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James_Miller comments on I have just donated $10,000 to the Immortality Bus, which was the most rational decision of my life - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (79)
Zoltan is articulate, extremely good looking, and willing to put in a lot of work to become president. Imagine one or both of the major U.S. political parties becomes discredited and Zoltan gets significant financial support from a high-tech billionaire. He could then have a non-trivial chance of becoming president, although the odds of this ever happening is still under .1%.
But what he talks about is completely unaligned with what 99% of the electorate gives half a shit about. Even though I suppose recent political-theater events in the united states proves that giving off a strong crackpot vibe is not an automatic disqualification, there is that to contend with.
I'd guess less than 5% chance for each major party to get discredited, maybe 50% chance that after that a high-tech billionaire decides it's a good time to try to shape politics, maybe a 2% chance that s/he chooses Zoltan, and no more than a 20% chance that Zoltan wins after all that happens. I make that about a 0.0005% chance, being quite generous.
So, yeah, "remotely theoretically possible" is about as far as it goes.
Billionaires attempt to shape politics right now and I don't see why would they stop. I think that the 50% chance is actually a 100% chance. However the probability of choosing specifically Zoltan I would estimate as considerably less than 2%.
If both parties become discredited I say at least 80% chance that more than one high-tech billionaire will try to shape politics, but otherwise a good estimate.
A chance under 0.1% sounds trivial to me.