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blog/political-opinions.md
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@ -41,9 +41,9 @@ This can also be blamed on cultural evolution/memetics. As with religions, the m
The most common objection I've heard is along the lines of "but if everyone did this, no political improvement would occur and the world would be much worse off". This is true but irrelevant: I'm not a Kantian and don't only advocate for behaviors which need to apply to everyone at once[^4]. In the current state of the world, I think the marginal benefit (to everyone, and to you) of engagement is below the marginal cost and so it should be avoided - if a sufficiently large amount of people agreed with me on this and did so, my arguments would apply less and it would become more worthwhile, and I might then argue in favour of political engagement.
Another is the claim that I am a privileged person who is only able to ignore politics because I'm not heavily threatened or discriminated against by existing instutions. This is entirely missing the point: being more affected by something does not make you more able to affect it.
Another is the claim that I am a privileged person who is only able to ignore politics because I'm not heavily threatened or discriminated against by existing institutions. This is entirely missing the point: being more affected by something does not make you more able to affect it.
The best I've had[^3] is that even if standard political engagement doesn't do anything, there are some activites considered "politics" which do work and which are reasonably accessible to indviduals, such as local organization, engaging directly with figures in government or writing detailed policy proposals. This is plausibly true, but it's almost entirely orthogonal to most interaction, and having strong opinions on politics tends to bias your judgment of how effective and reasonable your actions actually are.
The best I've had[^3] is that even if standard political engagement doesn't do anything, there are some activities considered "politics" which do work and which are reasonably accessible to individuals, such as local organization, engaging directly with figures in government or writing detailed policy proposals. This is plausibly true, but it's almost entirely orthogonal to most interaction, and having strong opinions on politics tends to bias your judgment of how effective and reasonable your actions actually are.
If you have any arguments against my argument I haven't addressed here, please tell me so I can think about them.
@ -53,4 +53,4 @@ If you have any arguments against my argument I haven't addressed here, please t
[^3]: And the reason why this post was accidentally left as an unfinished draft for several months.
[^4]: I don't think [decision-theoretic](https://arbital.com/p/logical_dt/?l=58f) notions save you, because most people don't use or apply complicated decision theories so if you think about them you are already uncorrelated with almost everyone else.
[^4]: I don't think [decision-theoretic](https://arbital.com/p/logical_dt/?l=58f) notions save you, because most people don't use or apply complicated decision theories so if you think about them you are already uncorrelated with almost everyone else.