31–40 of 200 posts
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Today's social structures exist because they evolved through history and shifting incentives. I sometimes wonder if we could design a better system today taking today's knowledge of psychology (and psychopathology) into account and optimizing for values we have today like freedom, balance of power and equality of opportunity.
Yes, trivially. The tricky part is building a system that the median citizen (and the officers in the military) can verify has been optimised that way vs competing, poorly optimised systems that sound good. Factor in the median citizen has maybe a couple of hours to do research, isn't very principled and doesn't understand game theory well. Also consider that high status people are perfectly happy to set up an "exper…
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Banning campaigning would go a long way. The state already mails out voter information containing a little stump speech of each registered candidate at least for Californian elections. Further advertisement is purely propaganda and leads to establishment victories over merit and a genuinely attractive platform.
Are stump speeches not propaganda? I don't see why the election system should privilege candidates whose political views are most compellingly expressed in quick little text blurbs.
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Banning campaigning would go a long way. The state already mails out voter information containing a little stump speech of each registered candidate at least for Californian elections. Further advertisement is purely propaganda and leads to establishment victories over merit and a genuinely attractive platform.
> Banning campaigning would go a long way. With tongue in cheek, that qualifies you as the "people like Stalin" category. Not a good idea.
If you enjoy even a smidge of this, please look at other articles/series on their blog, ACOUP is absolutely phenomenal and I've not seen many writers (here also historian and tenured professor) both be so accessible and graspable while having a deep and nuanced understanding of the situation AND providing ample sources. 10/10 couldn't recommend more. I believe the Sparta series is the most popular, but I really enjoy…
I've enjoyed Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond recently. If you have read it, how does it compare?
As a side note, I've read some interesting critiques on Diamond's theories. But I did find the whole book to be an interesting perspective, even just thinking about things North America lacked such as animal husbandry that may have drastically changed the way it developed.
I have heard about that a few times now. But this series really emphasizes how much surplus labor the rich could extract. And hence shows how much social impact it had when that labor reduced, and could suddenly negotiate.
I wonder if the black death, and subsequent social change, might have been the best thing to happen to the peasant class.
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Banning campaigning would go a long way. The state already mails out voter information containing a little stump speech of each registered candidate at least for Californian elections. Further advertisement is purely propaganda and leads to establishment victories over merit and a genuinely attractive platform.
Being able to give a good speech is merit when the goal is to select a leader.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Today's social structures exist because they evolved through history and shifting incentives. I sometimes wonder if we could design a better system today taking today's knowledge of psychology (and psychopathology) into account and optimizing for values we have today like freedom, balance of power and equality of opportunity.
Yes, trivially. The tricky part is building a system that the median citizen (and the officers in the military) can verify has been optimised that way vs competing, poorly optimised systems that sound good. Factor in the median citizen has maybe a couple of hours to do research, isn't very principled and doesn't understand game theory well. Also consider that high status people are perfectly happy to set up an "exper…
Has anyone tried to write a constitution based on all this? Not with the expectation that it will actually be used, but as a way to teach these important theories and give a good example of how they can be applied to law?
Someone has already written a "here's how to bootstrap modern technology again if all is lost" book. We also need a "here's how to write a constitution that wont immediately be twisted into a bludgeon against the people" book.
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Banning campaigning would go a long way. The state already mails out voter information containing a little stump speech of each registered candidate at least for Californian elections. Further advertisement is purely propaganda and leads to establishment victories over merit and a genuinely attractive platform.
File this under Lies Engineers Believe About Political Science.
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Our current regime lies through their teeth daily. Like obvious, completely made up lies. Every. Day. It's not a misunderstanding. One side is pushing for authoritarianism, one is not. One can be negotiated with by voting, the other, violence. I'm so fuckin tired of pretending there is just some kind of misunderstanding between both "sides".
No, the video makes the point that it's not really a misunderstanding, there are fundamentally different values in tension. If you believe in and value hierarchy then authoritarianism is natural and desirable, the lies are just for assuaging your less committed or more sensitive allies and befuddling your enemies.