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D_Malik comments on What are your contrarian views? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Having political beliefs is silly. Movements like neoreaction or libertarianism or whatever will succeed or fail mostly independently of whether their claims are true. Lies aren't threatened by the truth per se, they're threatened by more virulent lies and more virulent truths. Various political beliefs, while fascinating and perhaps true, are unimportant and worthless.
Arguing for or against various political beliefs functions mostly (1) to signal intelligence or allegiance or whatever, and (2) as mental masturbation, like playing Scrabble. "I want to improve politics" is just a thin veil that system 2 throws over system 1's urges to achieve (1) and (2).
If you actually think that improving politics is a productive thing to do, your best bet is probably something like "ensure more salt gets iodized so people will be smarter", or "build an FAI to govern us". But those options don't sound nearly as fun as writing political screeds.
(While "politics is the mind-killer" is LW canon, "believing political things is stupid" seems less widely-held.)
Twelve people disagree with this? I'm surprised. I was going to downvote for ‘not in the spirit of the game, obviously not a contrarian view’, but I guess I was a victim of the typical mind fallacy.
I agree that forming political beliefs is not a productive use of my time in the same way that earning a salary to donate to SCI to cure people of parasites is. I disagree that this makes it silly. The reasons you gave may not be the most noble of reasons, but they are still perfectly valid.
While I mostly agree, trying to devise political systems that would encourage a smarter populace (ex. SSC's Graduation Speech with the guaranteed universal income and abolishing public schools) seems like a potentially worthwhile enterprise.