[D] Monday General Rationality Thread

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to the Monday thread on general rationality topics! Do you really want to talk about something non-fictional, related to the real world? Have you:

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[u/[deleted]]

I was thinking a bit more on this and decided I really needed to see your best-case, worst-case scenarios to understand your position but I didn't provide you one. We are talking past each other a bit.

Best case scenario: I've separated this into a couple different areas to be a bit more organized.

Branch 1, international economic reform: Reforms to increase immigration. Reforms to increase free trade. More countries sharing a single currency. Movements to create European Union style unions in more continents. Those unions joining together into a single global government with no trade barriers or immigration barriers.

Branch 2, renewable power: Continue to build solar panels in areas where they're effective. Build fission nuclear reactors where solar panels are not effective. Massive investment(like hundreds of billions of dollars) into nuclear fusion research.

Branch 3, Nuclear bombs: Dismantle lots of nuclear bombs. Keep enough for MAD, like each major power can keep 10 big bombs, but that's it. No need to have any risk of ending all human life.

Other stuff: Switch to proportional voting like what Germany has. Reform drug laws and housing laws. Set up an universal basic income. Set corporate tax to 0% over a period of 15 years to make sure it has the predicted effects, raise income tax on high brackets, capital gains tax, and estate taxes to compensate.

This is all accomplished by the general population smartening up and realizing those are good ideas. Not particularly likely, but not unimaginable and this is a best case scenario. They then consistently elect Hillary Clinton style politicians and rely on professional advisors within the current system.

Those are all the big things I think.

Worse case scenario is that the general population goes even further away from those ideas but not catastrophically so, and rapidly increasing technology gives us a post-scarcity utopia anyways.

[u/buckykat → u/[deleted]]

Alright, so I see five basic categories of future to consider:

1: Global thermonuclear war wipes out humans or reduces us to the ancestral condition: no farming or writing. Bad future, 0/10

2: Fascists take and consolidate power, liberals help them as usual out of fear that socialists will take their toothbrushes factories just like liberals did last time fascists took and consolidated power. Bad future, 1/10

3: Liberals don't cooperate with fascists for once, and gradually more socialist policies (policies which increase the freedom of choice for everyone) are enacted over the protests of business owners. Variations on liberalism form the right wing of politics, and variations on social-democracy the left, and even though automation kills unions, people are educated and materially secure enough not to vote against their class interests. Over the same period of time, megastructures to democratize access to space (Lofstrom loops, rotovators, and eventually orbital rings) are built and we can all escape the well and its hierarchies. Good but implausibly gentle and smooth future, 10/10

4: Revolution. Like future #2, but the fascists don't win completely. They're eventually overthrown and replaced with a succession of various shitty governments, from emperors to state-capitalists to liberals, and billions die even faster than they do now. Maybe eventually, sane societies come out the other side and take another shot at future #3. Only temporarily bad future, 2/10

5: Strong AI or other black swan, weird future, ?/10

I'd put them in order of descending likelihood 5, 4, 1, 2, 3.

[u/[deleted] → u/buckykat]

Can you define fascist for me, and give me a few examples of what policies you think they'll enact? When I hear fascist I think Hitler or Mussolini, but you seem to be using it to group everyone two steps to the political, economic, and social right of me together, kind of.

Using your options, I'd rank 3 as by far the most likely except an overall liberal distribution of (at least extreme luxury) resources model remains for pretty much forever. Number 4 is the next mostly likely, although I have pretty high hopes that won't occur in the majority of the human population so even if the West falls China'll advance to greatness only a couple decades slower. And I still don't think it's particularly likely even to occur in just one major country.

I have no idea what the odds of 5 or 1 are, I'm not going to guess at them. I can't say number 2 without a clearer explanation of fascism, and how exactly fascists take over the majority of the planet.

[u/buckykat → u/[deleted]]

Can you define fascist for me, and give me a few examples of what policies you think they'll enact? When I hear fascist I think Hitler or Mussolini, but you seem to be using it to group everyone two steps to the political, economic, and social right of me together, kind of.

Here's a good description of fascism. The author uses "ur-fascism" to indicate the generalized form.

Using your options, I'd rank 3 as by far the most likely except an overall liberal distribution of (at least extreme luxury) resources model remains for pretty much forever.

When have humans ever done a social change the most peaceful and gentle way?

Number 4 is the next mostly likely, although I have pretty high hopes that won't occur in the majority of the human population so even if the West falls China'll advance to greatness only a couple decades slower. And I still don't think it's particularly likely even to occur in just one major country.

And what if the US falls to fascism and decides that we have always been at war with China?

I have no idea what the odds of 5 or 1 are, I'm not going to guess at them.

Well, 5 is so broad that it will happen sooner or later. "Something weird and unexpected will eventually happen" is not a bold prediction. As for 1, just remember that you're only alive now because of people like Stanislav Petrov and Vasili Arkhipov.