likely to censor and control speech.
Nothing magic here, I believe people wanting influence over other people's thought-processes is a part of human nature. When people can fully satisfy physical wants, influencing how other people think becomes their main goal then. When they're movie-makers, they make movies. When they're philosophers, they write papers, When they're autocrats, they send their secret agencies against dissenters.