It seem plausible that institutional mechanisms that prevent malevolent use of power may work well today in democracies.
I agree that they probably work well but there still seems to be room for improvement. For example, Trump doesn’t seem like a beacon of kindness and humility, to put it mildly. Nevertheless, he got elected President. On top of that, he wasn’t even required to release his tax returns—one of the more basic ways to detect malevolence.
Of course, I agree that stable and well-functioning democracies with good cultural norms would benefit substantially less from many of our suggested interventions.
Also, the major alternative to reducing the influence of malevolent actors may be in the institutional decision making itself, or some structural interventions. AI Governance as a field seems to mostly go in that route, for example.
Just to be clear, I’m very much in favor of such “structural interventions”. In fact, they overall seem more promising to me. However, it might not be everyone’s comparative advantage to contribute to them which is why I thought it valuable to explore potentially more neglected alternatives where lower-hanging fruits are still to be picked.
That said, I think that efforts going into your suggested interventions are largely orthogonal to these alternatives (and might actually be supportive of one another).
Yes, my sense is that they should be mutually supportive—I don’t see why they shouldn’t. I’m glad you share this impression (at least to some extent)!
I agree that they probably work well but there still seems to be room for improvement. For example, Trump doesn’t seem like a beacon of kindness and humility, to put it mildly. Nevertheless, he got elected President. On top of that, he wasn’t even required to release his tax returns—one of the more basic ways to detect malevolence.
Of course, I agree that stable and well-functioning democracies with good cultural norms would benefit substantially less from many of our suggested interventions.
Just to be clear, I’m very much in favor of such “structural interventions”. In fact, they overall seem more promising to me. However, it might not be everyone’s comparative advantage to contribute to them which is why I thought it valuable to explore potentially more neglected alternatives where lower-hanging fruits are still to be picked.
Yes, my sense is that they should be mutually supportive—I don’t see why they shouldn’t. I’m glad you share this impression (at least to some extent)!