Sorry for the slightly clickbait-y title.
Some commenters have expressed, in the last open thread, their disappointment that figureheads from or near the rationality sphere seemed to have lost their cool when it came to this US election: when they were supposed to be calm and level-headed, they instead campaigned as if Trump was going to be the Basilisk incarnated.
I've not followed many commenters, mainly Scott Alexander and Eliezer Yudkowsky, and they both endorsed Clinton. I'll try to explain what were their arguments, briefly but as faithfully as possible. I'd like to know if you consider them mindkilled and why.
Please notice: I would like this to be a comment on methodology, about if their arguments were sound given what they knew and believed. I most definitely do not want this to decay in a lamentation about the results, or insults to the obviously stupid side, etc.
Yudkowsky made two arguments against Trump: level B incompetence and high variance. Since the second is also more or less the same as Scott's, I'll just go with those.
Level B incompetence
Eliezer attended a pretty serious and wide diplomatic simulation game, that made him appreciate how difficult is to just maintain a global equilibrium between countries and avoid nuclear annihilation. He says that there are three level in politics:
- level 0, where everything that the media report and the politicians say is taken at face value: every drama is true, every problem is important and every cry of outrage deserves consideration;
- level A, where you understand that politics is as much about theatre and emotions as it is about policies: at this level players operate like in pro-wrestling, creating drama and conflict to steer the more gullible viewers towards the preferred direction; at this level cinicism is high and almost every conflict is a farce and probably staged.
But the bucket doesn't stop here. As the diplomacy simulation taught him, there's also:
- level B, where everything becomes serious and important again. At this level, people work very hard at maintaining the status quo (where outside you have mankind extinction), diplomatic relations and subtle international equilibria shield the world from much worse outcomes. Faux pas at this level in the past had resulted in wars, genocides and general widespread badness.
In August fifty Republican security advisors signed a letter condemning Trump for his position on foreign policy: these are, Yudkowsky warned us, exactly those level B player, and they are saying us that Trump is an ill advised choice.
Trump might be a fantastic level A player, but he is an incompetent level B player, and this might very well turn to disaster.
High variance
The second argument is a more general version of the first: if you look at a normal distribution, it's easy to mistake only two possibilities: you either can do worst than the average, or better. But in a three dimensional world, things are much more complicated. Status quo is fragile (see the first argument), surrounded not by an equal amount of things being good or being bad. Most substantial variations from the equilibrium are disasters, and if you put a high-variance candidate, someone whose main point is to subvert the status quo, in charge, then with overwhelming probability you're headed off to a cliff.
People who voted for Trump are unrealistically optimists, thinking that civilization is robust, the current state is bad and variations can definitely help with getting away from a state of bad equilibrium.
You know , there was one other guy who wasn't preoccupied at all about the other team's welfare , that guy was John Von Neumann and were he able to have it his way he would have cold bloodedly killed 600 millions people between USSR and China in 1955 when US had B52s and thermonuclear bombs ironed out , while he could have used his intelligence and technical wisdom to deescalate tension with the ultimate goal of getting rid of nuclear weapons altogether . Irony of the ironies he died relatively young because of a cancer probably developed working on the bomb , exactly like his soviets counterparts...he'd have had more chances of surviving if american , soviet and chinese researchers would have been able to talk to each other and exchange informations on potential life saving treatments . Besides that I don't even mention the damage that wiping out 600 millions people would have done to the world's economy , the world would have been a very different place if Von Neumann succeeded in acting his personal version of the final solution
There is only one team and that's team humanity , the prostate cancer which kills a russian citizen is the same identical disease which would take your life if you're unlucky enough to develop one , so given that ever since we (almost) stopped killing each other over land we enjoyed a prosperity which has no precedent in the history of our specie and it is mostly correlated with the fact that there are more humans around to solve our common problems , so how about we keep it that way? Also how about we increase the number of humans around and we lift them from poverty so they'd be able to contribute to the economy and together find a solution to our common problems (energy crisis , diseases , aging , AI) ?
Also I agree with you that the "preserve every pulse" kind of thinking could lead to an impractical situation , but I also think that the correct approach for this issue is the "in medio stat virtus" approach being something like "If you create damages to society which are greater than your contribution to it for a continued period of e.g. 5 years" your life would not be worth preserving
Such danger only exists because Russian people are possibly even worse than americans at spotting con-artists and calling them out on their BS (europeans seems to be better than anyone else at doing this , maybe because they suffered so much in the past when they failed to do it) , so they praise and elevate Putin as a modern day czar because their life conditions sensibly improved with respect to the Yeltsin years , but they fail to see how much power and wealth is concentrated in the hands of their president who is able to casually steal 1 billion dollars from the State budget to build a private palace on the Black Sea . It is the support of Russian people which enables Putin to threaten the world with the apocalyptic scenario of a nuclear war , but as the Arab Spring proved such support is not destined to go on forever , dictators get only deposed when the people of that country collectively think that their lives would be better without him....if all the westerners who waste time every day watching Netflix or playing video games dedicated that time to talk with their Russian counterparts through the internet , provide them information which would not be otherwise available given the regime's propaganda and yes , even send them 0.5BTC whenever they can to show support and compassion a dictator like Putin would be deposed and hanged within 6 months , much to the relief of people living in adjacent countries (whose suffering you seem to ignore and perhaps more importantly role in the world's economy you seem to ignore) and the rest of the world
This honestly seems a phrase straight off a propaganda poster , are you even aware of the costs in terms of brainpower and capital which are wasted every year on the military? Think of what could be accomplished if such resources were redirected towards research and basic research ( AI , FAI , WBE , nuclear fusion , brain understanding , consciousness understanding..)
So are you seriously claiming that you can't see the correlation between number of humans alive on the Earth and average quality of life and progress achieved by our specie?
Yeah right , because Putin putting his hands on the mineral rich and fertile soils of Ukraine is a totally desirable outcome for the world's economy
And that , my friend is the line of thinking which caused the outbreak of every war in the history of our specie , also electing a guy who spent 5 millions dollars to have his bathroom completely gold plated seems the best way to ensure american prosperity /s , also you continuously mention Putin , Trump is the presidential candidate who resembles him the most , except for maybe one thing that would sure impress the donald the first time he'll meet him , Putin speaks a fluent english with a marked BBC accent , you could almost say that between the 2 , the Russian from St. Petersburg has the better words
Mark my words he will , and he will channel public money through his companies in order to build it , he'll try to pull it off in the 2 years before the midterm elections...that would be something very Putinesque of him (see the similarities between the two are recurrent )
Just want to say I didn't downvote you man. It is actually really good for my argument that no sooner do I say:
"We want different things from Yudkowsky and he is wrong that we want the same things and are stupid", than someone shows up to say "Actually you just need me to contempt at you until you start wanting the same things as me."
Libs, this happens literally all the time. We can't go anywhere without the John Oliver / Ernestdezoe's of the world appearing to sneer at us. Do the experiment if you like. Make any conservative argume... (read more)