Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Steve3007]

Two of the main methods that people seem to use when discussing political issues might be crudely summarized as the "If I were king..." method and the "If I were president..." method. The first method imagines being able to wipe the slate clean and dictate policy, without having to deal with the world as it currently is and without having to figure out how to persuade other people to act in certain ways. The second method starts more or less where we are now, but imagines being in a position of influence, but not absolute power. So it involves having to try to work out how to get from here to where you want to go, how to take people with you, and how to work out how the various different people in the world might react to your policy proposals. This could include the possibility that one result of the proposals is that you find yourself no longer president and therefore having reduced influence.

The first method tends to result in more imaginative/radical solutions but is not practical. Using the second method tends to get bogged down in the potential difficulties faced by real-world politicians, and in realpolitik, but it's easier to imagine it actually happening.

In the context of a specifically philosophical discussion of political issues, do you favour one method over the other?

[Papus79]

I really like the things Samo Burja would do, to some degree also Daniel Schmachtenberger and Jordan Hall, which tends to be neither of the above:

1) Consider what's needed to seed a new culture or bring more 'live players' together.
2) Spotting places where the game theory coagulates to form a particular result and figure out if there are technical solutions for those spaces.
3) If you have maybe 10 or 15 'live players' - figure out what you can launch together in the entrepreneurial spirit which would be the first option available in either a completely unserved market or that resolves a need people didn't even quite have their finger on until it was made clear by that option being available.

[impermanence]

If you accept the idea of a ruling class, then you've got BIG problems. Groups act in their own interests, always have and always will. What's amazing is that people believe it to be any other way.

"Save me!, Save me!," cry the masses. "Save me because I am afraid...of everything! I will give you anything you want if you'll protect me from life itself."

Please save me and I will promise to be completely submissive. Just give me cheap fast food, 150 channels, and free internet porn and I will let you steal me blind, deaf, and dumb."

[Sy Borg]

Neither. Most people do not have the capacity to determine policy for a company or a local council, let alone a state or nation. Nor do I. Many politicians don't too, especially at this time when expertise is no longer valued. Today, the average Joe with Google knows FAR more than any trained doctor, right? No competiton, right? Doctors are useless, yes? Corrupt shills of Big Pharma. By the same token, climatologists have no idea, and any bloke with Google knows MUCH more about climate change than mere scientists, who are all being paid by ... Big Environment (?), which is obviously far richer and more powerful than poor little Fossil Fuels, who need ever grander subsidies from government to survive.

Yes, the uneducated know far more about everything than the educated, so it seems. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

Stripping away the fantasies and delusions, all the public tends to have are general directions that resonate with them, shaped by the media. Ego drives people to pretend that they know more than they do, to believe they know how to run a nation, when most would be lucky to be able to run a business without going bankrupt.

What I prefer to do is look at the drivers of broader trends, to see what drives the circumstances that drive people's policy preferences. After all, philosophy is all about panning out to the big picture.

For the most part, humanity's obsession with itself leads to delusional thinking, resulting in unrealistic ideas about our relationship with other organisms, the the Earth and the universe. There is an equally ungrounded notion of what technology, where it is progressing, and the ways in which it has already impacted all areas of life, including politics.

[LuckyR]

Neither. Most people do not have the capacity to determine policy for a company or a local council, let alone a state or nation. Nor do I. Many politicians don't too, especially at this time when expertise is no longer valued. Today, the average Joe with Google knows FAR more than any trained doctor, right? No competiton, right? Doctors are useless, yes? Corrupt shills of Big Pharma. By the same token, climatologists have no idea, and any bloke with Google knows MUCH more about climate change than mere scientists, who are all being paid by ... Big Environment (?), which is obviously far richer and more powerful than poor little Fossil Fuels, who need ever grander subsidies from government to survive.

Yes, the uneducated know far more about everything than the educated, so it seems. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

Stripping away the fantasies and delusions, all the public tends to have are general directions that resonate with them, shaped by the media. Ego drives people to pretend that they know more than they do, to believe they know how to run a nation, when most would be lucky to be able to run a business without going bankrupt.

What I prefer to do is look at the drivers of broader trends, to see what drives the circumstances that drive people's policy preferences. After all, philosophy is all about panning out to the big picture.

For the most part, humanity's obsession with itself leads to delusional thinking, resulting in unrealistic ideas about our relationship with other organisms, the the Earth and the universe. There is an equally ungrounded notion of what technology, where it is progressing, and the ways in which it has already impacted all areas of life, including politics.

