Eye of the Probability Storm
Precommitment is most meaningful in the face of Uncertainty
Readers Note: Some parts of this were written in June, revisited in late August, and then it was finished in early November, so there may be unexpected tonal shifts.
A singularity is about to occur. Not The Singularity (though Sam Altman and his ilk insist that’s right around the corner), but a singularity in the mathematical sense, where a function “breaks down” and what happens on one side of the point can’t be predicted from what is happening on the other side. In this case, the “course of history” will vary immensely depending on who is elected tomorrow. But “course of history” is imprecise, since it implies something bigger than yourself, but not much more than that. After all, from the perspective of The Singularity, this election probably doesn’t matter, unless true Disaster strikes, and humanity gets wiped out or intellectually crippled. Similarly, from the perspective of my daily life, the fact that Trump was in power for four of the last eight years and Biden the other four had minimal effect on my day-to-day life. So, the importance of the 2024 election is that it is big and complicated enough that no human could predict what will happen afterward, while being completely predictable to a superhuman intelligence, and also completely explicable by humans after the fact. If I was writing this months ago, there is even the chance I could have done something to affect it, but now that’s beyond anybody’s power, perhaps even Trump and Harris themselves. In other words, the singularity has already will happen. Thus, we’re in the liminal part of probability space, offering an interesting vantage point to think about the past’s relationship to the future. I’m going to ignore most object-level political topics, and instead focus on the “vibes” and meta-level of the recent political history. So, what follows will be vague notes that help describe my pre-singularity perspective to a post-Singularity being.
The most salient fact that everyone will eventually forget is that “no one,” including Trump himself, thought he would win the election in 2016. The pithiest way to describe what happened is that Trump asserted Jester’s Privilege and used it to take the Mandate of Heaven. Then, he governed like a person who cared more about spectacle than substance (which was already a trend in American politics), but delegated most of the administration to “normal” Republican policies and people. The fact that Trump was President “allowed” Democrats to overreact and indulge their worst political instincts, which came to a head during the COVID pandemic and the riots after the murder of George Floyd. Both sides made egregious mistakes in how they reacted to these events, making the outcomes especially bad since the “best” policy would have been a strange amalgam of “extreme” ideas from either party depending on the exact moment in time we’re talking about. This made the 2020 Democratic primary an especially strange and fraught affair. But, in the end, Democrats went with Biden because he represented the most “normal” candidate in the crowded 2020 field, and America agreed that a “return to normalcy” was the best path forward.
Of course, Trump did not agree with America, and so he engaged in blatant chicanery to try to deny the Will of the People. I don’t know what Trump “thought” was going to happen on January 6, but it doesn’t really matter, since he expected that he would be protected by Jester’s Privilege regardless of the outcome. When it ended up being the worst insurrection since Reconstruction, I, like most people, was horrified. But, after January 6th, Congress had the ability and supposedly the political will to impeach Trump to ensure that we could put that period behind us. Pointedly, Republicans like McConnel lost their nerve, and did not reach the necessary number of votes to convict. To me, this is incredibly unethical, but it’s not actually treasonous, so it’s not worth it for me to criticize (I was never going to vote for someone like Trump or McConnell anyway, so implying they “lost my vote” would be disingenuous). I consider this to be the only/most reasonable position, though I have enough epistemic humility to believe you could come to other conclusions with very different priors.
Now, all things considered, the Biden administration has been one of the most “effective” in my lifetime, which is why the U.S. economy is currently the envy of the world. However, I also think that economic engine is steering towards a demographic cliff, so massive policy changes are called for to balance current needs with future prosperity. I expect a Harris presidency with a Republican Congress to be the likeliest option for keeping such options available, so that is what I’m currently expecting/hoping for. Neither party is currently well-positioned to govern competently, so everything that happens in 2025 and beyond should be staking out positions for how to govern after a Great Realignment.
