PBD - Heated Debate on Anarchy With Michael Malic

[Epikur]

 

[Leo Gura]

I was listening to it, but as soon as he started to describe how anarchy would work I couldn't stand it any more. It's so naive to think that you could have modern society without a giant centralized government. Such a thing doesn't exist because it isn't possible, not because some elites are too stupid or corrupt to appreciate Michael Malice's genius ideas.

Government bureaucracy is absolutely crucial. At least for the next century. That Michael Malice doesn't understand this shows how unserious he is.

Edited March 18, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Epikur]

Just now, Leo Gura said:

I was listening to it, but as soon as he started to describe how anarchy would work I couldn't stand it any more. It's so naive to think that you could have modern society without a giant centralized government. Such a thing doesn't exist because it isn't possible, not because some elites are too stupid or corrupt to appreciate Michael Malice's genius ideas.

Government bureaucracy is absolutely crucial. At least for the next century.

I agree. I find it fascinating that he gets so much invitations to podcasts. I find it refreshing that he gets called out finally.

[Danioover9000]

@Leo Gura

8 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

I was listening to it, but as soon as he started to describe how anarchy would work I couldn't stand it any more. It's so naive to think that you could have modern society without a giant centralized government. Such a thing doesn't exist because it isn't possible, not because some elites are too stupid or corrupt to appreciate Michael Malice's genius ideas.

Government bureaucracy is absolutely crucial. At least for the next century. That Michael Malice doesn't understand this shows how unserious he is.

   And this is the guy that gone on Lex Fridman's podcast multiple times, spouting his ideological views. Again I don't want to throw shade at Lex, but again the guy should know better than to make a person's who an ideologue okay in the general public, you have takes like this that start sounding okay, which can become a problem. He either should take firmer stance or question more aggressively the other's point of view, or don't offer to continue platforming their names again.

[Danioover9000]

@Epikur

8 hours ago, Epikur said:

 

   While PBD is himself a libertarian/capitalist, here he's right in giving this Michael Malice's view of an Anarchistic society. Great share!

[Leo Gura]

@Danioover9000 You should stop and examine your bias regarding Lex. What you're doing is not right.

[Danioover9000]

@Leo Gura

6 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@Danioover9000 You should stop and examine your bias regarding Lex. What you're doing is not right.

   Fair enough I'll stop mentioning Lex Fridman, and block him completely from my socials. Just thinking of him hurts my head.

[Leo Gura]

7 minutes ago, Danioover9000 said:

@Leo Gura

   Fair enough I'll stop mentioning Lex Fridman, and block him completely from my socials. Just thinking of him hurts my head.

That's not really addressing the issue. Just avoiding it.

[Tanz]

@Leo Gura Michael Malice doesn't seem to have the right answers but he's onto something in regards to people governing themselves. I have to admit people are far from being organized but a lot can change in a decade time frame. Such as if small communities grow food and share with one another and create an alternative way of exchanging without government oversight. There are wealthy to upper middleclass  neighborhoods in California that do not recieve funding at all from the government allowing them to choose which subjects and topics the kids can learn.

Intelligently the ultra wealthy have figured it out such as SVB. The minute they fail the government bails them out over a weekend. REAL swift and fast.

Malice has mentioned in a podcast some commentary on the right bitching and complaining why the left control tech and media. He mentioned that the right needs to do the same rather than complaining. He did mention something along the lines of them being more organized and intelligent.  We can have the same train in thought to any problem. And the answer is going to be revolved around education and personal action. Something at this moment in time does feel distant in our lifetime. 

The masses indeed are selfish and lazy but  a big part of me has to believe in tomorrow's children.

A huge change in consciousness willl be required but can happen swiftly if people get desperate enough or if psychedelics become as readily available as weed.

Edited March 19, 2023 by Tanz

[Leo Gura]

59 minutes ago, Tanz said:

@Leo Gura but he's onto something in regards to people governing themselves.

People ARE governing themselves. What we have now IS what self-governance looks like.

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Such as if small communities grow food and share with one another and create an alternative way of exchanging without government oversight.

Absolutely not. That will never happen. Government oversight is the only way those small communities can exist.

Someone has to monitor the nuclear weapons. There is a team of 1000s of people sitting in a bunker right now monitoring nuclear weapons, in shifts, 24/7/365. With a key to launch missiles. There is no putting that genie back in the bottle.

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Intelligently the ultra wealthy have figured it out such as SVB. The minute they fail the government bails them out over a weekend. REAL swift and fast.

