Authoritarians and Politics

[FreelancePoliceman]

Authoritarians will wreck the world and non-authoritarians will try to fix it. It is basically what you've seen for the past forty years in US politics.

Bush attacks the Middle East, Clinton makes trade deals, Bush II attacks the Middle East and Afghanistan, Obama tries to make trade and nuclear disarmament deals, Trump attacks the Middle East.

It's a lot like the US deficit. Republican president lowers taxes on the rich while raising defense spending and reducing welfare benefits thus blowing up the deficit, Democrat does the opposite and gets a budget surplus, rinse, repeat.

Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House roof as a symbol of his administration's efforts to reduce Global Warming, Reagan had them removed, citing "government over-regulation".

It's pretty clear, I'd say.

But I really do recommend reading the original reference.

Strange, I was interested by how people with RWA didn’t seem to much help others. While of course their game played out in average a lot better, my impression from your post was that they worked together due to self-interest rather than much altruistic motivation.

I feel that “self-interested” is a relatively low bar to set, even if the alternative is active aggression. In politics we need a little better than that. The Obamas and Clintons of the world have been fucking normal people over too (and if you don’t agree, lemme know and I’ll duke it out with you), and even if it isn’t quite as bad as when a Bush starts a war in the Middle East, they don’t have to be the alternative.

[Adam Strange]

Strange, I was interested by how people with RWA didn’t seem to much help others. While of course their game played out in average a lot better, my impression from your post was that they worked together due to self-interest rather than much altruistic motivation.

I feel that “self-interested” is a relatively low bar to set, even if the alternative is active aggression. In politics we need a little better than that. The Obamas and Clintons of the world have been fucking normal people over too (and if you don’t agree, lemme know and I’ll duke it out with you), and even if it isn’t quite as bad as when a Bush starts a war in the Middle East, they don’t have to be the alternative.

Freelance, the real world is more complicated than the Global Change game, and isn’t cleanly separated into Authoritarian and non-Authoritarian ranks of nearly-equal class status college students. In the real world, people of different economic classes war with each other, and can form mutually self-interested groups across political and national boundaries.

The politicians in the US all represent the ruling class, and as such, have been screwing the middle class pretty consistently ever since the oil-and extraction industry-funded Republicans destroyed the unions, which were where the Democrats got most of their campaign money. Now, the Democrats get their money from the parasitic Finance industry, and the Middle class is left without any say in the economy at all. The economic decline of the Middle class is a direct consequence of this.

But Altemeyer’s essay does illustrate the fact that Authoritarians will destroy the planet in the interest of their group. I’m absolutely certain that this kind of behavior has been selected for by evolution as being advantageous in certain situations, but those situations didn’t take into account the ability to end life on this planet.

I wonder if this is why we don’t see any other civilizations in the galaxy? They have all hit this Great Filter.

[FreelancePoliceman]

The real world is more complicated than the Global Change game, and isn’t cleanly separated into Authoritarian and non-Authoritarian ranks of college students. In the real world, people of different economic classes war with each other, and can form mutually self-interested groups across political and national boundaries.

But Altemeyer’s essay does illustrate the fact that Authoritarians will destroy the planet in the interest of their group. I’m absolutely certain that this kind of behavior has been selected for by evolution as being advantageous in certain situations, but those situations didn’t take into account the ability to end life on this planet.

I wonder if this is why we don’t see any other civilizations in the galaxy? They have all hit this Great Filter.

edit: to be clear, in my previous post I was referring to the way you described Republicans causing issues and Democrats fixing them. I was annoyed because I felt reality wasn’t that simple. The problems the Democrats “solve” are rarely bread-and-butter issues (what difference does it really make to me if the budget is balanced?), and that their policies inadvertently result in less mass dying than the Republicans’ doesn’t really inspire me to love them.

You’re into sci-fi, aren’t you? I’ve read some (mostly Asimov (I read the entire Foundation series, at least most of the robot series, and various short stories), Arthur C. Clarke, and Herbert’s Dune series) but I’m not a sci-fi buff at all. My impression, though, is most sci-fi relating to interplanetary or interstellar travel relies on the invention of faster-than-light technology. Given the enormous advances in technology we’ve seen in the past two hundred years, I think a lot of people, especially the types who really like sci-fi, think that anything will be possible after enough time; that technological advancements are inevitable and will eventually let people do anything they put their mind to. But I wonder if the real reason we don’t see aliens is because FTL travel is simply impossible.

Already we’re reaching physical limits for electronics parts; that is, no matter how efficient a CPU can be, there’s still a physical limit to how small it can possibly be made. There are obviously ideas about how to get around this problem, but it’s interesting to consider that there might be real limits on technological advancement, and that we might be about to hit them.

[mu4]

Freelance, the real world is more complicated than the Global Change game, and isn’t cleanly separated into Authoritarian and non-Authoritarian ranks of nearly-equal class status college students. In the real world, people of different economic classes war with each other, and can form mutually self-interested groups across political and national boundaries.

The politicians in the US all represent the ruling class, and as such, have been screwing the middle class pretty consistently ever since the oil-and extraction industry-funded Republicans destroyed the unions, which were where the Democrats got most of their campaign money. Now, the Democrats get their money from the parasitic Finance industry, and the Middle class is left without any say in the economy at all. The economic decline of the Middle class is a direct consequence of this.

But Altemeyer’s essay does illustrate the fact that Authoritarians will destroy the planet in the interest of their group. I’m absolutely certain that this kind of behavior has been selected for by evolution as being advantageous in certain situations, but those situations didn’t take into account the ability to end life on this planet.

I wonder if this is why we don’t see any other civilizations in the galaxy? They have all hit this Great Filter.

I see it as a lot less black and white and we need to talk about real world interaction between groups rather than some experiment. Authoritarians engage in social conflict for their group which form for reasons usually related to geography, ethnicity and culture. The Russians and Chinese did not engage in social conflict within their society and against other societies because they were Authoritarian. The Authoritarians got power because they were willing to engage in social conflict. Authoritarians probably have the tendency see things was winning/losing/zero sum, which rationalizes the conflict but sometimes this is the enviroment which people live in. The west was very good for a period of time at sending their authoritarians to other parts of the world in order to use them and their lives to subjugate other groups, while largely being non-authoritarian with their own group. The British were especially good at this, however the authoritarians in the west eventually still got into conflict.

Historically non-authoritarian modes of coexistence is not possible without sending your authoritarians on wars of conquest and subjugation. However doing so today is difficult and there is little political will or profit to this, the authoritarians stay home and engage in social conflict domestically which of course create social instability. Also without authoritarians fighting these social conflicts and fighting to win, it is largely impossible to overcome authoritarians of a more advanced society.

I think it's also important to differentiate between forms of authoritarianism, as inverted totalitarianism which is rooted in very different ideas vs say Fascism or communism. This study is largely right wing authoritarianism which is of a fundamentally different character than LWA.