Politics is Truly the Mind-Killer Friday, Aug 7 2009
politics 3:50 am
Jamais Cascio has a post up on politics that argues we should beat the hell out of anyone that tries to move beyond politics. Here was my response:
Jamais, see here for a rejoinder from Peter. A passage in it seems especially relevant in light of this post, which seems like the most angry I’ve ever read on this blog:
“I believe that politics is way too intense. That’s why I’m a libertarian. Politics gets people angry, destroys relationships, and polarizes peoples’ vision: the world is us versus them; good people versus the other.”
I believe that enhanced intelligence will introduce differential goals of a different character than we can currently predict, goal differentials that at our current level of intelligence we cannot comprehend. So I would not say that politics would be eliminated after a Singularity, but its nature would be changed so much that our present-day thinking would become largely irrelevant to it.
Let me quote a blog post originally from Overcoming Bias, “Politics is the Mind-Killer”:
People go funny in the head when talking about politics. The evolutionary reasons for this are so obvious as to be worth belaboring: In the ancestral environment, politics was a matter of life and death. And sex, and wealth, and allies, and reputation… When, today, you get into an argument about whether “we” ought to raise the minimum wage, you’re executing adaptations for an ancestral environment where being on the wrong side of the argument could get you killed. Being on the right side of the argument could let you kill your hated rival!
If you want to make a point about science, or rationality, then my advice is to not choose a domain from contemporary politics if you can possibly avoid it. If your point is inherently about politics, then talk about Louis XVI during the French Revolution. Politics is an important domain to which we should individually apply our rationality - but it’s a terrible domain in which to learn rationality, or discuss rationality, unless all the discussants are already rational.
Politics is an extension of war by other means. Arguments are soldiers. Once you know which side you’re on, you must support all arguments of that side, and attack all arguments that appear to favor the enemy side; otherwise it’s like stabbing your soldiers in the back - providing aid and comfort to the enemy. People who would be level-headed about evenhandedly weighing all sides of an issue in their professional life as scientists, can suddenly turn into slogan-chanting zombies when there’s a Blue or Green position on an issue.
Even though Jamais is usually cordial on his blog, he seems to get very aggressive when it comes to the suggestion that we move beyond typical politics. Fortunately, much of modern day politics seems to revolve around human instincts which will become subject to deep modification and improvement moving forward.
To have a sensible discussion of politics and whether or not it will be eliminated or changed forever after discontinuous technological change would require an extensive definition of what we mean by politics, breaking it down into sub-concepts, and analyzing each of those sub-concepts independently. But such a subtle analysis is difficult when political arguments are soldiers and carry so much moral valence.
August 7th, 2009 at 8:05 am
Fortunately, much of modern day politics seems to revolve around human instincts which will become subject to deep modification and improvement moving forward.
Michael, that statement echoes the shallow hope that Jamais lampooned — “After we can reengineer the brain, we can do away with conflict and disagreement” — so closely that I wonder if you did it on purpose, or perhaps subconsciously.
By claiming to be above politics (or at least beyond passionate disagreement), you are removing yourself from the arena within which the future is actually created. Moreover, that separatist approach, all too common among singularitarians, is part of what makes the movement so prone to quasi-religious comparisons.
You might as well say, “Yes, I look like a duck, walk like a duck, and quack like a duck, but I am NOT a duck!” Until you can step back and see how blinkered your attitudes really are, all your protestations will accomplish next to nothing.
August 7th, 2009 at 8:17 am
I don’t think that politics will be eliminated, and it seems likely that mindless slogan chanting will continue for some time. But politics will undoubtedly change, because the issues will change. The sorts of issues which dominate the political arena by the mid 21st century will be quite different from the ones we have today. If you think race or sex or abortion are controversial topics, you ain’t seen nothing yet. GNR technologies, although mostly below the political radar today, are going to eventually raise fundamental issues which will not be easy to ignore.
Also, I agree that otherwise intelligent people can be turned into zombies by political or religious ideologies, with surprising ease and efficiency. At some point, most people just suspend their critical faculties and go with the wisdom of the crowd, even if the crowd is less intelligent than they are.
August 7th, 2009 at 8:39 am
> human instincts which will become subject to deep
> modification and improvement moving forward.
Especially given your understanding of morality as arbitrary and driven by instinct, yet of the greatest value, this is a dangerous idea. Once you can change the human mind directly, 1984-style scenarios rise to a whole new level of scariness.
August 7th, 2009 at 8:39 am
@Mike T. — To improve the heat/light ratio of public policy debates, it is only necessary that we feel less threatened, become enraged with greater difficulty, and make decisions with less urgency and greater circumspection. It is certainly not necessary, or even advisable, to “eliminate conflict and disagreement” entirely.
But to watch the left and right tirelessly shouting past each other for years on end does not inspire confidence in the ability of Humanity 1.0 to resolve political challenges wisely, and may lead some to despair of any significant improvement in that direction, and thus lead them to renounce politics.
“If you’re just going to yell at me, I’m hanging up.” That sort of thing.
August 7th, 2009 at 9:43 am
You constantly see science get kidnapped by politics…or the religion of politics as not all political discussions need to be blindly zealous. Mike T’s site, CRNano, has spent a lot of time talking about Global Warming for the past 18 months. For a site that generally has been calmly discussing molecular nanotechnology in terms of the science and the associated potential risks of this possible technology upgrade the seemingly (by the way it is postured) political addition surprised me a bit. I made a few replies with respect to the oceanic temperature trend data from NOAA cooling rather than warming for the past decade and was promptly labeled a “denier” and what was the point of discussing things (not by Mike by the way.) Now the terminology has shifted to “Global Climate Change” because the facts don’t fit “Warming” anymore, but we have to have a crisis so the politicians can hang funding somewhere…and I would imagine if I still asked about how much influence the sun and lack of sun spot activity has had on the temperature trends versus the idea that CO2 is a substantial driver for Global Temps I would likely still be roundly labeled a “denier”…rather than having a rational discussion about the pro’s and con’s of the hypothesis. Science and Politics don’t mix…well, they do, but it is simply that when they do you’re no longer serving science. You are simply serving yourself, your side, your political team…at the expense of science. I no longer engage in posting on the site as “what’s the point”? I know the response I’m going to get to any statement, point or question I post.
How anyone can argue that politics won’t change if all of humanity were significantly smarter than the smartest of us today simply doesn’t make any sense. However, I can’t imagine simply being smarter implies a fundamental change in humanity’s core self interest…which points back to the “friendliness” of that intelligence upgrade. Crossing my fingers and hoping either I’m in the group with the upgrade or if it is AI that it is FAI. The alternative doesn’t make for pleasant Friday morning contemplations.
August 7th, 2009 at 9:53 am
Michael, I’m sorry that the “kick them” sounded to you like “beat the hell out of them.” It’s a somewhat tongue-in-cheek phrasing that I used once before on OtF, and gets used in conversation around here quite a bit. Please trust me, I’ve never kicked anyone in real life.
And Thiel’s argument that politics is too intense, that it “destroys relationships,” is a bit disingenuous. All of what he claims politics does can be said of business (both partnerships and competition) — yet we don’t see him crying out that we should seek to “escape economics.” That’s because business has worked in his favor, while politics hasn’t. It’s no surprise that he’d like to escape the latter.
So why do I get “aggressive” when it comes to politics (not in the partisan sense, but in the “role in society” sense)? Because I *do* believe that the GRIN technologies can and will be transformative in truly disruptive and potentially dangerous ways — and to see the people who work the most closely with these technologies act so dismissively about a fundamental aspect of human society is deeply distressing.
August 7th, 2009 at 10:26 am
Political independence is tough and the entity formed will have some relationship with the existing system. Usually the break away to independence has involved violence. The motivations can be economic, religious or political.