This is very silly logic. The government did not bail out SVB. SVB was bailed out by a special insurance pool which all banks pay into with annual fees. This pool was designed for just this event. It is working perfectly.

And as far as bailouts go, bailouts are a very good thing. Bailouts is how we prevent a catastrophic collapse of the economy. Without bailouts there would be runs on banks and serious disaster would happen. There would be Great Depression style of events that would hurt tens of millions of the poorest people first.

You have to stop framing this as some battle against "the elites". That's not what is happening.

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He mentioned that the right needs to do the same rather than complaining.

This is not a good thing. If the right-wing got more media power America would become even more screwed up. The right-wing is not presenting serious solutions and their media would not be truthful, it would be propaganda and brainwashing along the lines of Fox News, Brietbart, and OANN. We definitely don't need more of that.

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The masses indeed are selfish and lazy but  a big part of me has to believe in tomorrow's children.

Tomorrows children will run a huge and well-oiled bureaucracy because that is the only way to govern the insane technology we have.

We are not in hunter-gather times. You cannot go live in the forest with your friends in a hippie commune. We got nukes, we got oil tankers, we got wars, we got insane supply chain logistics, we got pandemics, we got biological weapons, we got nearly-sentient AIs, we got airports, we got space stations, we got UFOs and aliens flying around, we got terrorists, we got Putin launching wars. Are you crazy? Who is gonna manage all this? Your silly hippies and anarchists? This is laughable.

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A huge change in consciousness willl be required but can happen swiftly if people get desperate enough or if psychedelics become as readily available as weed.

What is needed is a change in your understanding of how government actually works. Not these New Age ideas. None of these New Age ideas can govern a civilization. Lay people have no understanding of what it takes to run a civilization of our technological complexity. These hippies complain about elites, but then they want their free 2-day Amazon shipping. All the hippies in the world would not have enough intelligence to govern one Amazon warehouse, let alone a nation.

All of these discussions are pure childishness. Putin will bomb your fucking hippie anarchist commune, rape all your women, and enslave all your children. This is reality. If Michael Malice was in charge his governance would lead to worse wars than WW2.

It's time to wake up and be an adult. Elites are in charge because they are adults. And that is why they don't subscribe to these childish philosophies.

When you finally understand this, this will be your political awakening. I hope you get there soon.

Edited March 19, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Epikur]

Malice knows a lot about North Korea but when it comes to the Ukraine war he just doesn't know much he says to give an opinion.

 

 

[Nilsi]

14 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

I was listening to it, but as soon as he started to describe how anarchy would work I couldn't stand it any more. It's so naive to think that you could have modern society without a giant centralized government. Such a thing doesn't exist because it isn't possible, not because some elites are too stupid or corrupt to appreciate Michael Malice's genius ideas.

Government bureaucracy is absolutely crucial. At least for the next century. That Michael Malice doesn't understand this shows how unserious he is.

What makes Daniel Schmachtenberger's notion of "collective intelligence" i.e. decentralized distributed governance more appealing to you, than Malice's so called anarchism (if it is)?

Of course this presupposes a highly educated and developed majority, but if that's not the case, the only other option to handle the complexity of the 21st century is some kind of benevolent Übermensch dictator - and I'm not convinced any one agent is intelligent enough, not to fuck this up spectacularly (as Xi and Putin clearly demonstrate -- although the label benevolent obviously doesn't apply here).

Edited March 19, 2023 by Nilsi

[Leo Gura]

4 hours ago, Nilsi said:

What makes Daniel Schmachtenberger's notion of "collective intelligence" i.e. decentralized distributed governance more appealing to you, than Malice's so called anarchism (if it is)?

It all depends on what Schmachtenberger's actual idea of a government is. I don't know his answer to that. Does he say to do away with the Federal government? I doubt it. That would be very foolish.

The American government as it is now IS a vast collective intelligence. American governance is very distributed across a beauracracy that has 10000s of people.

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Of course this presupposes a highly educated and developed majority, but if that's not the case, the only other option to handle the complexity of the 21st century is some kind of benevolent Übermensch dictator - and I'm not convinced any one agent is intelligent enough, not to fuck this up spectacularly (as Xi and Putin clearly demonstrate -- although the label benevolent obviously doesn't apply here).

The other option is exactly what we currently have: a bureaucracy with 10000 administrators.

The only change that's really necessary to improve it is to elect much wiser and more conscious people into those positions. That would be the sane solution. We do not need to make very radical changes to the government in order to have it function extremely well. We have a very solid foundation. Mostly just remove the corruption.

