The current US administration is attempting an authoritarian takeover. This takes years and might not be successful. My manifold question puts an attempt to seize power if they lose legitimate elections at 30% (n=37). I put it much higher.[1]
Not only is this concerning by itself, this also incentivizes them to achieve a strategic decisive advantage via superintelligence over pro-democracy factions. As a consequence, they may be willing to rush and cut corners on safety.
Crucially, this relies on them believing superintelligence can be achieved before a transfer of power.
I don’t know how much the belief in superintelligence has spread into the administration. I don’t think Trump is ‘AGI-pilled’ yet, but maybe JD Vance is? He made an accelerationist speech. Making them more AGI-pilled and advocating for nationalization (like Ashenbrenner did last year) could be very dangerous.
The forum likes to catastrophize Trump but I need to point out a few things for the sake of accuracy since this is very misleading and highly upvoted.
The current administration has done many things that I find horrible, but I don’t see any evidence of an authoritarian takeover. Being hyperbolic isn’t helpful.
Your Manifold question is horribly biased because you are the author and made it very biased. First, there is your bias in how you will resolve the question. Second, the wording of the question comes off as incredibly biased. For example, saying that Bush v Gore counts as a coup or “Anything that makes the person they try to put in power illegitimate in my judgment,”. Your judgment is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
I think it’s important to quantify this supposed incentive. Needless to say, I think it’s very low.
I don’t think it matters much but I am Manifold’s former #1 trader until I stopped and I’m fairly well regarded as a forecaster.
The forum likes to catastrophize Trump but I need to point out a few things for the sake of accuracy since this is very misleading and highly upvoted.
The current administration has done many things that I find horrible, but I don’t see any evidence of an authoritarian takeover. Being hyperbolic isn’t helpful.
I think this statement is highly misleading. First, I think compared to most other fora and groups, this Forum is decidedly not catastrophizing Trump.
Second, if you don’t see “any evidence of an authoritarian takeover” then you are clearly not paying very much attention.
I think there is a fair debate to be had about how seriously to take various signs of authoritarianism on the part of the Administration, but “seeing no evidence of it” is not really consistent with the signals one does readily find when paying attention, such as:
- an attack on the independence of the judiciary and law firms, complaining about the fact that courts exercise their legitimate powers - flirting with the idea of being in defiance of court orders - talking about a third term - praising Putin, Orban, and other authoritarians - undermining due process
I think this statement is highly misleading. First, I think compared to most other fora and groups, this Forum is decidedly not catastrophizing Trump.
On a relative basis to other left-wing places, the forum is not catastrophizing Trump. I should have said that this post is catastrophizing Trump and is only getting the upvotes (at the time I posted, it was all upvotes and “agree” reacts), because of the forum’s political bias.
Second, if you don’t see “any evidence of an authoritarian takeover” then you are clearly not paying very much attention.
Again, I should be more precise but this is a misinterpretation I think. There is always evidence of authoritarian takeover by any President. Every President does things that are supposed to be done through Congress (for example, most military action). I agree that Trump has more authoritarian impulses than most but this is not nearly clearing the bar for, as the author says, “The current US administration is attempting an authoritarian takeover.”. That’s a very strong statement and the evidence doesn’t back that up. It’s hyperbolic.
For the record, by authoritarian takeover I mean a gradual process aiming for a situation like Hungary (which they’ve frequently cited as their inspiration and something to aspire to). Given that Trump has tried to orchestrate a coup the last time he was in office, I don’t think it’s a hyperbolic claim to say he’s trying again this time. I’m also not making any claims about the likelihood of success.
is only getting the upvotes (at the time I posted, it was all upvotes and “agree” reacts), because of the forum’s political bias.
I think this is very uncharitable to other Forum users. (Unless you meant “is getting only upvotes [..]”)
I was mostly objecting to your statement of “seeing no sign of authoritarian takeover”, I do agree and mentioned in my comment that Siebe’s statement was possibly too definite.
But I don’t think it is hyperbolic to say that there are many signs of Trump’s authoritarianism and signs consistent with an attempted authoritarian takeover and that this is qualitatively different than what we have seen from any other President in recent history, one has to go back to at least Nixon to get things in the same ballpark (and Nixon was arguably a lot more constrained by his own party than Trump is right now).
The examples you are citing “Presidents doing things that should be done through Congress” are not examples of authoritarian behavior and pretending that what Trump is doing is part of the regular testing of executive authority is also quite misleading.
Which other recent Administration was headed by someone denying a legitimate election result? Which other recent Administration had a VP flirting with the idea of not honoring Supreme Court rulings? Which other recent Administration was systematically invested in fighting against civil society institutions and law firms? Which other Administration has had so many people warning about authoritarian tendencies, both from their own party and from key senior staff from their own first administration?
