All of duhadway's Comments + Replies

Peter Thiel recently argued that a slowdown in progress is overdetermined, and due in part to a widespread fear of progress itself. Should we be focusing on the mass psychology needed to support progress? What might help?

2elidourado1yI think it's true to some extent that the masses exert some demand for stagnation. The way I've been thinking about it is that laws and norms are ways of solving iterated prisoner's dilemmas. But because of loss aversion, there isn't symmetry in the kinds of PDs that get solved this way. The "prevent something bad from happening" PDs get solved more than the "make something great happen" PDs do. (This is essentially the Nietzschean distinction between slave morality and master morality, applied to laws as well as morals.) I don't think the masses are ever going to change. Rather, I think elites need to compensate and be advocates for great things happening. There needs to be an elite conspiracy to elevate humanity far above where it would otherwise be willing to go. A lot of policy change can happen with only elite consensus. In my work I focus a lot on small changes that need not concern most people, like a categorical exclusion for geothermal energy. Or changing how the Department of Energy does contracting for demonstration projects. I think a promising way to increase progress is to subtly remove a lot of small obstacles like this. Maybe if we can get a few great, visible achievements it will soften mass opposition to some degree.

Eli Dourado AMA

duhadway1y1

What's your theory of political authority? Do citizens have a moral responsibility to obey government more than other organizations? What are the proper limits to government authority? How does this figure into your policy recommendations?

2elidourado1yI don't think there is any account of political authority that isn't defeated by the standard objections. For purely prudential reasons, I think people should give some deference to governments as long as the government is mostly functional and aligned with the population. Living in a state where the government is ineffective is not generally pleasant, and we should all in some sense be rooting for the government to succeed at least at its basic functions. I don't think there is a set of given-from-on-high proper limits to what the government should do, but I prefer modest aims executed with competence and focus compared to what we have now. My recommendations don't generally speak to the overall size or role of government. For the most part, I am trying to help the government succeed by its own lights—often by helping it get out of its own way. I think this approach gets me in with both Democrats and Republicans and makes me more effective than if I founded my ideas in a more explicit ideology.