3 ms·

From http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/: As with chocolate cookies, not everything t

by ggreer 13y ago

From http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/: As with chocolate cookies, not everything that feels pleasurable is good for you. And it certainly isn't good for our hapless readers who have to read through all the angry comments your blog post inspired. Criticizing political ideologies isn't very productive (especially when its party has never won a seat in congress), but if you're going to do it, please follow this example: http://raikoth.net/libertarian.html http://raikoth.net/libertarian.html. The author addresses specific issues and injects a bit of humor into his responses. He uses statistics and facts instead of anecdotes. Most importantly, he doesn't strawman or condescend. That's the sort of writing that convinces people. The submitted post will most likely just annoy any libertarians who read it.

dylandrop 13y ago
The original link isn't titled "Why Libertarianism Doesn't Work", it's called "How I Outgrew Libertarianism". He's just writing a personal anecdote about why he no longer agrees with a political philosophy. Does everything on HN have to be laid out as an academic paper?
- hexd 13y ago
  No, but I think should have something to do with "hacker", at least.
- unimpressive 13y ago
  >Does everything on HN have to be laid out as an academic paper? No, but a personal anecdote about libertarianism as a political ideology is the sort of thing that breeds argument, but no debate. EDIT: So I went ahead and looked up "debate" in a dictionary and it apparently doesn't mean "principled argument", I'm not sure what the word for that is, but basically a post like this generates a lot of noise but produces little to no signal.
  - dylandrop 13y ago
    I see it more as an interesting read than anything else, and enlightened me to one person's issues with libertarianism. Sort of like reading a novel with political viewpoints: you can agree with it or disagree with it. It doesn't have to "produce signal".
ZeroGravitas 13y ago
That raikoth link is really good, but isn't this a case of "you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into"? I mean the raikoth article is just a big list of lies that libertarians believe, some subtle and complicated, some just plain stupid. How did they get so convinced without investigating these things? I welcome stigmatizing such fervent belief in comforting (to the believer at least) lies as childish. And I say this as someone, like the author of your link, who sees great value in some of the free market ideas.
- jimzvz 13y ago
  "'you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into'?" Don't forget that this applies to you as much as anyone else. None of the rebuttals presented by the author of the "faq" are that strong as far as I am concerned. You would say that is because I have irrational beliefs and I would say that it is because the author completely ignores (as far as I can tell) the corporatocracy that big government enables; uses empirical evidence of phenomena from a big government environment and instead of attributing these phenomena to that environment, uses them as evidence against libertarian philosophies; and in general uses arguments that aren't particularly compelling. Now the truth is probably somewhere in the middle but I think it is important for you to at least acknowledge that your dismissal of other ideas or beliefs as lies can probably be attributed to bias as much as the converse. In which case, "stigmatizing such fervent belief in comforting (to the believer at least) lies as childish. " is not a very good idea.
iSnow 13y ago
Actually, I think the way we are wired, the raikoth-article are not going to win debates: >Want to Win a Political Debate? Try Making a Weaker Argument (http://www.psmag.com/politics/why-even-your-best-arguments-never-work-64910/ http://www.psmag.com/politics/why-even-your-best-arguments-n...) I am not saying this is great, but personal anecdotes might work better...

by ggreer 13y ago

dylandrop 13y ago

The original link isn't titled "Why Libertarianism Doesn't Work", it's called "How I Outgrew Libertarianism". He's just writing a personal anecdote about why he no longer agrees with a political philosophy. Does everything on HN have to be laid out as an academic paper?

hexd 13y ago
No, but I think should have something to do with "hacker", at least.
unimpressive 13y ago
>Does everything on HN have to be laid out as an academic paper? No, but a personal anecdote about libertarianism as a political ideology is the sort of thing that breeds argument, but no debate. EDIT: So I went ahead and looked up "debate" in a dictionary and it apparently doesn't mean "principled argument", I'm not sure what the word for that is, but basically a post like this generates a lot of noise but produces little to no signal.
- dylandrop 13y ago
  I see it more as an interesting read than anything else, and enlightened me to one person's issues with libertarianism. Sort of like reading a novel with political viewpoints: you can agree with it or disagree with it. It doesn't have to "produce signal".

ZeroGravitas 13y ago

That raikoth link is really good, but isn't this a case of "you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into"? I mean the raikoth article is just a big list of lies that libertarians believe, some subtle and complicated, some just plain stupid. How did they get so convinced without investigating these things? I welcome stigmatizing such fervent belief in comforting (to the believer at least) lies as childish. And I say this as someone, like the author of your link, who sees great value in some of the free market ideas.

jimzvz 13y ago
"'you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into'?" Don't forget that this applies to you as much as anyone else. None of the rebuttals presented by the author of the "faq" are that strong as far as I am concerned. You would say that is because I have irrational beliefs and I would say that it is because the author completely ignores (as far as I can tell) the corporatocracy that big government enables; uses empirical evidence of phenomena from a big government environment and instead of attributing these phenomena to that environment, uses them as evidence against libertarian philosophies; and in general uses arguments that aren't particularly compelling. Now the truth is probably somewhere in the middle but I think it is important for you to at least acknowledge that your dismissal of other ideas or beliefs as lies can probably be attributed to bias as much as the converse. In which case, "stigmatizing such fervent belief in comforting (to the believer at least) lies as childish. " is not a very good idea.

iSnow 13y ago

Actually, I think the way we are wired, the raikoth-article are not going to win debates: >Want to Win a Political Debate? Try Making a Weaker Argument (http://www.psmag.com/politics/why-even-your-best-arguments-never-work-64910/ http://www.psmag.com/politics/why-even-your-best-arguments-n...) I am not saying this is great, but personal anecdotes might work better...