A lie (it cannot be hyperbole as the claim he made was very specifically framed)
Legal under the constitution, because he would do it via running for Vice President and having the elected President resign, and anything technically legal is not an ‘authoritarian takeover’
Illegal under the constitution, but he would legally amend the constitution to remove term limits
Something else?
And then, for whichever you believe, could you explain how it isn’t an authoritarian takeover?
(I choose this example because it’s relatively clear-cut, but we could point to Trump vs. United States, the refusal to follow court orders related to deportations, instructing the AG not to prosecute companies for unbanning Tik Tok, the attempts from his surrogates to buy votes, freezing funding for agencies established by acts of Congress, bombing Yemen without seeking approval from Congress, kidnapping and holding legal residents without due process, etc. etc. etc., I just think those have greyer areas)
Trump and crew spout millions of lies. It’s very common at this point. If you get worked up about every one of these, you’re going to lose your mind.
Look, I’m not happy about this Trump stuff either. It’s incredibly destabilizing for many reasons. But you are going to lose focus on important things if you get swept up into the daily Trump news. If you are focused on AI safety or animal welfare or poverty or whatever it may be, your most effective thing will almost certainly be focusing on something else.
I don’t think discussing authoritarian takeover is against Forum rules, though EA is not the ideal place for political resistance given its broad amount of causes for which it needs political tractability. However, it’s tricky because US political dynamics are currently extremely influential for EA cause areas, and I think we need to do better thinking through how various areas will be affected, and how policies might interact with the affect that the US administration is proto-authoritarian. We should not simply pretend the US administration is a normal one.
That said, in these discussion we should be careful to not descend into ‘mere partisanship’ though I don’t know where that line is. I wish the Forum team would give more guidance.
This is something we should think about more as a mod team- I’ll discuss it with them.
Our current politics policy is still this. But it arguably wasn’t designed with our current situation in mind. In my view, it’d be a bad thing if discussions on the Forum became too tied to the news cycle (It generally seems true that once something is on the news, you are at least several years too late to change it), our impact has historically not been had by working in the most politically salient areas (neglectedness isn’t a perfect proxy but it still matters). However, it’d also be wrong if the Forum couldn’t discuss politically salient issues while they are going on, and there is something readers could do to stop them.
FWIW in this particular situation (and I haven’t conferred with the mod team) I don’t see this thread as being against Forum rules, because the participants could reasonably believe (or for that matter, not believe) that preventing authoritarian takeover in the US is a relevant cause area to EA.
Trump tried something arguably coup-like but it fails (25%, n=44) and the linked “Trump remains in office” is 15% (n=43), putting the total attempt probability at 40%. Other markets put success at lower rates though, which seems more realistic.
The President has also already tried a coup once (fake elector scheme, J6). There’s a much bigger case I could make but I don’t want to do that here
Whilst I agree there is a disconcertingly high chance (i.e anything above 10% = very concerning) of coup/coup-adjacent actions by the Trump admin, it’s worth remembering that ‘coup attempt’ ≠ ‘coup success.’ It’s also worth remembering that 30% ‘thing happens’ means 70% ‘thing doesn’t happen.’
A larger market (n=158) on metaculus has 2% on “Will Trump win the 2024 presidential election and retain supreme executive power past 2028?” Given that he already won the election, the question is effectively “Will Trump retain supreme executive power past 2028?”. Granted, this excludes coup attempts by Vance, but, eh, idk why he would have a substantially higher chance of pulling of a successful coup (admittedly without having given it much thought).
Admittedly, I felt motivated by a gut level “I don’t like politics/Trump posting on the EA forum” to write a response. Or maybe it was also partly the subtle alarmism (which isn’t a claim that you intended to write an alarmist post, just that I read it as such).
I realize ‘Manifold questions with poor resolution criteria’ is something of a repeated subject from me, but I think it’s worth noting how perverse this criteria is. If traders are behaving rationally, for this contract to be trading at 30% implies 70% confidence that… the 2028 election will be more democratically legitimate than the 2000 election? As far as I can see, this market pricing is perfectly compatible with:
70% of being more democratically legitimate as a perfectly fine presidential election
30% of being equally legitimate to a perfectly fine presidential election
To the extent that you use the word ‘coup’ in a very expansive way that is not shared by most people, you should probably explicitly signpost this. The rest of your comment doesn’t really follow as a result… why should SCOTUS deciding than you can’t do cherry-picked county recounts create an incentive to rush to a strategic decisive advantage? The Absence of AGI was not an issue to the ruling back in 2000.
