Consider the Most Important Facts

-9 CarlJ 22 July 2013 08:39PM

Followup to: Choose that which is most important to you

When you have written down what your own fundamental political values are, the next step is to get an understanding of all possible societies so you can see which one is best. And by best I mean that society which comes closest to meeting your criteria of what you find most valuable.

So, to construct a model for thinking about this issue two things are needed. First, a list of all possible societies. And then some lists of those facts which would seem to rule out the largest number of possible societies as not being best; it would close in on the best society. The important point for this post regards the second list, but I still have a little discussion on the scope of the first list. If it seems obvious to, more or less, look at variants of economic systems, you can skip the next section and go straight to Facts which rule out and points toward certain societies.

A list of all possible societies – How long and exhaustive should it be?
I don't know if anyone has made such an exhaustive list. One might be constructed if one takes the list of economic systems (which regards laws, institutions, and how they are produced, and some culture) from Wikipedia and imagines that each of those systems may vary somewhat by different cultural norms. Not all cultural norms are compatible with every economic systems (objectivist virtue ethics with central planning), but every system would seem to allow some variation.This means 54 broad economic systems with, let's just say, ten broad cultural variations of these. So there's approximately 500 types of societies that people discuss today to take into account.

There's an obvious limitation to all this, which is that for every type of system, that system may vary in five million ways regarding certain laws. So, the Nordic model have changed a lot during the last 25 years. And if you take each law and consider a society of this type to be able to switch that on or off, there's, from that period alone, enough laws to be changed that the total combination exceeds five million. Many of the laws are however interdependent on one another, but there's still room for enormous configuration to ”construct” different societies.

So, maybe there are around a billion to a trillion possible societies. Now, it seems obviously clear that it is wrong to start discussing what, of two quite similar possible societies are better than the other – even if each society can have one million variations.1 That is because each are highly unlikely to be the best society.

If we can make one assumption, this will be much more easy. And that is that societies which we today would consider to be more similar than others would produce more or less the same results relative to other societies. There are some areas where every society would change drastically with just a small change in that area since it would lead to drastic change in the rest of the society. These areas are of great importance when we come to changing systems, but for now I assume these areas are too few in number to be of any importance.

With this assumption we can return to look at broad systems, because if societies of one category would seem to be better than other societies, we do not need to look more closely at that sort of society. If one type of mercantilistic society looks bad compared to a free-trade economy, any other type of the former are not worth looking at again.

Again, societies have these fundamental attributes (i) some general rules regarding how their laws are structured, (ii) some definitive rules on how these rules should be changed, and (iii) cultural norms. This model is still somewhat limiting, however. It seems to assume that a society can only have only one law and so on. But that problem disappears if we assume they can be different for different time, places and people. In all, this means we're back to some 500 possible societies.

Facts which rule out and points toward certain societies
Before considering any facts that has an impact on how you view a society, all societies should appear to be equally probable of being the best. This starting point may seem strange to some. It means that one should not dismiss even the policies of Nazi Germany out of hand. That is just the starting point however. After one accumulates more and more data some societies will appear less and less probable to be on that best fulfill your criteria.

But, since you don't have time to read everything, it is necessary to construct a model of how humans (and other beings, for post-singularity issues2) function and interact, that first only considers the most important facts. This could be done in several ways.

One could begin by just following normal science and ask what general facts can explain most of observed behavior and then see what those facts would predict about all societies. That seems wise to do, in and of itself, because it forces the discussion (which will ensue with others who follow the same method) to be very methodical and well grounded in a rich theory. This can be called the general method.

But this path is not the quickest, since these general facts would probably not damn enough societies to be unsuitable to your goals. A much faster way, but which will paint a more sketchy painting, is to just list those facts which will rule out the most societies. This is quicker since it will go straight to the chase. These facts may be thought of by thinking on what assumptions certain systems rely on to work adequately and trying to figure out what facts disprove most of these assumptions. This can be called the specific method.

