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Alsadius comments on A bit of word-dissolving in political discussion - Less Wrong Discussion

2 [deleted] 07 December 2014 05:05PM

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Comment author: Alsadius 07 December 2014 10:27:21PM 3 points [-]

I was going to make exactly this point. Very few ideas get to 100% on their own, but it's obvious which ideas are winning and which are losing at most given times. A policy can be implemented more strongly with state power, but state power selects for ideas that pass the political sausage-making process, not for ideas that are actually good or right. Capitalist success is a much better filter for idea quality than government is(in large part, because the sorts of people who run governments tend to be ones who pick a few values to elevate and lose perspective on the importance of others).