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is4junk comments on Open thread, Jan. 26 - Feb. 1, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Politics as entertainment
For many policy questions I normally foresee long term 'obvious' issues that will arise from them. However, I also believe in a Singularity of some sort in that same time frame. And when I re-frame the policy question as will this impact the Singularity or matter after the Singularity the answer is usually no to both.
Of course, there is always the chance of no Singularity but I don't give it much weight.
So my question is: Has anyone successfully moved beyond the policy questions (emotionally)? Follow up question: once you are beyond them do you look at them more as entertainment like which sports team is doing better? Or do you use them for signalling?
I just read a crapton of political news for a couple years until I was completely sick of it.
I also kind of live in a bubble, in terms of economic security, such that most policy debates don't realistically impact me.
High belief in a near singularity is unnecessary.
Overdosing on politics to become desensitized is genius. However, I seem to have too high of tolerance for it.
The singularity aspect is more of a personal inconsistency I need to address. I can't think that the long term stuff doesn't matter and have a strong opinion on the long term issues.
This reminds me forcefully with some of the politics associated with apocalypitic rapture theology. "X doesn't matter, Jesus is coming."
There is a line in the Talmud about how if one is busy planting a tree and someone comes to tell you the Messiah has come, you should finish planting the tree before you check it out.
I think I can pretty confidently say "yes." Well, emotions are still there, but I think they are more like the kinds of emotions a doctor might feel as he considers a cancer spreading through a patient and the tools they have to deal with it, not the sort of excitement politics in particular provokes.
Well, you are free to do what you want at that point, but I think economists look at them as scientific questions, ones that are quite important, though often not as important as people seem to think.
I am working on a series of articles about economics, and I would like one mini-series to be "How To Think About Policy" or something to that effect....