On Leverage Research's plan for an optimal world

I was suspecting a self-parody.

If not, it's a heaping serving of poeslaw.

No. You're entitled to arguments, but not (that particular) proof (blog post #898).

You would invoke this on someone asking for only specific evidence for your theory. It doesn't make sense to invoke it against someone asking for ANY evidence.

The parent is misinformed trolling.

Skeptic: But you have never studied psychology, why would I trust your reasoning on the topic?

(Not) Leverage Researcher: Yes I have. What are you basing this pretentious diatribe on? You clearly know nothing about us and are pattern matching to the issues you rant on about incessantly with respect to SingInst.

Skeptic: I am not convinced.

(Not) Leverage Researcher: I haven't seen you be convinced about anything substantial ever. "Motivated skepticism" would be a polite declaration - it assumes your 'curiosity' is not a rhetorical facade. (See blog post #1355 for the appropriate response to this kind of rubbish.)

Skeptic: Ummm, okay. To refine my estimations regarding your theory of psychology, what do you anticipate to see if your ideas are right, is there any possibility to update on evidence?

Leverage Researcher: No, I don't know enough about psychology to be more specific about my expectations. We will will know once we try it, please support us with money to do so.

I don't think that this is actually true. While I don't know of Geoff's specific plans to test CT, I do know that he's interested in continuing to do so.

...I'm not sure whether you're making fun of Leverage Research or LessWrong in general here. Which is worrying.

To address the point behind the parody, the main difference between this and the analogous argument with "SIAI researcher", besides user:Incorrect's point and the fact that not being convinced is almost never automatically equated with motivated skepticism, is that the links to the blog posts don't work. When they do, I don't think the practice of linking to blog posts is problematic at all. It reduces the need to repeat arguments, and centralizes discussion of a particular issue to the comments of the corresponding post, instead of it being all over the place. Your dialog also gives the impression that you can find a post from the LW archives to support "anything", that the linked post usually appears as incomprehensible and seemingly unrelated as a bunch of random digits, and that the act of giving someone a link to a relevant blog post is mainly a way to confuse and intimidate them with authority and the point is never for them to actually read it. Each of these impressions is false, as far as I can tell.

OK, let's consider the opposite proposition: Most positions of power are occupied by people who are crazy, resentful, and irresponsible. It might sound cynically plausible. But I would see even those traits as mostly a reaction to the difficulties of power. The idea of smooth sociopaths who lie their way to power and riches via superior awareness of human gullibility is way overrated. In most cases, power is a reward for boring hard work, taking responsibility, and being effective. Unless you're born to power, you only get to have it and to hold onto it by working with some group of people who have a complementary power of their own, the power to depose you - your investors, your voters, your professional colleagues.

The LR paradigm seems to be based on a counter-myth, the opposite of the manipulator who cruises to worldly success on the basis of pushing the right buttons in people's minds. This counter-myth is the idea of the super-effective altruist who similarly owes their success to superlative psychological knowledge. Both myths underrate the psychological sophistication of the peers who are being manipulated (for good or bad) by the mythical figures, and both myths overrate how far you can get just with psychology.

Is your objection the assertion that authority figures have "common sense, good will, and a sense of responsibility" at all? Or do you assert that other values will often override them?

If the former, I suggest that Tywin Lannister seems like he does have those three qualities. It's just that he also has a bunch of jerkwad values. (if you aren't familiar with Song of Ice and Fire, I'll come up with a different example). And I think he's a reasonable representation of many actual authority figures.

Okay, finished. Wasn't as bad as I'd expected given the beginning.

Short summary: spend decades developing a particularly powerful way to understand people, and then use that to do as much good as possible, e.g. by working like a grant-awards agency that really understands who deserves the money, or like a think tank that really understands what messages people will remember, etc.

If you sort of squint your eyes, it makes sense. On the other hand, I won't hold my breath. For example, their plan only works if they beat everyone else to this understanding by greater than the time it takes to recruit all the donors and prestige they'll need (~5 years?). For another example, they're sort of hamstrung by "Connection Theory" already.

I'm pretty sure a larger than normal fraction of people that rule us are sociopaths.

What makes you think that? I'd have guessed that a lot of the non-optimal decisions made by people in various positions of power are the result of normal human biases mixed with whatever incentives pertain to their situation.

I'm pretty sure a larger than normal fraction of people that rule us are sociopaths.

I've seen some speculation about this, but even if it's true, and the proportion is larger by an order of magnitude than in the background population, it's still a lot less than "most".

I don't think sociopathy or malice is really a good explanation of what goes wrong, when it does go wrong, among people of power.

We've tried to fill in step 3 quite a bit. Check out the plan and also our backup plan. We're definitely open to suggestions for ways to improve, especially places where the connection between the steps is the most tenuous.

I'm sure powerful people have common sense, and I'm sure they have the ordinary good will towards their friends and responsibility for their allies. But I doubt they have the extraordinary good will and responsibility needed to do the right thing.

Well, yeah, but the same could be said of Leverage Research.

the extraordinary good will and responsibility needed to do the right thing

What are you referring to?

I think you just invented the anti-Godwin. "Know who else tried to make the world a better place? Jesus.

Connection Theory is not the problem. It's the whole idea of saving the world with a psychological theory. That's what tipped my assessment from positive to negative.

Have you looked at the plan? Magic and messianic are not exaggerations.

Why is this tagged politics?

"The actively and stably benevolent people successfully seek enough power to be able to stably guide the world." "Give everyone the power to achieve their ultimate goals as far as possible without harming others." Those are political intentions and political acts.

Also, every country on Earth already has a class of people nobly bearing the burden of being in charge of everything. You cannot set out to deliberately and comprehensively change the world without encroaching upon this existing political sphere, even if you imagine The Change happening via leaderless self-organizing harmony. Either you intend to be on the throne, advising the throne, or making the throne irrelevant, and in each case, the current occupant of the throne will take a keen interest, if by some miracle you do start to make a difference.

Connection Theory is not the main thing that we do. It's one of seven main projects. I would estimate that about 15% of our current effort goes directly into CT right now. It's true that having a superior understanding of the human mind is an important part of our plan, and it's true that CT is the main theory we're currently looking at. So that is one reason people are focusing on it. But it's also one of the better-developed parts of our website right now. So that's probably another reason.

This is actually pretty funny and sort of true.