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Vitalik Buterin
@vitalik.eth
This may be the strongest case for authoritarianism: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/how-liberal-democracy-might-lose Basically: the war for people's hearts and minds has no stable equilibrium except local hegemony of one dominant elite, much like (and for the same reasons as) what Hobbes pointed out for regular war.
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Vitalik Buterin
@vitalik.eth
Hobbes: state of anarchy -> war of all against all -> governing elite with monopoly of force Noah (Nobbes?): state of info anarchy -> info war of all against all -> governing elite with monopoly of memes
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Vitalik Buterin
@vitalik.eth
I don't agree with such an ideology, for quite a few reasons, eg.: * Info war can be made much more defense-favoring without borders * Borders are much less effective at containing it, so successful monopoly of memes can ultimately only be global * Benefits of info pluralism are extremely large
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Vitalik Buterin
@vitalik.eth
But it feels like what Noah describes is pretty close to the central thing that we're up against.
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Vitalik Buterin
@vitalik.eth
Using "we" here in a generalized sense, as "people who care about info freedom and pluralism". People of this temperament exist in all countries.
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Paywalled, so ironically this is non-elite memes by his own theory. Brb will go read some elite memes I can get for free somewhere. Kidding aside — it takes force to control enough resources that you can use free info for power.
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