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According to The Economist Democracy Index, 8% of the world's population lived in full democracies in 2022, vs 36.9% in autocracies and the rest somewhere in be
by T-A 3y ago
According to The Economist Democracy Index, 8% of the world's population lived in full democracies in 2022, vs 36.9% in autocracies and the rest somewhere in between [1]. You can pick other democracy indices and measures of freedom, but you will always find that those at liberty to even just publicly contemplate a change of government are a tiny minority.
If today's world were to somehow end up having a single government, what would it be most like, those of the WEIRD [2] minority or those of the vast majority?
And even if a miracle happened and the whole world embraced freedom, how long would that last - and where would you seek refuge after the inevitable rise of the next charismatic demagogue?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology#WEIRD_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology#WEIRD_bias
- black_thoughts 3y agoGood comment, I like arguments backed by stats! I do recognise the validity of this line of thought. Food for thought for you, though: is solving this problem (a "miracle") not quite similar to the problem of making a safe FAI, possibly with hard takeoff? That is to say, shouldn't we be concerned that we can't (at least gesture towards) solving this problem of most people having crappy governments, when we are also supposed to be solving the problem of AI alignment? I feel as though these two problems are intimately related beyond just the issue of bad governance interfering with or actively hindering safe AI research.