It is historic level of effort though. Isreal, USA etc… nation birthing to achieve political goals.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/08/how-independent-could-seastead-or.html
August 7th, 2009 at 11:16 am
I’m confused by the idea that politics will go away with transformative technologies. Is the idea that by achieving super intelligence we will all come to the same conclusions about issues so there will be nothing to disagree about? If only we are smart enough everyone on the planet will realize that a certain economic system is the way to go, or one type of zoning law makes the most sense or there is only one way to provide health care?
I think different people value different things which sets us up to have disagreements in life and in politics. Perhaps you think once we achieve more intelligence it will become clear which value system is the best. I doubt that will be the case. I doubt that would be a good thing.
Certainly one can become frustrated with the various political systems in the world, including the various forms of democracy. I can see how technological transformations will change the issues on which we disagree. I can even see that technological change, including greater than human intelligence, may lead to new types of political systems so that Churchill’s famous statement that “democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried” will no longer be true. But, I doubt that disagreements will go away and thus some sort of political system will be necessary to referee them.
August 7th, 2009 at 11:20 am
I guess if our world becomes more complex, politics will also become more complex, not simpler.
A world of smarter people will be also a world of people whose interests collide in subtler and more complex ways. This may increase the complexity of conflicts and their management.
By the way, politics = conflict management. If there are no conflicts things are very simple, but this is never the case.
August 7th, 2009 at 11:48 am
I’m surprised no one has mentioned this, but undercurrent of all the calls to ‘move beyond politics’ or formulations of ‘up-winger’ avoidance of right-wing/left-wing divisions is the implicit suggestion that the formulators political opinions are somehow ‘not-political’, and should be accepted without debate.
If Peter Thiel wants to avoid politics, he can. If you want to put off political engagement until after the Singularity, you can. But nobody suggesting moving beyond politics actually wants to disengage from establishing social policy, you just want to win by other means. Arguing and campaigning is too hard with all those soft-headed girls, and people who’ve had their lives saved by government programs or churches or community organizers. So you’d really prefer to delay the issues until technology or massive financial advantage allows you to avoid it.
That’s not really how human affairs work, and it betrays a deep apathy towards others opinions that bothers me immensely.
You can’t seriously argue for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation one day, and ask people to avoid typical politics the next. You don’t get to set your policies in a separate magisteria, immune to debate and the interest of opponents.
Even if you are discussing issues of objective fact and interest to people, the implementation of the policy won’t be. You aren’t capable of operating fairly, it’s not how people work. To suggest otherwise is to support unilateral action by whomever has the ability to do so, a recipe for massive existential risk, if I ever heard one.
August 7th, 2009 at 11:57 am
Well said, outlawpoet.
August 7th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
outlawpoet: I think you’re probably correct in your assessment of the way things stand today. However, I can imagine a state of things where I am more intelligent, more technologically connected (or informed) and at the same time more autonomous. I could see a state of things where it isn’t appropriate for me to cede power of me to another individual or individuals who are acting as “the government”. Or at least how much of those powers I’m ceding to them could potentially be greatly diminished.
If, as a primitive example, I were able to manage multiple tasks simultaneously, truly simultaneous multi-tasking, then I could attend those debates, presentations and votes via remote. Instead of a primarily 2 party system in the US you might have a 300 million party system of individuals voting their own self-interest. Yes, there would be floating coalitions, but it would be infinitely more complex…and the higher level intelligence would be able to accommodate those complexities.
August 7th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
It seems to me that a large part of what are often considered to be political problems are due to willfull ignorance. People deny evidence that opposes their ideas - or rather the ideas of the religious or tribal leaders that they follow.
The scientific method works. If people could accept the results of scientific research (or do their own research if they have alternate theories to test) then a significant portion of the political debates would disappear.
Economics is another problem area. There are number of bad ideas floating around that exist for the sole purpose of supporting certain rent-seeking behaviours. There are many good models of economic systems and many real implementations of different economic methods.
The solution to many economic problems would start by copying good ideas. If country A provides a particular government service to it’s citizens at a low cost while giving a high quality of service (judged both by the government’s goals and the opinion of the citizens) while country B provides the same service at a high cost with low quality then country B should just copy what country A is doing!
