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SYSTEM_ERROR_KING_TAKES_KING

                                             December 16, 2022
                                             March    18, 2023

About "System Error" (2021):
                                          SYSTEM_ERROR

This book is dismissive of the idea that
big companies can "self-regulate".  They
think of this as reaching for the dream of
a philosopher king.

But myself, I think the authors have their
own philospher king problem...


   "We need an alternative model of what we
   want from our politics-- not utopian social
   engineering, as Plato imagined, but
   'piecemeal engineering,' in Popper's words. ...
   Without a blueprint for where we want
   to end up-- because such a thing is             So the idea here is we're
   impossible to achieve-- we must focus           going to get some good
   instead on identifying and mitigating the       guys elected who will
   harms and suffering we want to avoid.  At       appoint smart,
   this task, democracies have generally           well-intentioned (and
   excelled: avoiding mass starvation;             incorruptible?)  people
   preventing nuclear war; eliminating extreme     who won't be be able to
   poverty and suffering." -- p.75                 pull off any grand
                                                   schemes-- and in fact will
                                                   not have any, because
                                                   those are impossible--
                                                   but they'll make the
                                                   right moves to steer us
           You can tell you're dealing             away from outright
           with "moderates" here:                  catastrophes.
           they're big believers in
           democracy but don't have
           any positive ideas that
           would inspire anyone to
           vote for them. "Vote for us
           us, we're the party that
           sucks less."


               But then, I don't think they
               endorse any party throughout this
               book, but it's pretty clear that
               the only reasonable way we can
               get toward the future they
               envision (without admitting to
               anything like Vision) is "Step        Remember the sub-heading
               one: elect a bunch of democrats."     for this book: "How we
                                                     can reboot".





       Democracy is supposed to appoint us as it's crack
       team of anti-technocratic experts so we can get to
       work on "piecemeal engineering", and then we can
       get to work nudging those billionaries to do The
       Less wrong Thing or else we'll keep making them
       come down to congressional hearings.

       This fantasy of "if only guys like *us* were in
       charge, everything would be fine" strikes me
       as the real "philospher king" problem.


    Notably, Jeremy Weinstein had a position in the
    Obama administration, which seems common for
    people arguing in this direction: if only we
    could bring back the good old days of moderate
    Democrats triumphant.

         (They also criticize they echo-chamber bubble
         phenomena the internet often seems to encourage--
         but it's only those other tribes that have
         problems with tribalism.)








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