Politics Discussion Thread February 2013

OrphanWilde

Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.
In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.

As Multiheaded added, "Personal is Political" stuff like gender relations, etc also may belong here.

Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.
In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.

As Multiheaded added, "Personal is Political" stuff like gender relations, etc also may belong here.

We've got to deal with politics eventually. The whole world isn't going to listen to the Singularity Institute just because they've got a Friendly AI, and it's not like those cognitive biases will disappear by that time. Besides, I feel like LW could get more done with discussions about political brainstorming, at least in the near future.

The whole world isn't going to listen to the Singularity Institute just because they've got a Friendly AI

'Just' because they've got an FAI? Once you have an FAI (and nobody else has a not-friendly-to-you-AI) you've more or less won already.

We've got to deal with politics eventually.

Apart from being able to protect against any political threat (and so make persuasion optional, not necessary) an FAI could, for example, upgrade Eliezer to have competent political skills.

The politics that MIRI folks would be concerned about are the politics before they win, not after they win.

8Larks13y

If an AGI wants you to listen, you won't have any choice. If it doesn't want you to listen, you won't have the option. The set of "problems for us after we get FAI" is the null set.