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Kaj_Sotala comments on First(?) Rationalist elected to state government - Less Wrong Discussion

63 Post author: Eneasz 07 November 2014 02:30AM

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Comment author: Viliam_Bur 09 November 2014 11:14:43AM 1 point [-]

In politics, you figure out what needs to be done to solve a problem, and then spend the next several years talking to people and trying to convince them that this is the right answer, having to start the explanation basically from scratch each time you talk with a new person. I found this tedious.

Maybe there are higher-level solutions for this. For example, write a text explaining the topic, make a youtube video, or hire other people to do the explaining for you.

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 09 November 2014 11:48:41AM 5 points [-]

On the issue of copyright reform, I did try writing a number of texts, and when I came to the conclusion that I needed to cover more inferential distance than was possible in isolated texts, a book. The book was favorably received, with an extended and generally positive review in Finland's biggest newspaper among other things, but didn't ultimately seem to affect the landscape of the discussion very much, since only a limited amount of people actually bothered reading it. Maybe if we'd pushed it more aggressively in online discussions and such it could've had a bigger impact.