/ratanon/ - Rationalists Anonymous

Is Trump a negative utilitarian?

This is just MAD. However it is exactly what Kim Jong-un wants.

I think Kim Jong-un is what we have when a smart, powerful and amoral person is trying to maximize his/her personal utility function. He wants to survive as the tyrant of North Korea at any cost. Hence the nukes.

Kim is never going to abandon the nukes no matter how many ordinary North Koreans starve to death. Period.

> I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I've reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We'll just slip the word to them that, "for God's sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can't restrain him when he's angry—and he has his hand on the nuclear button" and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.

>>11338

Narrator voice: They didn't.

>>11335

Is anyone of any note a serious negative utilitarian? I mean with no easy "buts" like "extinction should be voluntary".

>>11336

Could there be The Dictator's Handbook-type resource limits because of which Kim Jong Un can't improve his peasants' conditions? Even if you insist on a command economy and are very poor, you can do better planning than North Korea. Either Un simply DGAF, or he GAF to some extent but there isn't enough money to keep his generals satisfied AND bootstrap the economy.

>>11341

North Korea is best understood not as a Communist state but as traditional East Asian authoritarianism on steroids.

The point here is that Kim doesn't give a shit about his subjects at all. Instead he only cares about himself and probably some family members. He won't give a shit even if 90% of the population die.

Ridiculously brutal and effective governments that regularly culls low-IQ population through starvation, wars and war crimes is why East Asians evolved European-level IQ and are highly diligent, cunning, materialist and cold while other Mongoloids generally have 80-90 average IQ. These are the traits required to survive in North Korea and similar authoritarian regimes. If you are not smart, do not work hard enough, are too autistic, care too much about things other than wealth and status or care about justice you are just less likely to survive and reproduce and nobody outside your own family will ever give a shit about you. I mean who would miss a dead person when during major wars about 50%-90% of all the inhabitants die?