on a purely tactical level, epistocracy proponents should probably endorse turnout-boosting efforts like vote-by-mail or election day holidays

consider (thread) https://twitter.com/antirobust/status/1244375817758445568

a big barrier to epistocracy is the (mostly false, imo) impression that it is a bad-faith smokescreen for partisan & racially-discriminatory efforts to constrain voting from Black & poor citizens (the partisan & racial dimensions are necessarily intertwined)

given the substance of epistocracy (principled IQ & education discrimination in vote weight, suffrage & ballot access), its overlap w/ historic & ongoing partisan/racial power politics is extensive

epistocrats should grapple with this, not conspicuously ignore it

it might be small, but there is a market for left- or centrist- mood-affiliated epistocracy

by not clearly differentiating principled epistocracy from status quo partisan/racial power politics, you undermine its appeal & intellectual seriousness

if epistocrats sincerely aspire to a new democratic paradigm, they shouldn't defend existing partisan/racial voting inequalities as a desirable "imperfect" version of what they want — they should strive to build their vision from a position of intellectual purity

for example, if being a felon is highly correlated w/ traits epistocracy seeks to downweight—lack of education, low IQ etc—they shouldn't defend permanent felon disenfranchisement on those grounds

they should militate *against it*, while strongly arguing for their ed & IQ rules

for a blue-sky intellectual vision, epistocracy is curiously strategic in its lack of engagement in existing, real-world deviations from fully-universal voting

instead of vigorously arguing for their ideal framework, where e.g. ballot access is reoriented according to new principles, epistocrats quietly defend existing inequalities that produce some overlapping outcomes but are grounded in wildly different moral justifications

to reiterate, this caginess undermines epistocracy's credibility & limits its appeal

eg on ballot access, focusing solely on ways to *constrain* low-ed, low-IQ turnout ignores a whole other side of the equation: *boosting or enabling* high-ed, high-IQ turnout

epistocracy seeks to improve outcomes by raising avg voter quality via mechanistic institutional reforms

but this can be achieved in many ways. adopting more tools & rhetoric from universalist conceptions of democracy would go a long way towards broadening its appeal imo

(note: this thread is mostly in response to some private conversations; the actual work of Jason Brennan & gang are significantly better on all these points, although i think the overall critique is valid)