I appreciate you looking into the resolution criteria, because they matter. And yes, partisan SCOTUS rulings being included muddles the evidence somewhat. That said, I don’t think it’s that misleading because
Trump tried something arguably coup-like but it fails (25%, n=44) and the linked “Trump remains in office” is 15% (n=43), putting the total attempt probability at 40%. Other markets put success at lower rates though, which seems more realistic.
In hindsight I would’ve referenced the Manifold poll resolution.
I recommend everyone in this thread looking at the US Democracy topic on Manifold which I have added all relevant questions to that I could find (and also look elsewhere, e.g. Metaculus, which has much fewer questions but arguably better incentives for long-term questions)
P.S.
I also have a separate question for specifically a controversial SCOTUS ruling in favor of Republicans but it doesn’t have enough traders.
Going meta, I think this thread demonstrates how the Agree/Disagree system can oversimplify complex discussions.
Here, several distinct claims are being made simultaneously. For example:
The US administration is attempting some form of authoritarian takeover
The Manifold question accurately represents the situation
“This also incentivizes them to achieve a strategic decisive advantage via superintelligence over pro-democracy factions”
I think Marcus raises a valid criticism regarding point #2. Point #1 remains quite vague—different people likely have different definitions of what constitutes an “authoritarian takeover.”
Personally, I initially used the agree/disagree buttons but later removed those reactions. For discussions like this, it might be more effective for readers to write short posts specifying which aspects they agree or disagree with.
To clarify my own position: I’m somewhat sympathetic to point #1, skeptical of point #2 given the current resolution criteria, and skeptical of point #3.
Speaking as an American—I think a silver lining on recent tariff moves is that they may foster anti-American sentiment in e.g. Europe, which then makes Europeans more instinctively resistant to America’s recklessness when it comes to AI. I think it could be really high-impact for EAs in e.g. the Netherlands to try and kickstart a conversation about how ASML may enable an American AI omnicide.
Never let a good crisis go to waste!
Probably worth red-teaming this suggestion, though. It would be bad if the MAGA crowd were to polarize in opposition, and embrace AI boosterism in order to stick it to Europe. Perhaps this effect could be mitigated if the discussion mostly happened in the Dutch language?
The current US administration is attempting an authoritarian takeover. This takes years and might not be successful. My manifold question puts an attempt to seize power if they lose legitimate elections at 30% (n=37). I put it much higher.[1]
Not only is this concerning by itself, this also incentivizes them to achieve a strategic decisive advantage via superintelligence over pro-democracy factions. As a consequence, they may be willing to rush and cut corners on safety.
Crucially, this relies on them believing superintelligence can be achieved before a transfer of power.
I don’t know how much the belief in superintelligence has spread into the administration. I don’t think Trump is ‘AGI-pilled’ yet, but maybe JD Vance is? He made an accelerationist speech. Making them more AGI-pilled and advocating for nationalization (like Ashenbrenner did last year) could be very dangerous.
So far, my pessimism about US Democracy has put me in #2 on the Manifold topic, with a big lead over other traders. I’m not a Superforecaster though.
The forum likes to catastrophize Trump but I need to point out a few things for the sake of accuracy since this is very misleading and highly upvoted.
The current administration has done many things that I find horrible, but I don’t see any evidence of an authoritarian takeover. Being hyperbolic isn’t helpful.
Your Manifold question is horribly biased because you are the author and made it very biased. First, there is your bias in how you will resolve the question. Second, the wording of the question comes off as incredibly biased. For example, saying that Bush v Gore counts as a coup or “Anything that makes the person they try to put in power illegitimate in my judgment,”. Your judgment is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
I think it’s important to quantify this supposed incentive. Needless to say, I think it’s very low.
I don’t think it matters much but I am Manifold’s former #1 trader until I stopped and I’m fairly well regarded as a forecaster.
I think this statement is highly misleading. First, I think compared to most other fora and groups, this Forum is decidedly not catastrophizing Trump.
Second, if you don’t see “any evidence of an authoritarian takeover” then you are clearly not paying very much attention.
I think there is a fair debate to be had about how seriously to take various signs of authoritarianism on the part of the Administration, but “seeing no evidence of it” is not really consistent with the signals one does readily find when paying attention, such as:
- an attack on the independence of the judiciary and law firms, complaining about the fact that courts exercise their legitimate powers
- flirting with the idea of being in defiance of court orders
- talking about a third term
- praising Putin, Orban, and other authoritarians
- undermining due process
On a relative basis to other left-wing places, the forum is not catastrophizing Trump. I should have said that this post is catastrophizing Trump and is only getting the upvotes (at the time I posted, it was all upvotes and “agree” reacts), because of the forum’s political bias.
