The discussion about politics has created an astonishingly tense and uncomfortable atmosphere in this corner of the blogosphere. And how could it not? Human beings are political animals that have evolved for millions of years in environments where tribal politics could determine whether you had 10 children or were murdered before ever getting laid. We are slaves to our own political instincts.

When I say I want to move beyond politics, I should specify in more detail what I mean. I believe that modern day political issues have such strong moral valence that they are often opaque hurricanes of cognitive biases. What is most troublesome is the lack of distinction between facts and values along with moral realism. Facts about the world are objective and constant, while values are subjective and fickle. Because 99.9% of people take a moral realist stance, but moral values legitimately differ, there is an endless cycle of combat and retrenching, where everyone thinks they are right and little progress occurs. To quote Joshua Greene’s Ph.D thesis:

In this essay I argue that ordinary moral thought and language is, while very natural, highly counterproductive and that as a result we would be wise to change the way we think and talk about moral matters. First, I argue on metaphysical grounds against moral realism, the view according to which there are first order moral truths. Second, I draw on principles of moral psychology, cognitive science, and evolutionary theory to explain why moral realism appears to be true even though it is not. I then argue, based on the picture of moral psychology developed herein, that realist moral language and thought promotes misunderstanding and exacerbates conflict. I consider a number of standard views concerning the practical implications of moral anti-realism and reject them. I then sketch and defend a set of alternative revisionist proposals for improving moral discourse, chief among them the elimination of realist moral language, especially deontological language, and the promotion of an anti-realist utilitarian framework for discussing moral issues of public concern. I emphasize the importance of revising our moral practices, suggesting that our entrenched modes of moral thought may be responsible for our failure to solve a number of global social problems.

What people call “politics”, I usually see as inevitable conflict between inflexible moral realist fundamentalists. It has gone on for all of human history and will continue forever unless we abandon moral realism.

I have substantial political knowledge, and frequently follow politics, but I speak about my (socially liberal, economically moderate) political views much more frequently offline than online. Why? Because politics is a huge niche occupied by millions of people. Anyone can do it. Pick a side and start shouting slogans. I do occasionally make political comments here, for instance when I expressed happiness that Obama won the Democratic nomination. But look right there — by stating my support of Obama, I’ve already alienated a portion of my audience that I could have connected with via non-political arguments. I’ve given them a confirmation bias-ready excuse to dismiss my future opinions — “well, Michael is an Obama-nut anyway, so I’ll just ignore his point here instead of thinking about it more deeply”. Politics makes people acquire permanent biases about the beliefs of others.

Over the past 500 years, there have been two primary approaches to making the world a better place — playing politics and inventing new technologies. Politics has had nice breakthroughs on several fronts, such as the extension of the franchise to women and non-whites. (We have yet to extend that to children, who are considered the property of their parents, and animals, which are mostly considered dirt by meat-eaters.) But so has technology — in fact, I’d say that massively increased wealth since the Industrial Revolution has contributed more to the lowering of crime and improvement of our standard of living than political progress has. Without machines, there is no amount of social reorganization that would allow people to live the wealthy and often healthy lives that people in the developed world do today. In the end, our modern lives are enabled by technology, though politics has certainly lent a helping hand to ensuring that the benefits of technology are widely distributed.

When I look at modern politics, I see arguments caused by material scarcity and inflexible underlying values. If our current level of technology were maintained indefinitely, I would bet that our political bickering and arguing could go on literally forever without resulting in substantial increases in standard of living or subjective happiness among all of us. Political reorganization and improvement cannot generate wealth from nothing. But improving our manufacturing, resource gathering, and energy base certainly can. Because intelligence is relevant to everything, I consider the improvement our underlying intelligence as the most crucial technological challenge currently facing our civilization. Once we are able to turn sand (silicon) into intelligent, benevolent agents (human-friendly AIs), we will be able to leverage that tremendous resource into improving our world.

I applaud certain political agendas, like gay marriage. But I applaud them for their utilitarian effects, not because they are aligned with a certain political ideology. The most important thing is human welfare — does the policy improve it or not? I don’t care if the policy is progressive or libertarian — does it make life substantially better for us, or any minority? I strongly suspect that most humans, blinded by political instincts and moral realism, wouldn’t even think of taking a quantitative utilitarian approach to political decision-making.

I believe that the idea of the necessity of research into the goal systems of advanced artificial intelligence is strong enough that it will easily survive misleading comparisons with pseudo-religiosity or political libertarianism. In fact, I think attacks on such a research program are symptomatic of its rapidly rising profile and credibility. Metaphorically speaking, the higher a fighter jet flies, the better a target it is for AA guns. But the validity of that research program, which rests mostly on arguments from cognitive science, philosophy, and evolutionary psychology, is an entirely separate thing than the discussion of whether we can or should move beyond “politics” or “politics as usual”. The level of vitriol we’ve seen over the past few days alone (“Kick them hard, and repeatedly”) and the general construction of straw men (“Peter Thiel wants to ban women from voting”), shows that things have already gotten out of hand, emotions have been heightened, and people have already picked sides.

Improved technology and intelligence is the sword that will cut through the 200,000 year old Gordian knot of human politics and moral realism. Only by creating an intelligence outside ourselves will we figure out how we actually look in the mirror.