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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body bgcolor=white lang=EN-GB link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-US'>(Apologies if I recapitulate things well-known to cognoscenti – by the history of this email list, I’m a recent entrant)<br><br>Is there also a ‘damping’ consideration here? In effect constitutions and other mechanisms lock in the preferences of the past against the future (e.g. super-majoritarian requirements for amendment, etc.) This obviously hinders correcting the errors of the past, but may be a useful barrier against errors of the future. Britain has all manner of anachronisms which don’t survive contemporary scrutiny, but perhaps the general inertia of the political system has been helpful to ensure a few hundred years of peaceful and stable government.<br><br>Even if you’re pretty whiggish (which I’m guessing Extropians generally are…) about social progress over time, you might still want to have some institutional conservatism as we approximate better and better the ‘right system’, as newer innovations are more likely to be error.<br><br>I wonder if some mathsy political scientists have tried to quantify these effects?<br><br>Enjoy life,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-US'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-US'>Gregory<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-US'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0cm 0cm 0cm'><p class=MsoNormal><b><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:windowtext'>From:</span></b><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:windowtext'> extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org] <b>On Behalf Of </b>Anders<br><b>Sent:</b> 05 June 2016 07:45<br><b>To:</b> extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org<br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [ExI] political disaster was: request to tone down politics<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>On 2016-06-05 00:03, William Flynn Wallace wrote:<br><br><o:p></o:p></p><blockquote style='margin-top:5.0pt;margin-bottom:5.0pt'><div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:9.5pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#222222'>Still, trying to steer towards extropian themes: the way of handling disasters is to (1) avoid them happening, (2) make actions during the event to mitigate damage, and (3) have good recovery options. It might be interesting to analyse the problem of political systems going into headspins this way. anders</span><span style='font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:9.5pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#222222'>Russia has been dysfunctional for nearly 100 years. Surely they have tried to tweak the system many times, to no avail. Why don't they change? Why don't Cuba and North Korea, seeing as how these countries are in permanent disaster? Is it just that they are ruled by strongmen who control the military?</span><span style='font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div></blockquote><p class=MsoNormal><br>Blaming political ideology does not work as an explanation, since they were not exactly in a great state before shifting to socialism (Russia a collapsing monarchy, Cuba an authoritarian dictatorship, North Korea occupied by the Japanese and Soviet Union). Plus, other basket cases like Haiti has never been socialist. <br><br>Now, I know political science has a fair bit of knowledge and theory about why dysfunction tends to run deep. One clear issue is that institutions tend to be weak and untrustworthy, the incentives for rulers and ruled are such that corruption and distrust (or even outright theft) becomes rational. Some failure modes involve tribalist politics, making joint government hard. <br><br>To an outsider it is obvious that the US should update its constitution. But I guess that is not likely, is it?<br><br><br><o:p></o:p></p><pre>-- <o:p></o:p></pre><pre>Dr Anders Sandberg<o:p></o:p></pre><pre>Future of Humanity Institute<o:p></o:p></pre><pre>Oxford Martin School<o:p></o:p></pre><pre>Oxford University<o:p></o:p></pre></div></body></html>