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Counterpoint: Trump acheived all this because he followed the Moldbug plan of having a tech CEO bring in a bunch of 20-year-olds to run the executive branch like a startup. Curtis Yarvin is becoming whitepilled as we speak.
This feels like those people who think Yudkowsky is discredited because recursive self-improvement looks a bit different than what he imagined in 2007 or whatever. No one else was even thinking that deeply about AI in 2007.
He only got to do that because more people pressed Trump button. That's the central point, if more people had pressed Harris button, Trump wouldn't get to hire or appoint anybody. Yarvin is as turgid and obnoxious to read as usual, but "moral energy" is conveniently unquantifiable.
RWers have spent the past several years LARPing like they were Soviet dissidents living under a regime of red terror when it turned out they actually lived in a liberal democracy that functioned as advertised the whole time.
Do liberal democracies advertise that they'll prosecute whistleblowers reporting on the law being broken by institutions, unless the right candidate is elected? Maybe I misunderstood, but I thought they explicitly advertise the opposite.
Do they advertise that they'll attempt to control people's speech, unless it happens to be in line with who's in power? I was also under the impression that the ad pinky-swore liberal democracy will never do that.
No, but they advertise that if the government is being mean to you, you can go in the booth and press the button next to the name of the guy who says he'll make the government stop being mean to you, and make it be mean to the other guys instead, and if more people press that button then press the other button, the government will stop being mean to you. This is what just happened.
Can you link me to that advertisement? Because I'm pretty sure that they very emphatically don't advertise that, that they actually advertise the opposite, and that this is one of the defining differences between liberal democracies and other systems.
If this is what Mrs. Collins told you, she may be more based than you're giving her credit.
That liberal democracies never employ repression against political opponents, or that their doing so immediately falsifies the premises of liberal democracy? I don't think this is really held by anyone. Certainly I think very few defenders of liberal democracy would argue that, though they may argue that liberal democracies tend to pursue political repression less than countries which aren't liberal democracies, or do so less harshly, both of which I believe are true.
Granted that's my fault for glibly talking about "advertisement" as if there's a CEO of liberal democracy. A more important promise of liberal democracy is that if you don't like the current government, including if you think the current government is ineffective, corrupt, or unfair, you can vote it out, and the government you vote in its place will pursue different policies.
More like "something something rule of law...", and "mumble mumble not a tyranny of the majority". Anyway, if some exceptions are allowed without it disproving the broader point, I don't see why we should dismiss Yarvin wholesale.
I have never heard a liberal democracy enjoyer say "we totally do political repression, we're just more subtle about it". If this is what you believe, than you may be more based than you think.
That's not a promise of liberal democracy specifically, all democracies promise that, including illiberal ones (which I am told are a very very bad thing).
Perhaps, as they say, real liberal democracy has never been attempted.
Have you heard anyone in charge of a modern-day country say that? Political repression is what the others are doing; you are just taking appropriate measures against the extraordinary threats the nation is facing.
Yes, and from my experience they tend to deny that they're repressing anyone, even as they are outline their plans of political repression, which is my point.
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