[zahlman]

> It's not the bias the problem, it's the conviction of being better and "less wrong" than the rest of us.

There is not any such conviction. This is just your interpretation of a domain name, which is not intended that way.

> That, along with constantly calling yourself rational

This is explicitly not what you are supposed to do, and the point is explicitly not to create an identity around it.

[justonepost2]

https://xcancel.com/tenobrus/status/2023473440364392850#m

[g-b-r]

Oh, they're working to instate a dictatorship, they're not that bad...

[justonepost2]

For the record, I’m not saying this particular loser on twitter will ever have the power to institute a dictatorship.

But it is insane to say that EA and rationalism* are not about believing you are superior and more rational than your peers, or that most EA/rats don’t make an identity out of it (look at any of their online presences). Anthropic literally exists to funnel money and influence to its EA/rat cofounders and early investors, who sincerely believe that they and they alone are smart and rational enough to shepherd our society through its “technological adolescence”. I wish people who agree with this would at least be honest about it.

[g-b-r]

Ok, less wrong every day; we have some rationalists here, whether you think yourself as rational or not let's get an idea of how rational you actually are: do you agree with the views of @tenobrus mentioned below (https://xcancel.com/tenobrus/status/2023473440364392850), specifically that humanity should be placed under a dictatorship?

I know he's EA, but let's not pretend that EA is so distinct from the rationalist community.

[eudamoniac]

I'm not a rationalist and I don't know who these people are. As far as I can tell they're a bunch of online weirdos who don't matter. But as for that statement, "humanity will be far far better off if they're subjected to the values of effective altruists," that depends on the values in question, which haven't been explained in this thread. But there is definitely a set of values that exists that humanity would be better off subjected to than pure democracy. This is different from supporting an undefined alignment dictatorship in the abstract.

Everyone implicitly believes the above when they believe the concept of a "backwards society" can even exist, or when they think their own society would be better if their lost candidate had power. In both cases you think that there exist a set of values that are better to live under than what the democratic process resulted in.

I think actually most people believe this about their own values. I could find you infinite posts online that say "humanity would be better off if the other political party was gone [and my political party had sole power]"

[g-b-r]

There might (might, see later) be a set of values, but there definitely isn't anyone or anything that, given dictatorial powers, can be trusted in applying such values forever fairly without abusing or misusing their power.

I'm far from sure that even the rationalists' god-like AI could play that role, even in the extremely unlikely hypothesis that it will materialize at some point.

Not to mention that the best set of values could change with the circumstances, and most of all values are a vague concept, WAY too vague to make a dictator behave properly in all circumstances, even if he were somehow compelled to always follow them.

> humanity would be better off if the other political party was gone [and my political party had sole power]"

Even people wishing that don't necessarily long for a dictatorship, far from it; you could wish for the party you loathe to not exist, but still want everything else of your democratic system to stay unchanged (the possible parties are infinite, removing one doesn't necessarily turn your system into a single-party system).

[eudamoniac]

Well you're arguing that dictatorship must be perfect ("applying such values forever fairly without abusing") to be better than democracy. It doesn't need to be infallibly perfect, it just needs to be better than democracy, which is also not perfect.

[g-b-r]

What you wrote means that you're potentially in favor of a dictatorship, by the way?

Can I ask you if it's an idea you developed yourself or you read about it somewhere?

[eudamoniac]

I have trouble understanding the problem with a benevolent dictatorship, yes. Obviously in real life there are all kinds of problems that arise due to human nature. In an abstract sense, a benevolent philosopher king is better than democracy.

I don't think I read about this, it just seems obvious that if a truly great intelligent leader leads a country it's better than the stupid masses voting about things.

[HDThoreaun]

Im in favor of benevolent dictatorship. The big problem is ensuring the benevolence