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Fossegrimen comments on Open Thread for February 3 - 10 - Less Wrong Discussion
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A political question:
Our recently elected minister for finance just did something unexpected. She basically went:
“Last autumn during the election campaign, I said we should do X. After four months of looking at the actual numbers, it turns out that X is a terribad idea, so we are going to do NOT X”
(She used more obfuscating terms, she’s a politician after all.)
The evidence points to her actually changing her mind rather than lying during the election.
The question:
Would you prefer a politician sane enough to change her mind when presented with convincing evidence or one that you (mostly) agree with?
My preference is for politicians who I broadly ideologically agree with, who are capable of doing what you described.
I expect that if one I did not broadly ideologically agree with did what you describe, I would think of them as a weasel, or first consider the hypothesis they were preparing to fuck over all that was good and right in some manner I had not yet figured out. (I realise this is defective thinking in a number of ways, but that would in fact be my first reaction.)
Both. But they should change their mind before an election, not after. If they made the speech you quoted what I would hear is "X is the right thing to do, so I promised you X, but now that I have my mitts on some real power, not X is better for me, so I will do not X"
If I can trust them to actually be changing their mind when presented with evidence, and not just lying, and listening for any further arguments from the side they started on (presumably mine for purposes of this question), the former.