The main point of democracy and the rule of law is to facilitate peaceful transfers of power, which is why what Trump did was so appalling. But, democracy also depends on upholding the legitimacy of your authority in both perception and deed. So, if I’m going to look back in the future with rose-colored glasses anyway, I’m trying to anticipate what I would need to do to justify this time if things go the way I fear. If Trump loses this time, and he foments another riot or encourages lawlessness, I expect the police and National Guard to put down those riots and arrest the people involved. I think it’s only fair that if the opposite occurs, and Kamala loses, Trump voters could expect left-wing riots to be put down. So, despite thinking Trump shouldn’t be on the ballot, he is, and there’s a fair chance he’ll be elected. I assume he’ll then pardon himself for his numerous crimes, and I think that retro-causally makes his election legitimate. Thus, I am pre-committing to never arguing Trump is an illegitimate or criminal executive based on his current crimes. If he does future things I think are illegal, obviously I would hold that against him. The statute of limitations should apply to political grievances as much as actual crimes, simply because arguments get too exhausting otherwise.
Regardless of the specific outcome of the voting, I think the aftermath of this election is going to scramble people’s priorities in ways that preclude clear thinking, which is why I decided to convey my vantage point at a very specific moment in time. This post first started right before Biden’s debate with Trump, when things were feeling bad despite looking good for the country. Then there was the disastrous debate and a cratering of expectations. That changed when Biden was convinced to step down, though I was wary when Kamala got the nomination with no real resistance. Then the vibes shifted, and I was quite hopeful before returning to a feeling of perfect precarity. I think it’s actually important to remember my thought process when things looked dire. One of the conclusions that I came to was that, regardless of who won the election, the “American people” were going to be bitterly divided. I anticipated that calling Trump an “illegitimate president” would be the rallying cry, regardless of the actual tally of votes. I don’t think you can credibly claim that as truth if he wins tomorrow. If he shouldn’t have been allowed to be on the ballot, then that had to be established beforehand. Since he was on the ballot and people got to vote, if the majority of electors legally enstate him, then he’s legitimate, despite his past crimes.
I used to think Gerald Ford’s pardoning of Richard Nixon was a travesty, just a cover-up of Nixon’s crimes. But, given the way partisanship messes with our emotions and thinking, I now understand there may have been no good way to investigate those do that without further tearing the country apart. He was trying to keep liberals mad at Nixon (which they were going to be anyway), but not mad at the “government” in general. I suspect Ford’s motives were more self-serving than that, but I now see there is some wisdom in declaring “pre-emptive amnesty” for the sake of peace. I think of recent works like Alex Garland’s Civil War, and it’s clear that avoiding scenarios like that is worth a lot of compromise. Demarcating a clear line for a statute of limitations on moral turpitude is easier on our collective cognitive dissonance than believing that half the population, including some of our family members, supports evil.
My “United States of America” is an idea bigger and more important than Donald Trump, so even if he gets elected again, I am not going to be disloyal to the government or leave. U.S. history is littered with bad/evil decisions that end up being highly consequential towards human flourishing, toward enormous net benefits. For instance, the Mexican-American War seems fairly clearly to have been a war of aggression to further the expansion of slavery, and, like Emerson or Thoreau, I believe I would have strongly opposed it at the time. But, at least based on my view of history and “good” governance, every Californian for the past 200 years has benefited by living in the U.S. instead of Mexico, so it was a net positive for the people living there. Then, when you consider where Silicon Valley is and the potential of technology, I think the benefit to Humanity is incalculably larger than “just” the benefit to those Americans. Obviously, much of that technology would still be developed in the counterfactual world where the U.S. doesn’t control California, but I think we can’t discuss moral sins without acknowledging moral virtues. Though it’s obviously self-serving and self-flattering, I’m happy that the United States became the world’s hegemon, and I would be sad if any other (current) nation displaced it. That could change in the future, but I think my ideal America is worth fighting for, even if I have to do so with a government I did not actively choose. Still, my true hope is that future elections don’t feel so consequential as to induce this much anxiety. I think that can only happen in a world where America acknowledges and celebrates its past, present, and future. To do otherwise results in this:
