Astral Codex Ten

Socialists

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Socialists

Article

Socialists is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between November 04, 2021 and October 10, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “Socialists had a tough start; they had promised everyone lots of money during their campaign”; “extending olive branches to the socialists”; “socialists previously accused us of being tech company stooges”. It most often appears alongside Austria, Germany, Nazis.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: November 04, 2021
  • Last seen: October 10, 2024

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Dictator Book Club: Orban
November 04, 2021 · Original source
Did anyone at all fall for this? I guess yes; Fidesz won the 1998 elections and Orban briefly became prime minister. But he wasn't very good at it then either, and he lost control to the Socialists a few years later. He shrugged, gave up, and retired to live a quiet life in the country.
Haha, no, he spent the whole time plotting revenge. "The thirty-nine year old Orban was not disheartened in the slightest by the shock of the defeat; on the contrary, it filled him with new vigour". Conventional wisdom was that Orban had lost by being overly confrontational; when a journalist asked his opinion, he said that, no, he hadn't been confrontational enough. The book is kind of ambiguous about this, but I think it suggests that during his last few weeks in office he raised everyone's salaries to an unsustainable level, just so the socialists would have to lower them again and look like the bad guys. He started rumors that the election had been stolen - less because he thought anyone would believe it, more just to keep the opposition off-balance - and then started every other rumor he could think of.
The Socialists had a tough start; they had promised everyone lots of money during their campaign, and eventually the country ran out of funds. They replaced their original lackluster PM with charismatic businessman Ferenc Gyurcsany. Gyurcsany had to implement austerity measures, and those are never popular, but he was good at it and potentially could have gone down in history as a strong man during hard times.
Your Book Review: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
August 04, 2023 · Original source
Schleicher reached out to the man who had done more than anyone besides Hitler to build up the Nazi Party: Gregor Strasser. While Hitler’s influence was strongest in Bavaria, Strasser had connections in Northern Germany, and had done vital work for the Party by bringing these people into the fold. Despite this service, he was regularly at loggerheads with Hitler, both because the Führer recognized that Strasser alone had the combination of independence and influence necessary to take over the party and because Strasser strongly believed in the socialism of National Socialism and was frequently embarrassing Hitler by extending olive branches to the socialists and communists. With Party funds drying up and Hitler refusing to compromise to gain power, Strasser was more frustrated with his Führer than ever. Taking all of this into consideration, Schleicher was confident that he could peel Strasser and his more socialist contingent of the party away from Hitler and build a coalition government with their votes. He offered Strasser the vice-chancellorship.
SB 1047: Our Side Of The Story
October 10, 2024 · Original source
…to maybe slightly threatening. A frequent theme was that some form of AI regulation was inevitable. SB 1047 - a light-touch bill designed by Silicon-Valley-friendly moderates - was the best deal that Big Tech was ever going to get, and they went full scorched-earth to oppose it. Next time, the deal will be designed by anti-tech socialists, it’ll be much worse, and nobody will feel sorry for them.
I don’t want to gloss this as “socialists finally admit we were right all along”. I think the change has been bi-directional. Back in 2010, when we had no idea what AI would look like, the rationalists and EAs focused on the only risk big enough to see from such a distance: runaway unaligned superintelligence. Now that we know more specifics, “smaller” existential risks have also come into focus, like AI-fueled bioterrorism, AI-fueled great power conflict, and - yes - AI-fueled inequality. At some point, without either side entirely abandoning their position, the very-near-term-risk people and the very-long-term-risk people have started to meet in the middle.
But I think an equally big change is that SB 1047 has proven that AI doomers are willing to stand up to Big Tech. Socialists previously accused us of being tech company stooges, harping on the dangers of AI as a sneaky way of hyping it up. I admit I dismissed those accusations as part of a strategy of slinging every possible insult at us to see which ones stuck. But maybe they actually believed it. Maybe it was their real barrier to working with us, and maybe - now that we’ve proven we can (grudgingly, tentatively, when absolutely forced) oppose (some) Silicon Valley billionaires, they’ll be willing to at least treat us as potential allies of convenience.