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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Personal Donations Revealed Risks
- Raemon recounts donating to Alex Bores and earlier feeling 'skeezy' donating to Carrick Flynn during the FTX era.
- He uses these experiences to illustrate risks of naive political support and grift in fundraising.
Failure Modes For AI Safety Politics
- Raemon lists failure modes for an AI-safety political effort, including ossification, wrong technocrats, moral mazes, and lack of buy-in.
- These highlight that building power without robust epistemics can produce the wrong long-term outcomes.
Reputation Alliances Warp Epistemics
- Mutual reputation alliances cause invisible epistemic corruption by discouraging airing of doubts and facilitating selective reporting.
- Raemon argues this dynamic requires active tracking to avoid groupthink and hidden compromises.