EA Forum Bot Site
EA Forum

Take the 2025 EA Forum Survey to help inform our strategy and prioritiesTake the survey
Hide table of contents
Comment Permalink
Michael Latowicki3
1
0
  • cons
    • if we understood regime transitions better, then so would pro-authoritarian actors, and they would be better able to protect and promote authoritarian regimes.
      • for example, if we discover that women's rights were a long-term driver of democratization, an authoritarian regime may choose to keep women repressed to preserve its grip on power. Without this knowledge, the authoritarian regime might welcome women's rights, and eventually liberalize as a result.
  • pros
    • if we understood regime transitions better, we would be better equipped to safeguard, strengthen and possibly even promote the development of liberal democracy where it does not exist.

Those are first-order arguments, and they are symmetric. Second-order arguments might consider whether the pro-democracy or the authoritarian side would have more use for this knowledge. 

  • In an authoritarian regime, the government has many more actions it can take to shape developments, and a greater command of resources, than pro-democracy forces. So a highly-detailed understanding of regime transitions is likely to solidify authoritarian regimes.
  • in a liberal democracy, 
    • the pro-democracy forces may be roughly on par or even stronger than those promoting authoritarianism. 
    • power-seeking actors are shaped by an evolutionary competition for political power, and so learn by trial and error how to gain and secure political power.
    • There is a certain asymmetry between the competitive dynamics that shape pro-democracy and authoritarian agents. I will hopefully develop this idea further in my next comment.
Reply
See in context
by Michael Latowicki
1 min read1 answer 1

18

Existential riskSafeguarding liberal democracy
Frontpage

Suppose that we could build some tools that accelerated the progress of certain parts of social science substantially. Suppose further that using those tools, humanity would gain a substantially better understanding of the conditions under which authoritarian regimes transition towards liberal democracy and vice versa. Would that improved understanding be a good thing?

Please assume for the purpose of this question that:

  • by the nature of the tools to be developed, the knowledge gained would be accessible to the general public
  • liberal democracy is much better than authoritarian regimes

I will post my own thoughts in a comment.

Thank you for your help!

18

0
0

Reactions

0
0
New Answer
New Comment


1 Answers sorted by
Top

Geoffrey Miller

4
0
2

Michael - well, yes, it would be helpful to have better models of 'regime transitions' among various forms of government.

However, I think it's very important not to be naive about the rather narrow range of types of hegemonic regimes that we live under. To a first approximation, all functional nation-states in the world are quasi-meritocratic, semi-hereditary oligarchies run by elites who tend to be richer, more powerful, better educated, and more virtue-signally than the common folks they rule over. This describes how things actually work in the US, UK, Germany, China, India, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Nigeria, Brazil, and virtually everywhere.

In each case, the oligarchic elites use a combination of hard power and soft power to control their societies, including military and police power, economic control, digital surveillance, 'public education' and propaganda. 

This is equally true in the US and in China, for example. To call one a 'liberal democracy' and the other an 'authoritarian regime' strikes me a a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of political power in the 21st century. In each society, the oligarchic elites nudge, shape, and control public sentiment through 'engineering consent', using a combination of state propaganda (e.g. public education, press conferences, state media), corporate media (e.g. 'news', talk shows, journalism), state surveillance (e.g. China's Ministry of State Security; America's NSA, FBI, CIA, etc), and the deep state's stigmatization, criminalization, and demonization of various forms of dissent (e.g. crackdowns on Uyghurs or Falun Gong in China; crackdowns on 'Christian nationalists', 'white supremacists', and 'traitors' (e.g. Edward Snowden, Julian Assange) in the US).

For example, if you talk with behavioral and social scientists in the US versus China, they will mention all kinds of topics and truths that are taboo to discuss or to publish about -- topics that would be career suicide to study. The list of scientific taboos is, in my experience, shorter in China than in the US -- although the specific tactics for social control of academic research are somewhat different. In China, each university has a number of a Chinese Communist Party political officers overseeing teaching and research, whereas in the US, each university has a number of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion political officers (almost 100% from the Democratic Party) overseeing teaching and research. Their powers of censorship, ostracism, and control are roughly comparable, but in each society, their hegemonic presence is taken for granted.

Wei Dai4
0
0

Related to your last paragraph, what do you think about Have epistemic conditions always been this bad? In other words, was there a time when the US wasn't like this?