Again, I should be more precise but this is a misinterpretation I think. There is always evidence of authoritarian takeover by any President. Every President does things that are supposed to be done through Congress (for example, most military action). I agree that Trump has more authoritarian impulses than most but this is not nearly clearing the bar for, as the author says, “The current US administration is attempting an authoritarian takeover.”. That’s a very strong statement and the evidence doesn’t back that up. It’s hyperbolic.
For the record, by authoritarian takeover I mean a gradual process aiming for a situation like Hungary (which they’ve frequently cited as their inspiration and something to aspire to). Given that Trump has tried to orchestrate a coup the last time he was in office, I don’t think it’s a hyperbolic claim to say he’s trying again this time. I’m also not making any claims about the likelihood of success.
I think this is very uncharitable to other Forum users. (Unless you meant “is getting only upvotes [..]”)
I was mostly objecting to your statement of “seeing no sign of authoritarian takeover”, I do agree and mentioned in my comment that Siebe’s statement was possibly too definite.
But I don’t think it is hyperbolic to say that there are many signs of Trump’s authoritarianism and signs consistent with an attempted authoritarian takeover and that this is qualitatively different than what we have seen from any other President in recent history, one has to go back to at least Nixon to get things in the same ballpark (and Nixon was arguably a lot more constrained by his own party than Trump is right now).
The examples you are citing “Presidents doing things that should be done through Congress” are not examples of authoritarian behavior and pretending that what Trump is doing is part of the regular testing of executive authority is also quite misleading.
Which other recent Administration was headed by someone denying a legitimate election result? Which other recent Administration had a VP flirting with the idea of not honoring Supreme Court rulings? Which other recent Administration was systematically invested in fighting against civil society institutions and law firms? Which other Administration has had so many people warning about authoritarian tendencies, both from their own party and from key senior staff from their own first administration?
We’re probably already violating Forum rules by discussing partisan politics, but I’m curious to hear how you view Trump’s claim that he is “not joking” about a third term. Is this:
A lie (it cannot be hyperbole as the claim he made was very specifically framed)
Legal under the constitution, because he would do it via running for Vice President and having the elected President resign, and anything technically legal is not an ‘authoritarian takeover’
Illegal under the constitution, but he would legally amend the constitution to remove term limits
Something else?
And then, for whichever you believe, could you explain how it isn’t an authoritarian takeover?
(I choose this example because it’s relatively clear-cut, but we could point to Trump vs. United States, the refusal to follow court orders related to deportations, instructing the AG not to prosecute companies for unbanning Tik Tok, the attempts from his surrogates to buy votes, freezing funding for agencies established by acts of Congress, bombing Yemen without seeking approval from Congress, kidnapping and holding legal residents without due process, etc. etc. etc., I just think those have greyer areas)
I think 1, 3, and 4 are all possible.
Trump and crew spout millions of lies. It’s very common at this point. If you get worked up about every one of these, you’re going to lose your mind.
Look, I’m not happy about this Trump stuff either. It’s incredibly destabilizing for many reasons. But you are going to lose focus on important things if you get swept up into the daily Trump news. If you are focused on AI safety or animal welfare or poverty or whatever it may be, your most effective thing will almost certainly be focusing on something else.
What evidence would you need to see to conclude that an Orbanisation of the US government is beginning, but still early enough to prevent it?
I don’t think discussing authoritarian takeover is against Forum rules, though EA is not the ideal place for political resistance given its broad amount of causes for which it needs political tractability. However, it’s tricky because US political dynamics are currently extremely influential for EA cause areas, and I think we need to do better thinking through how various areas will be affected, and how policies might interact with the affect that the US administration is proto-authoritarian. We should not simply pretend the US administration is a normal one.
That said, in these discussion we should be careful to not descend into ‘mere partisanship’ though I don’t know where that line is. I wish the Forum team would give more guidance.
This is something we should think about more as a mod team- I’ll discuss it with them.
Our current politics policy is still this. But it arguably wasn’t designed with our current situation in mind. In my view, it’d be a bad thing if discussions on the Forum became too tied to the news cycle (It generally seems true that once something is on the news, you are at least several years too late to change it), our impact has historically not been had by working in the most politically salient areas (neglectedness isn’t a perfect proxy but it still matters). However, it’d also be wrong if the Forum couldn’t discuss politically salient issues while they are going on, and there is something readers could do to stop them.
FWIW in this particular situation (and I haven’t conferred with the mod team) I don’t see this thread as being against Forum rules, because the participants could reasonably believe (or for that matter, not believe) that preventing authoritarian takeover in the US is a relevant cause area to EA.
