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passive_fist comments on First(?) Rationalist elected to state government - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (54)
I'd argue that most successful politicians already are highly effective instrumental rationalists when it comes to getting elected and staying in office.
If by "highly effective instrumental rationalists" you mean "good at winning", that's a very defensible position. That said, I'm not sure it makes sense to use the terminology that way unless you want to commit to Usain Bolt being a highly effective instrumental rationalist when it comes to the 100 metres.
(If you're reading this, Mr. Bolt, well done on your many successes.)
Well, I wouldn't be surprised if Usain Bolt's training regimen was very effectively optimised for his goals, although he probably delegates that to someone else who's highly instrumentally rational in that field.
My point is that using "instrumentally rational in the field of x" in the sense of "does what it takes to win at x" doesn't really interact with the topic of this thread, which is about the wishy-washy demography of the Less Wrong community (i.e. "us").
I'm not casting doubt on Usain Bolt's methods, but I am casting doubt on the suggestion that those methods being "instrumentally rational" makes him likely to be reading this.
I didn't read passive_fist's comment as implying that the successful politicians are likely to read Less Wrong, but that a rationalist wouldn't be able to use their superior rationality to win an election - thus answering the question "why don't more people like us stand for public office?" with "we probably wouldn't win against typical politicians", which is how the comment is relevant.
The question wasn't "why aren't more people like us in public office". That is a legitimate question, but it becomes irrelevant if it's true that such people don't even stand.
I used to think that "politicians" were some special type of people with arcane social powers the geek knoweth not. More and more, I'm starting to think they're just the people who turn up for things. Ms. Edwards, to her enormous credit, turned up for something and got elected. Why don't more of us do that?