Edited March 19, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Nilsi]

15 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

It all depends on what Schmachtenberger's actually idea of a government is. I don't know his answer to that. Does he say to do away with the Federal government? I doubt it. That would be very foolish.

The American government as it is now IS a vast collective intelligence. American governance is very distributed across a beauracracy that has 10000s of people.

Bureaucracy is literally the arch nemesis of collective action, especially as things become increasingly complex.

 

What he wants to do is educate and develop the populous,

let them set the agenda/values/priorities,

have that be the basis for AI alignment,

and have that AI educate and govern the people.

And so on in a virtuous cycle.

 

At least, that's the only concrete example of collective intelligence he's given.

The obvious problem here is that you need an educated populous to begin with

 

As far as I'm concerned, it's way more realistic to get 1 person to the necessary level of development and have that person assert their will and intelligence on the world.

Edited March 19, 2023 by Nilsi

[Leo Gura]

11 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

What he wants to do is educate and develop the populous,

That's crucial. So good there.

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let them set the agenda/values/priorities,

Well, that's just democracy. We got that.

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have that be the basis for AI alignment,

and have that AI educate and govern the people.

And so on in a virtuous cycle.

That's too simplistic. There need to be many people in that system, not just one AI.

Perhaps that could work in 200-500 years. Kinda pointless to talk about because we'll never live to see it. And making predictions that far ahead is a fool's errand. The people in 100 years will be have much clearer vision of what to do for 200 years ahead. That is not our job. Our focus needs to be the next 50 years.

Edited March 19, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Nilsi]

8 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Well, that's just democracy. We got that.

How?

We mostly have manufactured demand and consent. 

This is where it's starting to get complex already - of course we need to make sure that people aren't corrupted and governed by perverse incentives and market forces -- calling what we currently have democracy is laughable.

8 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

That's too simplistic. There need to be many people in that system, not just one AI.

The people will only add unnecessary noise.

If we assume, we have properly represented the will of the people (of course, that get's us into the whole "the map is not the territory" AI alignment problem), there is no need to let human ambiguity interfere with delicate and complex operations.

8 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Perhaps that could work in 200-500 years.

He was literally talking about GPT-3.

Edited March 19, 2023 by Nilsi

[Leo Gura]

6 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

How?

We mostly have manufactured demand and consent. 

This is where it's starting to get complex already - of course we need to make sure that people aren't corrupted and governed by perverse incentives and market forces -- calling what we currently have democracy is laughable.

We have a decent democracy. The problem is in the media ecosystem and education. If voters were well-educated and well-informed then our current democracy system would work pretty well. You can fine tune it a bit with eliminating electoral college and banning lobbying and private money in politics.

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The people will only add unnecessary noise.

If we assume, we have properly represented the will of the people, there is no need to let human ambiguity interfere with delicate and complex operations.

The government's made out of thousands of professionals doing tons of management and implementation work. No AI will ever replace that. Not for 500 years.

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He was literally talking about GPT-3.

That is fucking absurd. I am losing respect for him.

Edited March 19, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Nilsi]

13 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

We have a decent democracy. The problem is in the media ecosystem and education. If voters were well-educated and well-informed then our current democracy system would work pretty well. You can fine tune it a bit with eliminating electoral college and banning lobbying and private money in politics.

The government's made out of thousands of professionals doing tons of management and implementation work. No AI will ever replace that. Not for 500 years.

I think you're vastly underestimating exponential technology.

In a world of tabletop CRISPR, AI superintelligence, nanobots and so on, you can't trust humans with the responsibility of governance.

All it takes is 1 fuck up and we're done.

Do you really want to trust some fucking social media addicted, obese, sweaty ape, that has slept 4 hours last night, because he watched a horde of apes throw a ball across a field, while stuffing himself with pizza and bears... do you want to trust that guy with administrative work, regarding the proper classification of say pathogen research, which any psychopath with a bioengineering degree could turn into a synthetic supervirus in his basement -- because that's the reality you're proposing.

And that's 5 years, not 500.

Edited March 19, 2023 by Nilsi

[Leo Gura]

I will trust the current government over some AI fantasy. I would not trust an AI to do my taxes.

What you're talking about is pure fantasy. That's not how government works.

Edited March 19, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Nilsi]

2 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

I will trust the current government over some AI fantasy.

What you're talking about is pure fantasy. That's not how government works.

I'm just presenting Schmachtenberger's position, as I understand it.

I'm for dictatorship.

In any case, you have some serious blindspots regarding exponential technology - show me that you've factored those in your political analysis and I will take it seriously.

Edited March 19, 2023 by Nilsi