Dwarkesh Patel: uncertainty

Transcript context

…Well, it’s extremely hard in the first past the post system. When I did some research in America recently, I asked about the third party thing, and you see this problem come straight through in focus groups. People say straight away, I hate both the old parties. They’re both obviously rotten. They both obviously can’t do a good job. We obviously need something new. America’s got so many wonderful people. Why the fuck have we got all of these ancient, old, useless people in charge of absolutely everything? It’s all a nightmare. “All right, okay. So imagine the following party comes along, and it’s got the following people, and it says the following things. What do you think?” “Oh my God. That would be so great, but I’m not sure if I would vote for it.” “Why not?” “Well, because my vote might be wasted, and it might let the crazy people from the other side in.” So even if you imagine this wonderful new entity run by the best and brightest in America with an agenda you actually agree with, even then you might not vote for it because you fear that it might let you. You see, there’s a fundamental structural problem with the first past the post system. Now, I’m in favor of first past the post system. I’m not suggesting getting rid of it, but it does make it structurally very hard to replace one of the old entities. I mean, it’s why the whole Brexit thing was such an incredible missed opportunity. Winning the referendum. The chaos that that created. The collapse of both the old parties in 2019. One of the parties coming to us, begging for us to save them. Us going into Number 10. Having the majority. We kind of maneuvered the system into such a place that we could actually then transform one of the old parties into the new thing that we wanted to build. That’s very hard, but it’s easier than creating something new and then taking over in a first past the post system. On Brexit. If it’s possible to build a new political machine that’s relatively cheap to do and is much more effective than the current political parties at winning elections, what is it that you would do? Whether it’s political modeling, whether it’s the use of new technologies, or I don’t know, testing things out with social media. What are the tricks that you would use to win? Obviously all the AI stuff means that there’s huge opportunities there. But I would stress Colonel Boyd: People, ideas, machines, in that order. Why was it that we built tools to help win an election that no one else built? The primary question is that we really wanted to win, and we really were focused on the voters, and that’s why we actually built tools. The old parties aren’t focused on the voters and aren’t really interested in what they’ve got to say. Therefore, that’s just not what they are thinking about every day. So I don’t think the most important question is the technical side. I think it’s — can you create something with very able people with Jeff Bezos like obsession on the customer, that really, really wants to obsess on the voter. If you can build that culture, then that culture will then build the technology and will exploit the tools 100 times better than the old parties will. But it’s that that comes first, not the technology.…

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