True, but you do need a platform that promises, at the very least, a direction that your policies are taking you. If, during your term, you completely neglect everything you talked about while running, you'll take a hit in the next election (unless you've miraculously been so effective during those 4/5 years that everyone is convinced you know better than them).
And if the point is to be the best liar and then do what you want in office, uh, why even have elections?
"solution to government" means "solution to the problem of how organise society".
If "except for all the others" only includes those that have been tried, then I mostly agree. But if it includes all possible forms of social organisation, I strongly disagree. The idea that we've reached the best solution and it barely works is similar to the idea that we will never solve death. Either of those could be true, but there is not nearly evidence to stop us from trying.
The complexity of politics that these arguments demonstrate (and the "error of the crowds" itself) makes democracy a seemingly futile solution to government. It would take an enormously skilled tactician to win the vote by selling actually useful policies to a population that prefers simple rhetoric aligning with their color.
They would need:
They disagree in exactly the way gjm mentions below. Experts are climate scientists and scientists in related fields. Some politicians may be included as 'experts' in terms of solutions, too, I suppose. They disagree about the severity, cause, timeline and solution. And not by some trivial amount, but by enough to drastically shift priorities.
Also, while this is a reply to Eliezer's 2007 comment, I'm aware the situation has changed. I really just want to know how to begin to form a rational belief about climate change as of now.
I find climate change a str...
I'm not sure what emotion it is, but I would hypothesize that it comes from tribal survival habits. Group cohesion was existentially important in the tribal prehuman/early-human era. Being accurate and correct with your beliefs was important, but not as important as sharing the same beliefs as the tribe.
So we developed methods of fitting into our tribes despite it requiring us to believe paradoxical and irrational things that should be causing cognitive dissonance.
Link to Orwell's paper is broken. New one: http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit/
The "overcomplicating the question" link is broken and I can't find the article on that site anymore. But this looks like the same one: http://www.yudkowsky.net/singularity/simplified/
And the next link is here, I think: http://www.yudkowsky.net/singularity/ai-risk/
"Technical explanation of technical explanation" link is broken.
Here's a working one: http://www.yudkowsky.net/rational/technical/
"Go back and not have children"
Ehh, I don't think that's a valid question to ask someone with kids. It's effectively, "would you prefer your children not be alive right now?" Or, "do you consider your children mistakes now that you've raised them?".
I'm not sure what the optimal way to phrase the question would be but maybe:
"If your biological age was reset to 20, would you start another family?" Or "If you could give advice to the parallel universe you who is 25 years younger, would you tell him to have kids?"
Hmm, those still aren't great.