Reply
2
Geoffrey Miller
Wei_Dai - thanks for sharing your post about the epistemic conditions in the American Left.  I think you're right, that epistemics have gotten notably worse compared to previous decades and cohorts.  When I was in college in the 1980s, the Left tended to have quite a bit of mistrust of government, corporate power, academia, and the media. Now, having ideologically captured all four institutions, they tend to distrust the common people and common sense. But that's getting us somewhat off-topic, in terms of modeling 'regime change'....
4
Wei Dai
I have two thoughts that spring from this: 1. If epistemic conditions in the US weren't always like this, could it be that on average liberal democracies still tend to have better epistemic conditions than authoritarian regimes? (And we just happen to live in an unlucky period where things are especially bad?) 2. Maybe it's comparably important to model/understand "internal regime changes" (a term I just made up) where conditions for making scientific or intellectual progress (or other conditions that we care about) improve or deteriorate a lot due to institutional changes that don't fit the standard definition of "regime change"?
2
Geoffrey Miller
Wei Dai: yes, I agree with both points. I think on average, 'liberal democracies' have tended to have better epistemic conditions than other types of regimes. However, I also think there has been significant 'internal regime change' (to borrow your term) that has undermined this advantage, at least in the US. Specifically, the rise of the 'censorship-industrial complex' (in which the US government outsources censorship to Big Tech companies) seems to have significantly eroded the quality and reliability of public epistemics on social media.
Geoffrey Miller3
1
0

PS: as always, for anyone who's disagree-voted with this, I'd value knowing what exactly you disagree with.

Reply
Michael Latowicki1
0
0

Thank you for challenging the question's assumption, Mr. Miller. Your points notwithstanding, I think you under-appreciate what we have, even though it could have been much better. I hope the tools that I envision would someday help clarify convincingly why not all regimes are essentially the same for human well-being.

Reply
Comments1
Sorted by
New & upvoted
Click to highlight new comments since:
Michael Latowicki3
1
0
  • cons
    • if we understood regime transitions better, then so would pro-authoritarian actors, and they would be better able to protect and promote authoritarian regimes.
      • for example, if we discover that women's rights were a long-term driver of democratization, an authoritarian regime may choose to keep women repressed to preserve its grip on power. Without this knowledge, the authoritarian regime might welcome women's rights, and eventually liberalize as a result.
  • pros
    • if we understood regime transitions better, we would be better equipped to safeguard, strengthen and possibly even promote the development of liberal democracy where it does not exist.

Those are first-order arguments, and they are symmetric. Second-order arguments might consider whether the pro-democracy or the authoritarian side would have more use for this knowledge. 