I don’t think it’s that misleading because
Will Manifold think Trump made a serious about to remain in charge? (35%, n=26, would be ~26% without my bets). Resolves via Manifold poll
Trump tried something arguably coup-like but it fails (25%, n=44) and the linked “Trump remains in office” is 15% (n=43), putting the total attempt probability at 40%. Other markets put success at lower rates though, which seems more realistic.
The President has also already tried a coup once (fake elector scheme, J6). There’s a much bigger case I could make but I don’t want to do that here
Whilst I agree there is a disconcertingly high chance (i.e anything above 10% = very concerning) of coup/coup-adjacent actions by the Trump admin, it’s worth remembering that ‘coup attempt’ ≠ ‘coup success.’ It’s also worth remembering that 30% ‘thing happens’ means 70% ‘thing doesn’t happen.’
A larger market (n=158) on metaculus has 2% on “Will Trump win the 2024 presidential election and retain supreme executive power past 2028?” Given that he already won the election, the question is effectively “Will Trump retain supreme executive power past 2028?”. Granted, this excludes coup attempts by Vance, but, eh, idk why he would have a substantially higher chance of pulling of a successful coup (admittedly without having given it much thought).
Admittedly, I felt motivated by a gut level “I don’t like politics/Trump posting on the EA forum” to write a response. Or maybe it was also partly the subtle alarmism (which isn’t a claim that you intended to write an alarmist post, just that I read it as such).
I realize ‘Manifold questions with poor resolution criteria’ is something of a repeated subject from me, but I think it’s worth noting how perverse this criteria is. If traders are behaving rationally, for this contract to be trading at 30% implies 70% confidence that… the 2028 election will be more democratically legitimate than the 2000 election? As far as I can see, this market pricing is perfectly compatible with:
70% of being more democratically legitimate as a perfectly fine presidential election
30% of being equally legitimate to a perfectly fine presidential election
To the extent that you use the word ‘coup’ in a very expansive way that is not shared by most people, you should probably explicitly signpost this. The rest of your comment doesn’t really follow as a result… why should SCOTUS deciding than you can’t do cherry-picked county recounts create an incentive to rush to a strategic decisive advantage? The Absence of AGI was not an issue to the ruling back in 2000.
I appreciate you looking into the resolution criteria, because they matter. And yes, partisan SCOTUS rulings being included muddles the evidence somewhat. That said, I don’t think it’s that misleading because
Will Manifold think Trump made a serious about to remain in charge? (35%, n=26, would be ~26% without my bets). Resolves via Manifold poll
Trump tried something arguably coup-like but it fails (25%, n=44) and the linked “Trump remains in office” is 15% (n=43), putting the total attempt probability at 40%. Other markets put success at lower rates though, which seems more realistic.
In hindsight I would’ve referenced the Manifold poll resolution.
I recommend everyone in this thread looking at the US Democracy topic on Manifold which I have added all relevant questions to that I could find (and also look elsewhere, e.g. Metaculus, which has much fewer questions but arguably better incentives for long-term questions)
P.S.
I also have a separate question for specifically a controversial SCOTUS ruling in favor of Republicans but it doesn’t have enough traders.
Going meta, I think this thread demonstrates how the Agree/Disagree system can oversimplify complex discussions.
Here, several distinct claims are being made simultaneously. For example:
The US administration is attempting some form of authoritarian takeover
The Manifold question accurately represents the situation
“This also incentivizes them to achieve a strategic decisive advantage via superintelligence over pro-democracy factions”
I think Marcus raises a valid criticism regarding point #2. Point #1 remains quite vague—different people likely have different definitions of what constitutes an “authoritarian takeover.”
Personally, I initially used the agree/disagree buttons but later removed those reactions. For discussions like this, it might be more effective for readers to write short posts specifying which aspects they agree or disagree with.
To clarify my own position: I’m somewhat sympathetic to point #1, skeptical of point #2 given the current resolution criteria, and skeptical of point #3.
Speaking as an American—I think a silver lining on recent tariff moves is that they may foster anti-American sentiment in e.g. Europe, which then makes Europeans more instinctively resistant to America’s recklessness when it comes to AI. I think it could be really high-impact for EAs in e.g. the Netherlands to try and kickstart a conversation about how ASML may enable an American AI omnicide.
Never let a good crisis go to waste!
Probably worth red-teaming this suggestion, though. It would be bad if the MAGA crowd were to polarize in opposition, and embrace AI boosterism in order to stick it to Europe. Perhaps this effect could be mitigated if the discussion mostly happened in the Dutch language?