[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Logic for the Left | Ben Burgis

Ben Burgis applies philosophical logic to political disagreement.

When it comes to politics, is logic in tension with emotion?

In recent years, a new tribalism has emerged. The right has claimed the facts are in their favour, whereas the left see many problems in society, yet rarely show how to solve them. So claims Marxist philosopher Ben Burgis. Join him as he implores the left to base their politics on logic.

00:10 Education and poverty: the composition fallacy
03:44 The continuum fallacy
04:44 Ben Shapiro
05:20 Hume's law
07:09 The purpose of debate

Good and bad can only be rationally evaluated when the goal can be identified. And a goal can't exist without a conscious entity.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Axiomatic Alignment: A critical component to Utopia and the Control Problem

It seems like if we consider adequately diverse ideas and carefully examine them, we can make our perspectives begin to converge, as all of us who can exchange ideas are somewhat conscious.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

This one is rather long, but I think it's worth listening for anyone who are curious about our future and having to coexist with machines.
Terminal Race Condition: The greatest danger we face from AGI (and how to prevent it!)

The reasonings presented here are mostly inductive, recognizing patterns of observed events around development of AI. The mere amount of important examples shown here to back up the conclusion is convincing enough to ones who has basic understanding of AI and machine learning.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

In our previous video, we've shown problems in traditional definition of knowledge. A possible solution has also been offerred by redefining knowledge as adequately justified information. Now we will show how the knowledge is accumulated. The title is Universal Utopia 6: Accumulating Knowledge.

[alancalverd]

I suggest that Bayes Theorem is always and absolutely true, but real decisions are weighted by the desirability of uncertain outcomes. That's why lotteries are popular.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

I suggest that Bayes Theorem is always and absolutely true, but real decisions are weighted by the desirability of uncertain outcomes. That's why lotteries are popular.

I don't think that the uncertainty is what's desired per se. I think it's about benefit/cost ratio. Lottery is thought by many as having high ratio, and the cost is often considered negligible.
If we can win lottery with higher certainty without significant additional cost, most of us will take it. Some traders learned some tricks by duplicating the stock tradings of powerful politicians.

[alancalverd]

There was a case some years back when the Irish Hospitals Sweepstake had a rollover first prize that actually exceeded the cost of all the tickets, so a Sicilian syndicate bought all the tickets. That's the difference between gambling and investing!

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

That's the difference between gambling and investing!

Except when we can gamble with other people's money, privatize wins, and democratize losses, as we've repeatedly observe during economic boom and bust.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Systems Thinking Ep 3 - First Principles

Many ideas presented in this video are in line with my thoughts posted in this thread.

[alancalverd]

That's the difference between gambling and investing!

Except when we can gamble with other people's money, privatize wins, and democratize losses, as we've repeatedly observe during economic boom and bust.

As in the UK news this week. HM Government privatised the water supply industry (and reduced the quality specification to EU levels, but that's another matter). Having a monopoly of distribution and legal ownership of the entire natural asset, the directors of Thames Water (which supplies about 30% of the British population) were able to borrow vast amounts of money, make huge profits, and award themselves massive dividends and bonuses. Then the bank rate increased and the company suddenly owes increasing debts that it cannot service. Who cares? The shareholders have made a good return on their investments and now the taxpayer will have to shoulder the burden of repairing and running the organisation that he used to own before it was sold at less-than-market value.

For the enlightenment of those unfamiliar with the workings of corrupt  and incompetent government, here's a simpler case. At gunpoint, I force you to sell your car to my friend for half of its market value. He runs it as the only taxi in town (I've "taken care" of the others), borrows money against his profitable company, spends it all on a holiday, then when the car breaks down and he can't repay the bank, he declares the company bankrupt and I demand that you now pay to repair the car and run the service.
 

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

That's why we need to understand and collectively practice systems thinking. Wilful ignorance will result in unintended results.
Failure to vote out corrupt politicians will have impacts on the whole constituents.

[alancalverd]

Unfortunately it doesn't matter how corrupt they are, they can do a lot of irretrievable damage in 5 years, and once they have given your money to their friends and relatives, you can't get it back.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Unfortunately it doesn't matter how corrupt they are, they can do a lot of irretrievable damage in 5 years, and once they have given your money to their friends and relatives, you can't get it back.

The problem is, people seemed to have short memory. They seem to forget what their elected politicians have done since the last elections, compared to what they had promised. It makes them harder to be replaced by better politicians.

[alancalverd]

As long as politics is treated as a trivial team game, government will be corrupt because the winning team has absolute authority and no mandate to represent anyone's interests apart from those if its own members. As the next "Cup Final" is no more than 5 years away, the task is to extract as much money and privilege as possible for your supporters, then plough up the playing surface if it looks as though the other side might win.

Time was that you elected someone to represent your constituency to government. The job now consists of representing his party to the constituents, so why vote?

[paul cotter]

Alan, as a fully paid up and long time member of the cynic party I agree with almost all you have said in the last few posts. That said, I don't know how one could improve the situation( bar me as the ultimate benign dictator ). Any system will eventually be undermined by rampant greed and there is no solution for this. PS raining in my garden, that's why i'm here!

[alancalverd]

I've always advocated the electoral system used by trade unions. Divide the electorate into small geographical groups ("streets") of maybe 20, and have each street mandate one representative to the "village" committee of 20, representing 400 electors. Same process again, with the mandated village rep attending the district committee representing the interests of 8000 electors, maybe a total of around 15,000 people including children. At that level, we are considering delegated financial authority for local shared facilities and significant input into infrastructure and services planning (health clinics, refuse collection, new building....) Group 20 districts into a county, and we are looking at major service planning (hospitals, roads, etc. ) and the financial authority to support and control the decisions made at the lower level.  Now collect 200 county representatives into a national government - a single debating chamber that represents the interests of 60,000,000 people and chooses its own ministers to propose statute legislation and national policies, and head up national ministries. The post of prime minister is now equivalent to that of the chief executive of a trade union - not a personal policymaker or "leader" but the chairman of and spokesman for the entire governing body. 

The key element is that the representatives are mandated at each level and can be recalled and replaced at any time if in the opinion of the other 19 (or 199 in the case of the national parliament) who selected them, they have not acted in the best interests of their constituents or provided a good reason why not.

No political parties or election campaigns - you can only progress up the ladder if you have the confidence of the 20 people you represent, each of whom is equally subject to continuous review by his constituents.

[paul cotter]

In my very limited historical knowledge that sounds like how the original soviets were organised? Even without political parties cliques left/right/libertarian would arise leading to blocks of similar policy. Deals would be done( you scratch my back and i'll scratch yours ) and soon we would be back where we started. Communism sounds great in theory, to each according to their needs and from each according to their abilities, but it fails because it does not take human nature into account: if you cannot advance your status, why bother going the extra mile? I do not want to depress you with my negativity but I see all systems of governance failing, due to the inherent peculiarities of human nature. Nothing motivates the human animal like greed, apart from sex.

[alancalverd]

Deals would certainly be done - that's the point of committees - but if any group felt that their representative was putting his own interests above those of his geographical constituency, he'd be recalled immediately and replaced by someone who had not agreed to the latest deal.

Where the soviet system went wrong was in establishing a prior elite - giving preferential voting rights to Party members and thus suppressing bottom-up policy development. My experience of the old Labour party and trade unions was quite the opposite: the national executive could only represent what the members demanded, and national policy was determined by conference debates, not platform speeches.

[paul cotter]

I can't understand what you said-not your fault, I think I have picked up covid, again. I will get back to you when my brain is in gear.

[alancalverd]

Wishing you a speedy return to the fray!