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Politics.md

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··· 15 15 - We usually vote to whoever gives us simple (and probably wrong) solutions. 16 16 - Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others — Winston Churchill [_probably quoting someone else_](https://richardlangworth.com/worst-form-of-government). To reach more people, arguments and topics need to be simplified to the maximum, losing trade-offs and nuance. 17 17 - Some other criticisms are; average voters are not sophisticated, because each voter only has a small chance of affecting the outcome, few voters put high-quality thought into their decisions, and you often get either low participation (making the system easy to attack) or de-facto centralization because everyone just defaults to trusting and copying the views of some influencer. 18 18 - - Democracy is not there to create optimal outcomes, it's there to prevent really really bad outcomes. 18 18 + - [Democracy is not there to create optimal outcomes, it's there to prevent really really bad outcomes](https://x.com/VitalikButerin/status/1887221268816273595). 19 19 - Any social structure decays over time, including political systems, nonprofits, religions, ... This is a social problem, that needs social solutions. 20 20 - Groups that form around a goal can work better or worse, depending on how well the goal can be verified by the group. If you're forming a group based on [what percentage of your income are you willing to devote to altruism](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/), that's a really easy thing to monitor. 21 21 - [Meritocracy isn't an "-ocracy" like democracy or autocracy, where people in wigs sit down to frame a constitution and decide how things should work. It's a dubious abstraction over the fact that people prefer to have jobs done well rather than poorly, and use their financial and social clout to make this happen](https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-the-cult-of-smart).

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Writing.md

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··· 14 14 - Instead of using constructions with "of" or "for", rewrite the sentence to put more information before the noun. 15 15 - **Be consistent**. 16 16 - **Add rhythm**. Vary the sentence length to break the monotony. 17 17 + - [Writing that sounds good is more likely to be right](https://paulgraham.com/goodwriting.html). Making sentences sound better forces you to fix ideas unconsciously. Good rhythm matches the natural rhythm of thoughts—use rhythm as a guide for getting ideas right. 17 18 - Use the active voice. 18 19 - Write in a conversational tone. Think about readers when writing. 19 20 - [Divide things into small chunks and if you have multiple points in a text, number them to make replies easier](https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/02/20/writing-advice/). List the points you want to make in a logical order. This allows you to remove the clutter and avoid confusion. Use the [Minto Pyramid](https://scqa.lifeitself.org/) or another standard structure like this one: