I upvoted since I also thought Ben’s claims in that section was too strong.
That said, I think “suspicious of democracy” seems fairly extreme as a way to describe it. I think some EAs are healthily skeptical that democracy is the best possible governance mechanism (or more controversially, best realistically attainable governance mechanisms).
I would certainly consider myself one of them. I think we should generally have a healthy degree of skepticism towards our existing institutions, and I don’t see clear reasons why we should privilege the “democracy” hypothesis over technocracy or more futuristic setups, other than general conservatism (“Chesterton’s fence”) preferences/heuristics. In contrast, we have substantially more evidence for the benefits of democracies over monarchies or other autocratic systems.
I do think the track record where so-called elite people overestimate the efficiency gains of less free systems is suboptimal (LOL at the 1950s economists who thought that the Soviet Union will be more productive than the US). But I don’t think bias arguments should be dominant.
I upvoted since I also thought Ben’s claims in that section was too strong.
That said, I think “suspicious of democracy” seems fairly extreme as a way to describe it. I think some EAs are healthily skeptical that democracy is the best possible governance mechanism (or more controversially, best realistically attainable governance mechanisms).
I would certainly consider myself one of them. I think we should generally have a healthy degree of skepticism towards our existing institutions, and I don’t see clear reasons why we should privilege the “democracy” hypothesis over technocracy or more futuristic setups, other than general conservatism (“Chesterton’s fence”) preferences/heuristics. In contrast, we have substantially more evidence for the benefits of democracies over monarchies or other autocratic systems.
I do think the track record where so-called elite people overestimate the efficiency gains of less free systems is suboptimal (LOL at the 1950s economists who thought that the Soviet Union will be more productive than the US). But I don’t think bias arguments should be dominant.