This post truth era is in part because the printed word sounds more authentic than the handwritten word. Before the Interweb, almost no one had a word processor and few typed so crackpot ideas from the rabble were either passed verbally ie at the level of gossip, or were typed in an unprofessional manner and thus not given the same credence as "official sources".

Now every word (including mine right now) can be in the same font as a professional newspaper of yore, lending undeserved authority. Why do you think online scams raise way more money now than in eras past? The rabble falls for official looking script.

[baker]

Two of the main methods that people seem to use when discussing political issues might be crudely summarized as the "If I were king..."
/.../
In the context of a specifically philosophical discussion of political issues, do you favour one method over the other?

You ought to add the "When I am king ..." method.

[Pattern-chaser]

Two of the main methods that people seem to use when discussing political issues might be crudely summarized as the "If I were king..." method and the "If I were president..." method.

8<

In the context of a specifically philosophical discussion of political issues, do you favour one method over the other?

The King method is the limited-thinking method; it's the one that doesn't work because it is barely connected to the reality within which we live. The President method is more difficult, but at least it addresses "is" rather than "ought".

[Terrapin Station]

I obviously favor the "If I were king" method, because (a) a lot of my ideas are pretty radical, and because (b), I have no special affinity for democracy.

To make things how I'd like them to be, especially in my lifetime (well, and that's rapidly approaching imagining being younger), we'd pretty much need to start with a clean slate. I'm not really presenting my ideas in this context as if I think they're likely to be implemented, especially not any time soon. But I still think it's worth sharing, because it's worth encouraging people to think differently, since that's what it would require. One simple way that we could realize that we could think differently is this: we could realize that we could simply make a decision to try something different. We could all say, "Alright, let's do a clean slate and try this starting tomorrow." It's not as if that would be impossible to do. We'd simply need to decide to do it. I wish people would more often realize the power in that--simply deciding to do something different.

I'm not so fond of the "tweak and inch towards improvement" method because (i) what we have now is way too far from my ideal, (ii) there are "grooves" embedded in what we have now that I think are maybe inescapable if we don't decide to try something more radical--in other words, things can get to a point in something where it's just not fixable as is. It needs to be trashed so we can start over. It's kind of like if you're baking a cake and it starts to go wrong. So you try to tweak it here and there, adding a bit of this and that, attempting to subtract some things, but at some point, it simply can be fixed. You have to trash it and start over with a new cake.

[Steve3007]

The King method is the limited-thinking method; it's the one that doesn't work because it is barely connected to the reality within which we live. The President method is more difficult, but at least it addresses "is" rather than "ought".

I'd say that the king method is the unlimited-thinking method; the one that involves being free to be a revolutionary. I think it's the one that naturally tends to appeal to philosophers as distinct from political pragmatists. I think that a lot of people think that one of the attractions of philosophy is being able to take a step back from the details of how things could be achieved in practice and "dare to dream".

[Steve3007]

I obviously favor the "If I were king" method, because (a) a lot of my ideas are pretty radical, and because (b), I have no special affinity for democracy...

And another clue is that you have started several proposals with the expression "If I were king...".

On point (b) though, I don't think you need to have a special affinity for democracy in order to opt for what I've labelled the "If I were president..." method. You just need to have a desire for your ideas to have some chance of being realised in a world that contains other people who need to be persuaded of things and in which "climbing mount improbable" is possible only in small steps.

...It's not as if that would be impossible to do. We'd simply need to decide to do it. I wish people would more often realize the power in that--simply deciding to do something different.

Yes, it would be great if people did that. Lots of things would be great. But the evolutionary "If I were president..." advocate (as opposed to the revolutionary "If I were king..." advocate) would point out that turning "we need to decide to do..." into actual action requires persuasion. To state the obvious: none of us is individually a "we".

I'm not so fond of the "tweak and inch towards improvement" method because (i) what we have now is way too far from my ideal, (ii) there are "grooves" embedded in what we have now that I think are maybe inescapable if we don't decide to try something more radical--in other words, things can get to a point in something where it's just not fixable as is. It needs to be trashed so we can start over...

But the upside of the evolutionary "tweak and inch towards improvement" method is that it's less likely that everyone dies during the transition because the system that's been supporting them up until now has been thrown away before a replacement has been built. As with Evolution in the Darwinian sense, you get a system which contains all kinds of vestigial features that you wouldn't have put in there if you were designing it from scratch, but at least you don't fall down a hole that was too wide to jump.

