EDIT: I assumed "politics" as most people take the meaning of the word, carlJ means something more sensible and general. I suggest different terminology or at least explicit clarification.
You missed the important part:
Given that we have very plausible explanation of your desire to talk about politics that doesn't at all require the hypothesis that politics is actually important, what reason do you have to believe that politics is an important subject?
Let me start you out with some things that don't answer this question:
"Politics is important because a lot of value is at stake". This is true but for it to follow that I should talk about politics, I need enough leverage on that value, relative to other opportunities. Why do you think an individual has enough leverage? Perhaps you have some reason, but before arguing this, consider that your leverage over politics has shrunk drastically since EEA times, so it would be suspicious if you still argued that politics is important with the same conviction.
"You can have large leverage because you can just X", where X is creating a successful ideology, organizing people, convincing people, etc. X is hero work. People vary in ability. If you assume you are in the upper end of ability such that you can do X, the opportunities open to you have just drastically increased and now you have to show that politics is better than starting a $100M business, doing great intellectual work, and so on.
"You have a lot of leverage because of TDT-style superrationality." The scope of this is at most LW. We are different enough here that we could make our decision independent of the population at large. I doubt even most of LW is superrational, but I wouldn't want to be convincing of that, for obvious reasons.
"The massive altruistic payout outweighs the tiny leverage." This might be true, but I want to see a good argument for it. Take into account that other altruistic targets like malaria or x-risk reduction may have much higher return. It would be suspicious again if the politics instinct happens to get the right answer, unless you can show that there are reasons to expect the political payout to be roughly invariant between EEA and here. Also, being essentially a long-shot gamble like pascals wager, you have to do it blind, with little idea of whether your particular intervention is doing good in expectation, hence little chance to learn and improve. Humans are good at learning but bad at getting it right a-priori.
Politics may or may not be worth one's while to pursue. The model I'm building will be used to determine if there are any such actions or not, so my full answer to your question will be just that model and after it is built, my ideology which will be constructed by it.
I also have a short answer, but before giving it, I should say that I may be using a too broad definition of politics for you. That is, I would regard getting together to reduce a certain existential risk as a political pursuit. Of course, if one did so alone, there is no political problem to...
Related to: Hold Off On Proposing Solutions, Logical Rudeness
Politics is sometimes hard to discuss. Partly since most of us seem to unconsciously take political matters with the same degree of seriousness as our forefathers used to, because we use the same mode of thought as they used to. Back then, a bad political choice or alliance, could mean death, while the normal cost today in a democratic society might be ridicule for having supported the losing team or position.
Nevertheless, politics should be taken seriously. Bad politics means that it'll take longer for us humans to reach world peace, an end to hunger and disease, and favourable conditions so that no one will create an unfriendly AI. Therefore, discussing politics is vital so that, someday, some collective actions could be performed to alter the political course for the better.
But what should that collective action be? - what should the new course(s) be? - and who should do it? - and what does "for the better" imply? To engage in politics one needs to be able to give some (implicit or explicit) answers to these questions. This can be done, and in so doing one has constructed a political ideology - which might be similar to existing ideologies or it might be different.
A political ideology might be constructed in various ways. In this and a few more posts I will propose one way of doing that. These posts might be seen as a tutorial in constructing a political ideology. In these posts I will not suggest an answer to what the best political system should be, nor will I follow my own instructions. But if one should follow these instructions I believe that one can answer the questions mentioned above.
Political ideologies might be constructed in various other ways. The one I discuss in my following posts is based on two principles: (1) that one should not propose an answer until one has thought about the question extensively, and (2) that one should consider the most important questions first.
Before writing the next post, here are the points I will discuss in each of them - I will write the posts as an instruction manual so I'll address you, dear reader, through them out:
Next post "The Domain of Politics"