LessWrong (Curated & Popular) "A high integrity/epistemics political machine?" by Raemon
Dec 17, 2025
Raemon explores the need for a high-integrity political machine focused on AI safety and governance. He reflects on personal donation experiences, highlighting the complexities of trust in political endorsements. The discussion dives into the adversarial nature of politics and the challenges of maintaining intellectual integrity. Raemon proposes innovative ideas like prediction markets for candidate accountability and individual watchdogs to mitigate risks. The importance of solid vetting processes and long-term institutional persistence is emphasized throughout.
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Power Attracts Self-Deception
- People pursue power both for public-good reasons and for normal selfish reasons, and self-deception about motives is easy.
- Raemon notes conditional power strategies may reduce compromise but most routes risk alliance-driven corruption.
Private Info Is Decisive
- Private information about character and reliability matters hugely for long-term political projects.
- Such information is often held by people inside reputation networks who will only share it anonymously or not at all.
Vindictiveness Suppresses Critique
- Powerful people can be vindictive, so critics avoid sharing negative information out of fear as well as loyalty.
- Politics is adversarial and sometimes requires secretive maneuvers, complicating transparency.