Then there are statements which you are uncertain about but if they were true, it would become really obvious what society is best. So, not facts actually, but those ideas which you believe are worth learning more about. These potential facts should be the ones you are pondering or those which are the root cause of many debates among those with similar goals. This can be called the search method.

Here's an illustration of all three methods. Except for the last illustration, I write my own views, but these are not my own most important facts but the 11th to 20th.

The general method:

  1. People tend to conform to popular opinion.
  2. Societies become wealthier with extended markets, more savings, gaining better knowledge, producing more advanced technology, peace, and institutions which support these activities.
  3. Man is not a perfectly rational creature but has the possibility to correct his mistakes
  4. To wield power over others one generally need superior military strength.
  5. Most people fear being ostracised.
  6. Ideologies are usually formed by the social structure, and the social structure can be changed by those ideologies.
  7. People tend to enjoy the company of those who they are similar to.
  8. On markets with freedom of entry, prices for reproducible goods tends to be as low as their cost of production.
  9. Producers who don't sell what the customers want tend to receive lower earnings.
  10. Most people are adept at spotting others mistakes, but do quite poorly on noticing their own.

The specific method:

  1. All or almost all states today have tariffs to protect a certain industry or firm from competition.
  2. Generally, to know for sure if one possible society is better than another, one must be able to discuss their respective merits and demerits.
  3. The leaders of large governments tend to have less incentive to produce collective goods, rather than private goods, relative to leaders of smaller states.
  4. Most people today in democratic states give in to pressure to support policies which they are unable to know if they actually are for their own good or not.
  5. Children can be indoctrinated to glorify mass-murderers and to want to join them as soldiers, asking nothing about the justice of their cause.
  6. People are disposed to believe that the society they grow up in is good.
  7. Most people are conservative; they dislike change.
  8. All centrally planned economies perform less well than market based economic systems.
  9. Firms tend to invest money in rent-seeking if it's profitable until the expected return is similar to normal investments.
  10. Generally, it's difficult for new facts to overturn one's ideology without a contrasting ideology and it is difficult to come up with a new one by oneself.

The search method:

  1. Political system X will best achieve my goals.
  2. Political system X leads to the best incentives for everyone to produce the most important collective goods.

Now, these facts are not simply facts. They are the tip of a theoretical ice-berg; they are interpretation of reality. As such they will not by themselves explicate what system they damn. For oneself they should be clear what they mean, but if one should discuss it with others it might be necessary to write down the points and their theoretical point of view explicitly.

In any case, if you've followed my steps you should have one candidate which seems to be best. This step might, of course, take years, but if you're confident you should next estimate how much a political action towards these societies might cost.

Notes
[1] It might seem that I'd imply that that is what most people do today when they discuss politics – which, by its nature, is usually limited to tweaking the existing system one small way here and there, instead of looking at larger changes to be made. That implication is tempting to make, but most people seem to be more engaged in a ideological debate. I'd guess, anyway – I do not know for sure.

[2] They are too hard to predict so I'll skip discussing them.

Choose that which is most important to you

-4 CarlJ 21 July 2013 10:38PM

Followup to: The Domain of Politics

To create your own political world view you need to know about societies and your own political goals/values. In this post I'll discuss the latter, and in the next post the former.

What sort of goals? Those which you wish to achieve for their own sake, and not because they simply are a means to an end. That is, those goals you value intrinsically. Or, if you believe that there exists only one ultimate goal or value, then think of those means which are not that far removed from being intrinsic goal. That is, a birthday party might be just of instrumental value but most would agree that it is more far away from the intrinsic value than, say, good tires. I will for the rest of the post assume that most people value a lot of things intrinsically, and by values I will denote intrinsic values.

So, I'd like to draw a line between values and that which achieve those values. The latter is what we're trying to figure out what they are, without first proposing what they are. Those are political systems, or parts of them; they are institutions and laws. This is not to say that these things cannot be valued for their own sake – I put value on a system, possibly for aesthetic reasons – but those values should be disentangled from the other benefit a system produces.

With that in mind, you should now list all the things you value in ranking order. To rank them is necessary since we live in a world of scarce resources, so you won't necessarily achieve all your goals, but you will want to achieve those that are most important to you.

Now, what one values may change over time, so naturally what seems to be most important may also change. That which was on place #7 may go to #1 and vice versa. That is, values are changing with new information and a change in one's condition. That said, one's political values don't probably shift all that much. And even if they do, if you can't predict how they will change, you still need them to be able to know what political system is good for you.

There are many ways to get a feel of what your most highly valued political values are. Introspection, discussing with friends, think through a number of thought experiments, read the literature on what makes most people happy, listen to what experiences have been most horrible or pleasurable to others, etc.. In any case, here's a thought experiment to help with finding your ideological preferences, should you need it:

A genie appears and it says that it will make ten wishes come true and then it will be gone forever. As this genie will make more than three wishes come true it has an added restriction: all wishes need to be political in nature. By luck you get to make the wishes – what do you wish for?

The important thing to remember is that, if you should lose one wish, you will be less sorry to give up your tenth wish than any other. And less sorry to give up the ninth wish than the eight if you lost two wishes, and so on.

To make it clearer what I mean I'll write down some of the things I value. Not my most preferred goals, but those on 11th to 20th place:

  1. Those who have trouble excelling in life should receive whatever help can be given so they may become better.
  2. If someone comes up with a previously unknown idea for improving the world, and if three knowledgeable and unrelated individuals believe the idea is very good, it should only take some hours for everyone to be able to know that this matter is of importance.
  3. Everyone should have access to some means of totally private communication.
  4. There should be no infringement on the right to develop one's mind, whatever technology one uses.
  5. All animals should be, if the technology ever becomes available, sufficiently mentally enhanced to be given the choice of whether or not to become as intelligent (or more) as humans.
  6. If it ever seems likely to be possible, we should strive towards creating a technology to resurrect the dead sooner rather than later.
  7. The civilization should be able to co-exist with other peaceful civilizations.
  8. There shouldn't be any ultimate certainty on the nature of existence or in any one reality tunnel; some balkanization of epistemology is good.
  9. Everyone who share these values should know or learn the art of creating sustainable groups for collective action.
  10. The civilization which embodies these values should continue indefinitely.

EDIT: DanielLC notes that this simple ranking wouldn't give you any information on how valuable a 90% completion of one goal is relative to a 95% completion of another goal. That information will however be important when you have to choose between incremental steps towards several different goals.

To create a ranking which displays that information, imagine that each goal you have written down can be in progress in five stages - 0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, 100% - so that it is possible to be 75% or 0% on the way to achieve any particular goal. So, for instance, the goal of having private communication for everyone might be 50% completed if half the population have access to secret communication channels, but the other half doesn't.

Next, assume your one wish (in the scenario) is divided into five parts, one for each stage. And then rank every wish again following the same rule. This will look something like this:

  1. 100% of my first goal.
  2. 100% of my second goal.
  3. 100% of my third goal.
  4. 100% of my fourth goal.
  5. 75% of my first goal.
  6. 100% of my fifth goal.
  7. 50% of my first goal.
  8. 75% of my second goal.

(This was made purely for illustrative purposes. I haven't thought the matter through completely on how much I value these incremental parts.)

Another option is to do these more fine-tuned rankings on a gut level. Just having an imprecise feeling that, somewhere being closer to goal A stops being as important as being closer to B. This should be appropriate for those areas where your uncertainty about your preferences is high or where you don't care that much about which goal gets satisfied.

Next post: "Consider the Most Important Facts"

The Domain of Politics

0 CarlJ 21 July 2013 06:30PM

Followup to: How To Construct a Political Ideology

Related to: What Do We Mean By "Rationality"?

Politics is the art of the possible.

The word 'politics' is derived from the Greek word 'poly', meaning many, and the English word 'ticks', meaning blood sucking parasites.

Politics can be inspiring; there have been several groups that have organized to achieve wonderful ends now and in the past. Such as ending slavery, the subjugation of women, and the censorship of ideas. (None of these have, however, been brought to their full completion yet.)

Politics can also be irritating. As when some politician or bureaucrat wastes money or lies in a particularly annoying way, or when the supporters of that politician or that bureau talk about the wonders of politics while ignoring all its bad parts. (Politics can also be horrible and devastating.)

Predictably, some of us who find politics today to be more irritating than inspiring will define politics somewhat differently. For some, politics is ”a relic of a barbaric past” because politics always entails the threat of violence, and if we should ever find ourselves in a better state of affairs, politics will have had nothing to do with it. But many others would contend that wherever there's civic life there's politics – for some that's true even in a stateless society.

So, there's a little disagreement on the definition of politics. For my part, I will use the latter definition, which contends that politics deals with certain areas of life – regarding civic life, elections, war, fund-raising for a cause, influencing cultural norms, establishing alliances and so on. This is almost the same as the definition used by Wiktionary, but it seems to have a broader focus than the one used by Wikipedia. The goal of political action can then be said to be to act rationally in this domain, just as one would act rationally in any other domain.

That definition isn't too detailed, so let me try and give a fuller definition. I will do that by introducing a hypothetical scenario which explores some fundamental political strategies:

You live in a village by a river, and you are interested in building a bridge across it.  But a fisherman also lives in the village and if you'd build the bridge it would make it difficult for him to fish during that time. No one else will be directly effected by this project. You bring up the issue with the fisherman and ask what he thinks about all this.

The fisherman could then have two basic attitudes towards your project: it would  either be a concern for him or it wouldn't. If it is the latter, then you are not in any conflict, but have a (weak) harmonious relationship. All that remains is for you to build the bridge, which I'll discuss later.

First, let's assume that the fisherman opposes your plans. Let us assume that he is willing to physically prevent you from building the bridge. What can you do then, given that you still want to construct the bridge? It seems only these six general strategies are available:

Persuasion  – You can try to convince the fisherman that it is in his best interest that the bridge be built, or that the construction will not disturb him so much as he believes. That is, convince him that the project will not become problematic for him.

Deceit – You can try to convince the fisherman that the construction won't be problematic, while lying.

Trade - You take his stated preferences, true or not, as given and you offer him something in return for letting you build the bridge.

Threat – You offer to give him something/do something to him which he does not want, if he doesn't let you build the bridge.

Bypass – You ignore the fisherman and try to build the bridge without him knowing about it.

Force – You can try to physically stop him from preventing you to build the bridge. As in, hitting him on the head, poisoning him or locking him up. 

(There might be other strategies I've missed, but for now it's not necessary to know all fundamental strategies.)

Suppose now that the fisherman doesn't mind at all that you build the bridge. Well then, what happens  now?

Well, either you  want the help of others in doing this or not. If not, there's no more politics. If you do want the help of others, and they are willing to help you, then everything is also settled. But, if they do not want to help you right away, then you can use persuasion, deceit, exchange, threats and force. Bypassing is not an option here, since that would be pointless.

Each option entails costs, and they could all have too high a cost so that there's no point in going forth with anything.  In that case, it's time to do something else. On the other hand, the cost for each mode of action might be so low that any option is advantageous. In that case the only prudent move is to choose whatever has the lowest cost, the one which let's you pursue and reach the largest number of your most highly valued ends. The point is that not only does an option have costs in money and time but it can also affect any further actions in, at least, two ways. First off, if the action should fail, some, or all, of the other options might become totally improbable to succeed. And secondly, even if the action succeeds, it might have some negative effects in other non-political circumstances, making it less likely to achieve your goals. Thus, the costs worth pondering are the opportunity costs of an action - the loss is what you otherwise could have achieved.

It seems  that every political problem can be seen through the lens of this framework. Both for, loosely speaking, dealing with conflicts and producing values. What about upholding laws that support certain property rights? Well, you can persuade or force those who disagree with the norms to accept them. You can even bargain with them. What about helping those who are addicted to drugs? Same thing, you can either get their consent or choose to force them. Everything can ultimately be seen as how you interact with others.

What does this then tell us about the goal of political action? Well suppose you need to interact with others regarding the bridge-project (either with the fisherman or someone else). You will need to perceive the effects of each path and compare their effects to choose whichever is most beneficial to you.  After that has been solved, that should be the end of politics. But, what does it mean to solve the problem? Well, what goals will be harder to reach if you choose to trick the fisherman into letting you build the bridge? That depends on a lot of circumstances, but, for most villages, I'd guess you lose any chance of being on really good terms with the fisherman, and you'd lose favour with most people in the village (if you weren't already dominant in the village). And what if you'd traded with others to get their help in constructing the bridge? You'd only lost the money, probably.

Now, maybe this doesn't feel like that hard of a problem. But let's suppose that you will face one thousand such scenarios in your life, every one of which are intertwined with each other. That is, you will want to build a bridge, but you may also want to be friends to friends of the fisherman, be on good terms with everyone in the village, be secure in your property rights, help fund the building of a local town hall, change the current law on building-restrictions, support the abolishment of the Bakers' guild, do a whole lot of ordinary things and so on. Now your choice in one area will have to fit with every other area. Or, at least those you care about the most.

All of this calls for you to create a meta-strategy; a grand plan plan so all those small plans are compatible with each other and will produce the most benefit to you. How to make that plan and follow it through is the essence of political choice, it's an essential part of your goal in politics.

To know what plan to choose you need to know two things: (1) what your political values/goals are and (2) what sort of political system (society) would be best in promoting your goals.

If you know everything about your preferences, but nothing about societies, then you can't support any complex system without running the risk of supporting something which is totally detrimental to your values. If you, on the other hand, know everything about how societies function but are, somehow, unable to know what you really want, then you cannot decide what society to strive towards.

The next two posts will discuss these two issues - first goals and thereafter means.

Next post: "Choose that which is most important to you"

How To Construct a Political Ideology

-2 CarlJ 21 July 2013 03:00PM

Related to: Hold Off On Proposing Solutions, Logical Rudeness

Politics is sometimes hard to discuss. Partly since most of us seem to unconsciously take political matters with the same degree of seriousness as our forefathers used to, because we use the same mode of thought as they used to. Back then, a bad political choice or alliance, could mean death, while the normal cost today in a democratic society might be ridicule for having supported the losing team or position.

Nevertheless, politics should be taken seriously. Bad politics means that it'll take longer for us humans to reach world peace, an end to hunger and disease, and favourable conditions so that no one will create an unfriendly AI. Therefore, discussing  politics is vital so that, someday, some collective actions could be performed to alter the political course for the better.

But what should that collective action be? - what should the new course(s) be? - and who should do it? - and what does "for the better" imply? To engage in politics one needs to be able to give some (implicit or explicit) answers to these questions. This can be done, and in so doing one has constructed a political ideology - which might be similar to existing ideologies or it might be different.

A political ideology might be constructed in various ways. In this and a few more posts I will propose one way of doing that. These posts might be seen as a tutorial in constructing a political ideology. In these posts I will not suggest an answer to what the best political system should be, nor will I follow my own instructions. But if one should follow these instructions I believe that one can answer the questions mentioned above.

Political ideologies might be constructed in various other ways. The one I discuss in my following posts is based on two principles: (1) that one should not propose an answer until one has thought about the question extensively, and (2) that one should consider the most important questions first.

Before writing the next post, here are the points I will discuss in each of them - I will write the posts as an instruction manual so I'll address you, dear reader, through them out:

  • what is politics, what is the goal of engaging in politics?
  • what are your most highly valued political goals?
  • what facts (and interpretations) can explain most societal features, what facts/interpretations will damn most societies as not ideal?
  • how much does it cost to engage in political action?
  • what are the most important facts concerning political strategies?
  • some thoughts on alliances, representatives and conspiracies.
  • some thoughts on discussing politics generally.

Next post "The Domain of Politics"