One downside of considering this question in the abstract is that it downplays the crucial issue of trust. The greater trust between the population and the experts, the more willing the population will be to accept more technocracy.
While true, I think most proposed EA policy projects are much too small in scope to be able to move the needle on trust, and so need to take the currently-existing level of trust as a given.
I think the issue of trust is very interesting when thinking about technocracy vs populism in the longer term.
However, I think the risk of the population rejecting decisions is only significant if decisions are extremely technocratic, and this would only a concern if we conclude that extremely technocratic decisions are ideal. I think we are unlikely to conclude this.
But if we do conclude that extremely technocratic decisions are ideal, I think the ideal approach would be to seek to increase population trust in experts, and aim for a gradual increase in technocracy corresponding to increasing population trust. But it is certainly possible that population trust can’t be increased enough to accept an extreme level of technocracy.
One downside of considering this question in the abstract is that it downplays the crucial issue of trust. The greater trust between the population and the experts, the more willing the population will be to accept more technocracy.
While true, I think most proposed EA policy projects are much too small in scope to be able to move the needle on trust, and so need to take the currently-existing level of trust as a given.
Thanks for your comment.
I think the issue of trust is very interesting when thinking about technocracy vs populism in the longer term.
However, I think the risk of the population rejecting decisions is only significant if decisions are extremely technocratic, and this would only a concern if we conclude that extremely technocratic decisions are ideal. I think we are unlikely to conclude this.
But if we do conclude that extremely technocratic decisions are ideal, I think the ideal approach would be to seek to increase population trust in experts, and aim for a gradual increase in technocracy corresponding to increasing population trust. But it is certainly possible that population trust can’t be increased enough to accept an extreme level of technocracy.