[ExI] Political correctness consequences

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Thu, Aug 4, 2016 at 5:51 AM, Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se> wrote:

> I don't know. I honestly wonder about the meme diversity in past elite
> groups. Most examples I can think of were very homogeneous. Perhaps the
> restoration era British elite were unusual in the existence of the
> protestant and catholic views, except that I think that was more political
> standpoints. Maybe in some periods the Athenian agora was relatively
> diverse, but there are tricky magnification effects here since we mostly
> know it from a few sources.
>

### I agree that past elite groups tended to be very homogenous within each
polity but there was a substantial amount of diversity between polities.
Today that inter-polity diversity is to some extent limited by the fast
diffusion of memes between polities.

--------------

> The interesting question is how to set up systems that enable diverse
> elites, or to investigate what other possibilities are open.
>

### The system of political beliefs that enables diverse elites is
classical liberalism, with its insistence on a very small number of
fundamental rules (self-ownership, freedom of association, freedom of
speech, non-initiation of violence) that enable a diverse and tolerant but
not randomly permissive or weak society. Anybody who espouses these rules
is capable of peaceful coexistence with a much wider spectrum of beliefs
and attitudes than those who fail at them. Classical liberalism is
compatible with conservatism, progressivism, internationalism, nationalism,
even utopian socialism, which are at their core orthogonal to classical
liberalism. On the other hand, the political systems that are starkly in
conflict with classical liberalism are communism, fascism, Islam, some
forms of fundamental Christianity, and to a large extent American
liberalism.

Rafał
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