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There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing

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Re: There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing

#481

Post by Guvante »

pluralmonad wrote: post #284
graemep wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative is worse. No government at all implies anarchy which is worse that all but the very worst governments, and from which IMO some form of government will emerge anyway.

Why is highly organized/systematized violence preferable?

A government that cannot commit violence is toothless.

How do you enforce court rulings?

We shouldn't be ignorant of how the violence is committed and restrictions should be numerous and enforced for sure.

But presuming a meaningful government that cannot commit violence can exist is unrealistic.

Re: There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing

#482

Post by Guvante »

wffurr wrote: post #267
Guvante wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the one hand giving parties more power sounds a little gross. On the other hand I don't know a solve for every bill having less than a handful of votes that are bipartisan...

3 or 5 member multi-member voting districts determined by a geographic clustering algorithm using approval voting.

Honestly I am surprised that tackling a method of easily collecting approval votes hasn't been done yet.

Like even in the abstract "here is what a voting sheet would look like" that isn't meaningfully more complex.

To be clear I think it is a hard problem and so far is the biggest detractor to alternative voting schemes.

However given all that I agree with your point that it is a meaningful path forward.

Re: There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing

#483

Post by PaulHoule »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #385
PaulHoule wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a certain argument that people are just in over their heads for a society as large and complex as our and we just can’t cut it. Nothing that won’t be fixed by overshoot.

Don't worry. AI will fix that. I repeat - don't worry.

AI doesn’t have skin in the game

Re: There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing

#485

Post by no-name-here »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #404
theahura wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all the things that are good will rise to the top, but most of the things that rise to the top will be good. We've gotten pretty good at ranking systems as a species at this point, I'd say

It really depends on what kind of "good" you're optimizing for. I'd point towards Instagram as a good counterexample: their signup page says that you can "See everyday moments from your close friends.", but most Instagram users see very few such moments, because the algorithm points them towards ragebait reels and thirst traps. If there's a 100x explosion of games, I think it's very likely that organic discovery will…

But for your IG example, isn’t that probably because although most people may claim they want to see everyday moments from friends, people in real life actually click more on the “thirst traps” etc?

Re: There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing

#487

Post by pembrook »

popularrecluse wrote: post #259
pembrook wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Government is fine if it’s done by people that aren’t in it only for themselves." Academic studies consistently show that people attracted to a career in politics (regardless of affiliation) score higher on "Dark Triad" personality traits (narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy). And even for the non-sociopaths, the problem with humans is instinctively we ARE only in it for ourselves and our family. Anyone…

Some people are wired such that altruism makes them feel good and gives them a sense of purpose. Maybe it's evolutionary, but it doesn't change the fact that they don't think of it as 'virtue signalling' or personal gain when they do it. In fact the ones who can only classify the behavior as such because they can't even comprehend it look like the real sociopaths.

If doing the thing makes them feel good then they’re doing it for personal gain?

I don’t know why people hate acknowledging the reality that humans are 1st person actors.

The system we have works because it converts this pursuit of personal gain into broader humanity gain, tying those incentives together where possible, even if imperfect.

Refusing to acknowledge this and instead pretending politicians can be selfless has resulted in the worlds worst atrocities like the communist experiments of last century.

Re: There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing

#488

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

no-name-here wrote: post #485
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really depends on what kind of "good" you're optimizing for. I'd point towards Instagram as a good counterexample: their signup page says that you can "See everyday moments from your close friends.", but most Instagram users see very few such moments, because the algorithm points them towards ragebait reels and thirst traps. If there's a 100x explosion of games, I think it's very likely that organic discovery will…

But for your IG example, isn’t that probably because although most people may claim they want to see everyday moments from friends, people in real life actually click more on the “thirst traps” etc?

It is, but I don't think you can infer a revealed preference from that. It's perfectly consistent for someone to want to avoid thirst traps because they know they're too inclined to click.

Re: There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing

#489

Post by dudeinhawaii »

I don't want to pile onto the conspiracy thinking but I was just wondering how Anthropic was going to foot the bill for the clearly larger and more expensive model being run on millions of Claude Code subscriptions, subsidized until the 22nd.

I thought for sure they'd turn it off sooner rather than later because the deadline would create a rush to get as much Fable usage as possible.

So, it would be logical to utilize any number of approaches to turn off usage...

It would be massively beneficial to Anthropic to have the government be the big baddie here. I'll withhold judgement until Fable comes back online - because it will. Will it come back online "unfortunately" just after the 22nd and, shucks, everyone will have to pay for token usage now?

Re: There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing

#490

Post by trimethylpurine »

dxdm wrote: post #268
trimethylpurine wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's vastly more to politics than that. I thought so in my teens. But now I know that I was naive. How can you be sure that you're not?

It's stupidly obvious. Politics is about how we organize government and distribute power to solve the problems of living together as a society of individuals. "Big" vs "small" government is a particular way of interpreting one aspect of that. It's an important aspect and a useful perspective, but even if taken at face value it completely neglects other important things like the rules for making policy and their actua…

Oh everything you said makes sense so long as I imagine wrongly that everyone is doing what's best for society, and that's why they got into politics.

But politics is really about negotiating ownership in companies that the politician will approve for government projects. And if you aren't doing that, then no other politicians will care to work with you, because it's not profitable for them. You'll be an irrelevant politician that accomplished nothing.

Which side of the aisle you sit on is more typically about where your lobbyists' marketing team agreed would better depict their brand, actually having very little to do with big or small government. Both sides want big government because it means more money for big projects for companies that they will or do own in part.

Sorry to dishearten you if you planned on going into politics.

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