Comments on: Rah Apathy

By: Dain

Dain — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 02:01:12 +0000

National dialogues suffer from the biases of far thinking (Hanson) and stereotypes (Lippmann). There are reasons to be skeptical of such deliberation at the highest levels even if you’re generally a fan of voice over exit:

http://oxlib.blogspot.com/2010/05/mark-pennington-democracy-and.html

By: Emile

Emile — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 21:15:31 +0000

Did the eugenicists really think that? That’s not the impression I had …

By: mwengler

mwengler — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 19:58:57 +0000

I think the biggest whole in “rationality” is the idea that we can come up with a “rational goal” for humanity. We tend to make the same mistake the eugenicists made: that evolution had a goal, and that evolution’s goal should be our rational goal. Of course evolution has no goal, it just happens, and the trilobites, the dodo and the baboon have all done just fine reaching the “goal” of evolution. Further, the idea of taking elimination of existential risk, a.k.a. survival, as our rational goal is just “stockholm syndrome,” we are at the mercy of the world and of evolution, why not identify with our oppressor and root for him?

Is there a rational argument for deifying the evolutionary goal of survival? Is that really the best, or even the only, goal we can come up with?

By: nazgulnarsil

nazgulnarsil — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 08:16:09 +0000

liberal sentiment and liberal societies are different things. liberal sentiment among a populace does not lead to a liberal society. liberal sentiment among elites does.

By: Bruce Smith

Bruce Smith — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 21:06:05 +0000

The virtues of libertarian apathy with regard to maintaining demand in the economy have put that economy in the ditch!

By: anon

anon — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 20:04:20 +0000

Intuitively, it seems that voluntary, competing “tribes” could coexist with a classical liberal society and a minarchist government. Gintis posits that “civil society” institutions cannot take part in any kind of governance, but this seems obviously wrong to me, since a voluntary contract with the tribe could well include punishment when the tribe’s norms are violated. In fact, modern religions seem to be much like “tribes” in this sense.

By: Curt Adams

Curt Adams — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 16:00:43 +0000

That’s not accurate at all. Liberal societies normally form in extremely unsettled conditions, most frequently in the middle of a revolution. The 3rd Republic was formed with the German army in France demanding (and getting) vast reparations and the French army going door-to-door in Paris killing Communards by the thousands. Even the English liberal society formed during a period (1660-1720) with at least the ordinary rate of unrest (the Dutch invasion of the Glorious Revolution, multiple Stuart revolts, complicated sectarian persecutions, etc.)

By: nazgulnarsil

nazgulnarsil — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 15:38:24 +0000

liberal societies develop in the rare condition of stability (protection from bandits) and lack of onerous government intervention. this is rare because governments strong enough to protect you from bandits are strong enough to do what it wants.

what breaks the deadlock is the interplay of the costs of attack and defense. where the costs of defense are relatively low, even a weak government can defend the populace from bandits.

By: Curt Adams

Curt Adams — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:47:01 +0000

Liberal societies rarely arise from liberal majorities. Liberal societies are usually formed as a powersharing arrangement between multiple competing illiberal groups where none can successfully take control. Once they are formed, liberal societies develop constituencies which support the current arrangements, based on loyalty, familiarity, and personal benefit (e.g., leaders in a liberal society tend to be those who are successful leading a liberal society and thus favor its continuation). Large illiberal groups always remain and often even collectively are a majority, but as long as one particularly group isn’t a majority by itself liberal societies tend to be pretty stable.

The classic example is the French 3d republic, which was formed by an overwhelmingly monarchical convention where the monarchist were split between Bourbonists, Orleanists, and Bonapartists. They couldn’t agree on a king, so they compromised on a Republic. But, by the time the Orleanist line died out some 15 years later, and the Bonapartists had faded in interest, there was too much inertia for the Republic to push it aside. But France had large reactionary and revolutionary socialist parties for decades afterwards and even today both Communists and neofascists sit in the National Assembly.

I can’t see liberal society as arising from evpsych based on this history. It’s not a system that normally develops in small groups; it’s a complex system that has been rare in human history and normally arises only as a resolution to intractable conflicts in large societies. As you point out, in a 40K yo hunter-gather band the resolution to an intractable intergroup conflict would be secession, not liberalism.

By: Hopefully Anonymous

Hopefully Anonymous — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 12:47:21 +0000

Classical liberal and libertarian governance evangelism seem to me to be algorithms. Here we have people making the case that they are persistence maximizing for humanity, because of evo psych. You Prof. Hanson seem sympathetic to the claim. I’m skeptical -I’d rather we start from first principles of “How can we minimize existential risk” rather than the implicit “How can two conflicting schools of thought that both appeal to nerdy white guys be synthesized?”

As an algorithm, classical liberal and libertarian ideology seems predatory to me on the population that would be sympathetic to evidence-based persistence maximizing public policy.