I’m not convinced by the “ideas as soldiers” argument. If that was the case then any idea that is strongly supported by one side would immediately get strong opposition from the other. But the worst political ideas seem to have strong support from one side but weak opposition from the other - after all the bad ideas make someone rich and that person will contribute to election campaigns on both sides of politics.
August 7th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
Scientific research doesn’t come close to consistently giving uncontroversial clear answers on politically relevant questions.
August 7th, 2009 at 8:09 pm
Mike, most of modern politics really does revolve around human instincts. It’s all in evolutionary psychology.
Clearly I’m not averse to passionate disagreement. I am entirely capable of arguing politics but prefer to push forward technology. We’ll see which approach has the bigger impact. Why not each pursue our own route and then compare results in 30 years?
Quasi-religious comparisons can be tossed at us as much as people want, but I will still be capable of explaining why I have certain beliefs in entirely logical terms. If anyone wants to have a discussion about the evidence of my current belief system without dismissing it out of hand, then that would be entirely possible at any time. Many people will continue to be interested in that evidence, due to natural curiosity.
Jamais,
Not a terrible point about politics and economics. But still, doesn’t Peter Thiel have the right to be pissed off at politics and want to start independent nations on the ocean, without James and Mike saying, “well, fuck those fucking libertarians, they can just get attacked by pirates out there”. (Not a verbatim translation, but that’s the vibe I get.) If Peter has a lot of money, he can use it to push forward whatever initiatives he wants, and it’s too bad that we don’t have the vision to acknowledge that seasteading is actually a pretty cool idea, even if we don’t personally want to live on the oceans. See, that’s why I loved Michael Savage’s Millenium Project book, it talked about the value of seasteading in an entirely non-political context.
Jamais, I am willing to argue politics, but I just prefer not to much as much emphasis on it as you guys do. I really do think that many of the aspects of present-day politics would be irreversibly changed when we have minds that are smarter than us in the way that we’re smarter than chimps or cockroaches. Either all you guys 1) don’t believe in the concept of superintelligence period, or 2) overestimate the similarity between your current politics and future superintelligent political-esque interactions. Sure, politics as it currently exists may matter up until then, but people who prefer the technological approach shouldn’t be insulted or dismissed.
Justin, the way that people are willing to entirely ignore decision-theoretic arguments about AI and interpret Singularity activism in an exclusively political lens shows how politics clouds more subtle discussions very easily. Politics is the black hole that sucks every other subject into it and leaves it irreversibly spaghettified.
Basically, political discourse as it currently exists is a social contract, and by rejecting that contract, one is labeled as a defector. It undermines the validity of the whole system. If you can circumvent politics by creating superintelligence that makes the world vastly better for everybody, that denigrates the significance of the contemporary human political milieu. Yes, we aim to render the current political milieu largely irrelevant. If that makes us crazy in your eyes, then so be it.
August 7th, 2009 at 11:53 pm
Coming technology will obviously have an impact in politics just as it will in all things, this goes without saying to everyone who reads this blog, other related blogs and anything about the Singularity or coming technology in general.
Future politics will be just as different today as our political organizations/philosophies and government systems are from the alpha male dominated groups of wolves, lions, apes and other socially organized intelligent animals.
I’d like to think that the future (a successful beneficial Singularity) will be something along the lines of “One Civilization - Many Systems” with one umbrella benevolent singleton safeguarding many different civilizations/societies below it such as humans as we know them today, transhumans, AIs, uploads, and everything else we can and can’t imagine that is a sentient form of life and intelligence.
Even in the far flung future, assuming many of us are god-like (for lack of a better word) beings we will still need some form of social organization that determines who gets how much computronium (let alone any other resource that more than one person desires), when they get it and how they get it. There will need to be discussion over how and where humans move (colonize), etc. Hopefully FAI and/or enhancements will allow all humans and intelligences to better share their minds and thoughts with each other and gain a fuller understanding of one another. If I was a religious man I would pray for that kind of shared understanding. It would lead to either more or less complexity for whatever forms of organization we take in the coming future. Complexity or simplicity is irrelevant so long as we achieve a peaceful coexistence I favor either one.