There are strong competent states, but they're rare, and don't survive for long, and this is probably not an accident; public choice economic theory explains why pretty well. In the long run, strong competent authoritarians almost certainly are replaced with incompetent ones.
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We're left with extremely poor choices in most situations where there are strong negative externalities to stupid behavior. It appears the only effective mechanisms involve actually improving the bulk of the populace, which is impractical (to say the least) in the short term.
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Replying to @perrymetzger
i think this is what tradition is meant to do; you take a few common hazards and you hard-code rules about it for people who aren’t wise enough to originate the right decision on the fly
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Replying to @s_r_constantin
Unfortunately, that leads to the overadaptation trap. Conditions change, the traditions fail, but people cannot break free of them quickly enough to survive the transformation without widespread suffering.
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Replying to @perrymetzger @s_r_constantin
In particular, if long periods pass between crises, the human brain seems to overadapt to the strategies that work well in normal conditions. (This is Taleb's point about the danger of fat tails.)
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Replying to @perrymetzger
sadly, this is probably how human general intelligence got selected for in the first place. A series of crises that our hominid ancestors couldn’t solve any other way.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin
This points out, though, that you can't live by System 1 alone. You need System 2 enough of the time that HGI is needed to dig yourself out of the crisis. (I'm being somewhat metaphorical about System 1 vs. System 2 here but not overly so.)
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Replying to @perrymetzger @s_r_constantin
Which means that people who are used to living by "don't make waves, it's always been okay to do things the usual way, storms come and go but they never have caused real harm so you should ignore them" eventually fail.
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Replying to @perrymetzger
Yes, true. I really want to create a world where general intelligence will no longer be needed but I think we are unbelievably far from that world & should be grateful we can be smart & resilient at need.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin
I don't know how you could do that. If anything, we need much, much more of it, not less.
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A safe sandbox. Takes a lot of technological advancement. Maybe will never happen.
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