[Steve3007]

After all, philosophy is all about panning out to the big picture.

Yes, and I think it's that view of philosophy which tends to make a lot of people with an interest in philosophy favour revolutionary ("king") over evolutionary ("president") solutions.

[Terrapin Station]

I obviously favor the "If I were king" method, because (a) a lot of my ideas are pretty radical, and because (b), I have no special affinity for democracy...

And another clue is that you have started several proposals with the expression "If I were king...".

On point (b) though, I don't think you need to have a special affinity for democracy in order to opt for what I've labelled the "If I were president..." method. You just need to have a desire for your ideas to have some chance of being realised in a world that contains other people who need to be persuaded of things and in which "climbing mount improbable" is possible only in small steps.

...It's not as if that would be impossible to do. We'd simply need to decide to do it. I wish people would more often realize the power in that--simply deciding to do something different.

Yes, it would be great if people did that. Lots of things would be great. But the evolutionary "If I were president..." advocate (as opposed to the revolutionary "If I were king..." advocate) would point out that turning "we need to decide to do..." into actual action requires persuasion. To state the obvious: none of us is individually a "we".

I'm not so fond of the "tweak and inch towards improvement" method because (i) what we have now is way too far from my ideal, (ii) there are "grooves" embedded in what we have now that I think are maybe inescapable if we don't decide to try something more radical--in other words, things can get to a point in something where it's just not fixable as is. It needs to be trashed so we can start over...

But the upside of the evolutionary "tweak and inch towards improvement" method is that it's less likely that everyone dies during the transition because the system that's been supporting them up until now has been thrown away before a replacement has been built. As with Evolution in the Darwinian sense, you get a system which contains all kinds of vestigial features that you wouldn't have put in there if you were designing it from scratch, but at least you don't fall down a hole that was too wide to jump.

Re the latter point, you can start preparing the other cake before you throw the ruined one out. (So that you have some basic services ready to go once you make a change.)

[Steve3007]

Re the latter point, you can start preparing the other cake before you throw the ruined one out. (So that you have some basic services ready to go once you make a change.)

This is true. The argument between the revolutionary/king method and the evolutionary/president method would then descend into details about how long you keep the first cake while working on the second cake and whether you end up incorporating aspects of the first cake in the second one.

[Wossname]

We Wossnames have a long and illustrious linenage, and though we have never done any kinging or queening that can be publically discussed I am sure that if I were king I would be good at it, everyone would be happy, and if anyone didn’t like it I would know how to put a sharp end to their complaining. Kings can at least get things done, and I would do the country well and truly.

But I can’t say I like the idea of others being king. People often have different ideas to me about what is best (mad fools) and in those circumstances I’m all for revolutionary zeal and screaming Vive la Republique in a funny accent. Of course, if in some form of democratic least worst option I should be elected Prime Minister or President or whatever (if it can happen to Fart why not me?) then it would only be right and proper to use my power and patronage to support all those who were rich enough, wise enough and willing to work to keep me in power. Visionaries should be nurtured. That would be my kind of democracy, in time it would be everybody’s, and a contented electorate would willingly elect and re-elect President Wossname. It seems likely that other members of my family might be appropriate people to rule (ahem, serve) after me. Of course some appropriate tax incentives and educational programmes might be required to ensure the ignorant, great unwashed develop the right attitude. And then I could declare war on France because of their history of being uppity and rebellious, their despicable desire to eat molluscs and their unspeakable cruelty to frogs. Liberté, fraternité, Wossnamité!

And in the future people will likely reflect upon my sage rule with phrases like, “That Wossname, at least he knew how to keep the pubs open”. My God, British democracy at least, is sadly wanting. It is one thing to give the world a hideous new virus variant to go with a vaccine, but what of the cost? A pox on those who say let them eat take-aways. Do I not have a democratic, natural, inalienable right to decent ale? We’ve just been told we’ve likely got three more months of this. At least. Man cannot live by take-out alone. And the next smart-mouth who accuses me of cabin fever will get a poke in the cake-hole and no mistake!

[baker]

Re the latter point, you can start preparing the other cake before you throw the ruined one out. (So that you have some basic services ready to go once you make a change.)

Meh, go with cooking. Cooking is a far more flexible procedure. Baking is perfectionistic: you have to get it right at the onset, or ditch it.