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The state politicians I talked to all seemed pretty smart, they'd talked to a lot of different people and could articulate several different perspectives, they did a good job of having their eye on the ball and seeing what the most important questions and disagreements were.
There was a fairly astonishing amount of mudslinging and lying but no one I talked to in state politics was really all that fooled by it. I got the sense that lying worked as a strategy less well than I would cynically have predicted.
And all of the politicians...cared about their constituents? This is another place where I was too cynical: I definitely imagined that politicians cared about reelection, but not really about constituent opinion on things that probably won't affect reelection.
But they really seemed to! They took public polls and public comment incredibly seriously. Conversations were often oriented around 'is this what the people of California want us to be doing'. Maybe everyone just knows how to talk the talk, but it's a good talk to talk if so.
There were a ton of revisions to the bill, some of which I thought made it better and some made it worse, but all of which were clearly closely responsive to feedback and concerns, and they generally did address that feedback and those concerns.
In general it felt like a honest process with a lot of smart people amending, studying, learning, and trying to do what they thought was right and what their constituents wanted, and standing up to a fair bit of silliness and pressure so long as the voters were with them.
The big exception here is Gavin Newsom. I do not know anyone in California politics who thinks highly of him. When you'd ask "how will this person make their decision?" the answer was usually "what they're hearing from constituents" or "what they're hearing from scientists"....
Unless you asked about Gavin Newsom, in which case the answer you'd get was "whatever benefits Gavin Newsom, presumably". I don't know if he's always been this disliked or if this is a new phenomenon.
I haven't heard anyone assert with a straight face that Gavin Newsom will do what serves his constituents. Instead they point to which of his friends a16z hired to lobby him to kill the bill, and whether the decision will affect his presidential ambitions.
It's kind of a shame that the California state legislature never overrides vetoes. I trust them more than the governor with most legislation. I don't think 1047 would be popular enough for an override but it seems like a good check for the legislature to have on the governor.
Is that a California thing or rather a Scott Wiener thing?
I'm not sure one could say equally positive things about e.g. Buffy Wicks' tech lawmaking (AADC, CJPA) techdirt.com/2023/06/26/cal
I've talked with some people in Wicks office who seemed to have done their homework but not with Wicks and agree that her tech bills are much worse. Weiner is definitely the most competent person in CA politics imo but not the only one.
The state proposition system is horrendous and enshrines a lot of catastrophic things in law, one party rule is bad, the moderate Democrats and liberal Democrats are kind of in the middle of forming an illegible two party system but they aren't quite there
Did you know that Rick Scott (R-FL) only won his Senate seat by 10,033 votes?
And he had to spend $64 MILLION of his own wealth to do it. Now, I'm polling 1 point ahead of him in the polls. Please, will you donate now to help me maintain this narrow lead?
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Why do you think there's such a big difference between [your perception of] the state legislators and Newsom?
The obvious answer is that optimizing blindly for your own personal power is how you end up governor. Whereas if you're Weiner and are willing to anger your donors for things you think matter, you have a harder time advancing.
Thanks for this reflection. I'll be pointing some of my students to it!
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Daniel Golliher 
@danielgolliher
Broadly: I think this is true of many government processes. Actually getting involved will show you a process that is completely different than the one in headlines or here.
It will make you feel more warranted optimism about what's possible, if only you join the process. And-- x.com/KelseyTuoc/sta…
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Did you know that Rick Scott (R-FL) only won his Senate seat by 10,033 votes?
And he had to spend $64 MILLION of his own wealth to do it. Now, I'm polling 1 point ahead of him in the polls. Please, will you donate now to help me maintain this narrow lead?
Slide 1 of 3 - Carousel
if you didn't want capitalists to betray the movement for safe artificial intelligence, then your community should not have courted billionaires at every sinister opportunity
Makes me wonder how much of what you’re saying can be applied more generally to American politics (i.e., including in Congress and red states) vs. it’s a function of a liberal-tilting legislature
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Every week or two I learn of another prominent Alzheimer's researcher who has just been making up fake medical data for years and years and years.
How did the field get this way? In a just society, we'd throw these fuckers in jail for half a century, or just hang them.
My problem with ASI is not that it will undemocratically kill everyone, but that it will kill everyone. Call me a wild-eyed libertarian, but I would consider that event to be almost exactly as bad if it happened as the result of a 51% vote of Earth's population.
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Robin Hanson
@robinhanson
ALL innovation changes the world without democratic consent. x.com/SigalSamuel/st…
I wonder if there's a world in which Eliezer Yudkowsky became convinced earlier in his career that trying to build AGI is a bad idea, and what that world looks like now. (I'm afraid that it wouldn't actually look very different.) I tried to convince him a few times, but failed.
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Alexander Kruel
@XiXiDu
People in the replies: "Wrong. Person X influenced millions of retards. Yudkowsky only influenced a handful of CEOs running the most important companies in the world." x.com/benlandautaylo…