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211 points lexandstuff | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.209s | source
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jandrewrogers ◴[] No.44477503[source]
A critical flaw in arguments like this is the embedded assumption that the creation of democratic policy is outside the system in some sense. The existence of AGI has the implication that it can effectively turn most people into sock puppets at scale without them realizing they are sock puppets.

Do you think, in this hypothesized environment, that “democratic policy” will be the organic will of the people? It assumes much more agency on the part of people than will actually exist, and possibly more than even exists now.

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1. lo_zamoyski ◴[] No.44479714[source]
What is an “organic will of the people” anyway?

Democratic societies always involve years of media and other manipulation to plow and seed the minds of the general public with presumptions, associations, spin, appeals to emotion, and so on. The will is a product of belief, and if beliefs are saturated with such stuff, the so-called “will of the people” - a terrifying and tyrannical concept even at face value - is a product of what people have been led to believe by tyrannical and powerful interests. Add to that that most people are utterly unqualified to participate politically, both because they lack the knowledge and reasoning skill, and because of their lack of virtue, acting out of undisciplined fear or appetite. And sadly, much of these disqualifying flaws also characterize our political leadership!

Our political progression follows the decadence described in Plato’s Republic - the decline into timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and finally tyranny - to the letter.

In so-called democratic societies, the association of monarchy and aristocracy with tyranny is unthinking and reflexive, but it is not rational. This is a conditioned prejudice that is ignorant of history. And partly it comes from a hyperliberalism that substitutes a live-and-let-live attitude, situated within a context of objective morality and norms and laws drawn from it, with a pathological, relativizing revolution that seethes at the very idea of moral limits, views them as “tyrannical”, and thus seeks to overthrow them. This necessarily leads to tyranny, as morality is the only protection against tyranny; when the authority of objective truth and good are destroyed, power fills the vacuum. We become psychologically and spiritually conquered. The paradox of such “anarchy” is that it is exactly the condition under which “might makes right” can flourish.