  • In an authoritarian regime, the government has many more actions it can take to shape developments, and a greater command of resources, than pro-democracy forces. So a highly-detailed understanding of regime transitions is likely to solidify authoritarian regimes.
  • in a liberal democracy, 
    • the pro-democracy forces may be roughly on par or even stronger than those promoting authoritarianism. 
    • power-seeking actors are shaped by an evolutionary competition for political power, and so learn by trial and error how to gain and secure political power.
    • There is a certain asymmetry between the competitive dynamics that shape pro-democracy and authoritarian agents. I will hopefully develop this idea further in my next comment.
Reply
More from Michael Latowicki
View more
Curated and popular this week
 ·  · 1m read
 · 
This morning I was looking into Switzerland's new animal welfare labelling law. I was going through the list of abuses that are now required to be documented on labels, and one of them made me do a double-take: "Frogs: Leg removal without anaesthesia."  This confused me. Why are we talking about anaesthesia? Shouldn't the frogs be dead before having their legs removed? It turns out the answer is no; standard industry practice is to cut their legs off while they are fully conscious. They remain alive and responsive for up to 15 minutes afterward. As far as I can tell, there are zero welfare regulations in any major producing country. The scientific evidence for frog sentience is robust - they have nociceptors, opioid receptors, demonstrate pain avoidance learning, and show cognitive abilities including spatial mapping and rule-based learning.  It's hard to find data on the scale of this issue, but estimates put the order of magnitude at billions of frogs annually. I could not find any organisations working directly on frog welfare interventions.  Here are the organizations I found that come closest: * Animal Welfare Institute has documented the issue and published reports, but their focus appears more on the ecological impact and population decline rather than welfare reforms * PETA has conducted investigations and released footage, but their approach is typically to advocate for complete elimination of the practice rather than welfare improvements * Pro Wildlife, Defenders of Wildlife focus on conservation and sustainability rather than welfare standards This issue seems tractable. There is scientific research on humane euthanasia methods for amphibians, but this research is primarily for laboratory settings rather than commercial operations. The EU imports the majority of traded frog legs through just a few countries such as Indonesia and Vietnam, creating clear policy leverage points. A major retailer (Carrefour) just stopped selling frog legs after welfar
 ·  · 4m read
 · 
Note: This post was crossposted from the Open Philanthropy Farm Animal Welfare Research Newsletter by the Forum team, with the author's permission. The author may not see or respond to comments on this post. ---------------------------------------- > Why ending the worst abuses of factory farming is an issue ripe for moral reform I recently joined Dwarkesh Patel’s podcast to discuss factory farming. I hope you’ll give it a listen — and consider supporting his fundraiser for FarmKind’s Impact Fund. (Dwarkesh is matching all donations up to $250K; use the code “dwarkesh”.) We discuss two contradictory views about factory farming that produce the same conclusion: that its end is either inevitable or impossible. Some techno-optimists assume factory farming will vanish in the wake of AGI. Some pessimists see reforming it as a hopeless cause. Both camps arrive at the same conclusion: fatalism. If factory farming is destined to end, or persist, then what’s the point in fighting it? I think both views are wrong. In fact, I think factory farming sits in the ideal position for moral reform. Because its end is neither inevitable nor impossible, it offers a unique opportunity for advocacy to change the trajectory of human moral progress. Not inevitable Dwarkesh raised an objection to working on factory farming that I often hear from techno-optimists who care about the issue: isn’t its end inevitable? Some cite the long arc of moral progress; others the promise of vast technological change like cultivated meat or Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) which surpasses human capabilities. It’s true that humanity has achieved incredible moral progress for humans. But that progress was never inevitable — it was the result of moral and political reform as much as technology. And that moral progress mostly hasn’t yet extended to animals. For them, the long moral arc of history has so far only bent downward. Technology may one day end factory farming, just as cars liberated w
 ·  · 1m read
 · 
This is a personal essay about my failed attempt to convince effective altruists to become socialists. I started as a convinced socialist who thought EA ignored the 'root causes' of poverty by focusing on charity instead of structural change. After studying sociology and economics to build a rigorous case for socialism, the project completely backfired as I realized my political beliefs were largely psychological coping mechanisms. Here are the key points: * Understanding the "root cause" of a problem doesn't necessarily lead to better solutions - Even if capitalism causes poverty, understanding "dynamics of capitalism" won't necessarily help you solve it * Abstract sociological theories are mostly obscurantist bullshit - Academic sociology suffers from either unrealistic mathematical models or vague, unfalsifiable claims that don't help you understand or change the world * The world is better understood as misaligned incentives rather than coordinated oppression - Most social problems stem from coordination failures and competing interests, not a capitalist class conspiring against everyone else * Individual variation undermines class-based politics - People within the same "class" have wildly different cognitive traits, interests, and beliefs, making collective action nearly impossible * Political beliefs serve important psychological functions - They help us cope with personal limitations and maintain self-esteem, often at the expense of accuracy * Evolution shaped us for competition, not truth - Our brains prioritize survival, status, and reproduction over understanding reality or being happy * Marx's insights, properly applied, undermine the Marxist political project - His theory of ideological formation aligns with evolutionary psychology, but when applied to individuals rather than classes, it explains why the working class will not overthrow capitalism. In terms of ideas, I don’t think there’s anything too groundbreaking in this essay. A lot of the
Recent opportunities in Existential risk
21
[Event] Building What the Future Needs: A curated conference in Berlin (Sep 6, 2025) for high-impact builders and researchers
Vasiliy Kondyrev, Daniel Ajudeonu, joechr+ 2 more
· · 2m read
0
0
14
Expression of Interest: Mentors & Researchers at AI Safety Global Society
Caroline Shamiso Chitongo 🔸, AI Safety Global Society+ 1 more
· · 2m read
0
0
5
SenseMaking Summer School 2025, September 17-24th
finnclancy
· · 1m read
0
0
View more