Comment by leggerss | Hacker News Reader

Comment by leggerss | Hacker News Reader

Something that strikes me every time I encounter SV Rationalism presented this way is the self-annihilation of it: tastes and preferences are to be optimized out as cognitive biases, grey uniforms mandated in lieu of individual expression (fashion). The god they're sacrificed to? “Technological progress"

I lived in SF for a few years and found the tech community's disinterest in art to border on allergy. It was as if expressing an aesthetic preference weren't an optimal way to spend one's time or money. Better to spend those things "optimizing efficiency” or optimizing oneself/one’s own life

It seems like Thiel and co _don't actually care about other people_ or human welfare writ large. This isn't a novel observation, but it bears repeating

It's mirrored in something I ask myself every time I hear that Thiel is a "libertarian" _while also_ being the founder of the biggest surveillance dragnet ever created: what about surveillance is libertarian? I thought libertarians were all about "live and let live" and "stay out of my business". It's the opposite. But I guess what he really wants is "freedom for me, surveillance for thee". Again, not a novel observation, but it finally clicked into place for me reading this piece

The state integration and the separatist fantasy aren't competing visions, though; you build the surveillance infrastructure inside the state, then exit into your own enclave that benefits from it. It all feels like a way to create the world depicted in Margaret Atwood's Maddaddam trilogy (fantastic if you haven't read it): corporate enclaves with private security built for employees and their families with lawless "pleeblands" outside the walls

> I lived in SF for a few years and found the tech community's disinterest in art to border on allergy. It was as if expressing an aesthetic preference weren't an optimal way to spend one's time or money.

Art takes many forms, and not everyone need be interested in the same kind of art.

There's plenty of aesthetic consideration that goes into scientific and technological projects. Consider the huge stack of technologies starting with silicon to massive computing clusters and code-bases with hundreds of millions of lines of code running on them. It's an impressive feat of science and technology, but the many pieces that go into making them also have an austere beauty of their own, often constrained by the need to be actually useful in an unforgiving world.

> The god they're sacrificed to? “Technological progress"

They're wannabe-Morlocks.

> I lived in SF for a few years and found the tech community's disinterest in art to border on allergy.

That has to do with the crowd you ran into. Burning Man is many things, but among those, it does have a lot of art. Did you go to SF Museum of Modern Art? or any of the art anything's? Same with sports. There are a ton of nerds that call it sportsball and think they're clever, but at the same time, the Superbowl is this weekend and there's a lot of sport-related things happening around the Bay Area that you wouldn't know about if you didn't look for it. So I'd be wary of drawing conclusions from such a limited sample set.

There’s really two types of people that tend to be drawn to libertarianism at some point: humanists and narcissists.

Those who are fundamentally humanist want to tear down systems of oppression because it pains them to see their fellow humans abused and brought low by corrupt laws and regulations. They (perhaps naively) imagine that if the system was dismantled or at least shrunk to minimum size, basic human decency will step in to fill the vacuum and people will thrive. Folks like Penn Gillette are the face of this group.

The narcissists are drawn to the movement because they feel like “if only everyone would get out of my way, I can do GREAT THINGS™ “. They like ideas like social Darwinism because they are already privileged enough to not be worried about losing in a survival of the fittest contest, and don’t tend to concern themselves with the second order effects of dismantling the system because it is simply an immoral impediment to their greatness. Peter Thiel and folks like him are the face of this group. This is largely the strain that has taken root in SV.

I see a whole lot more that end up at libertarianism as almost the default answer to "what philosophy most emphasis less government".

It's a generational thing I think, you see public money being spent on junk, and laws used to entrench and make competition hard; and you think "why do we want the government to do these things at all?". And if you look at common ideas around 20 years ago, the default answer was libertarianism.

fwiw Penn Gillette no longer calls himself a libertarian.

> I ask myself every time I hear that Thiel is a "libertarian" _while also_ being the founder of the biggest surveillance dragnet ever created: what about surveillance is libertarian?

Surveillance does not directly violate the non-aggression principle, and a myopic adherence to minimal principles without any consideration to where they lead is the central feature of libertarianism.

> a myopic adherence to minimal principles without any consideration to where they lead is the central feature of libertarianism.

Your definition, maybe. Redefining that idea and assuming it is accepted as fact is a touch arrogant.

I'm not assuming or defining anything, just summarizing my observations of how self-proclaimed libertarians behave.

Self-proclaimed libertians aren't anything of the sort. You'll never meet actual libertians, they won't tell you, because they don't care. It's basically the opposite of the vegan, crossfit, prius charade.

Libertarianism itself it a touch arrogant.

Surveilance means stealing intellectual property of surveiled people. If you're a TRUE libertarian, then you need to make sure that you arrange some kind of a contract with the people you surveil.

Libertarianism doesn't mesh well with reality; the government doing less is part of it, but it also requires a way for people to efficiently protect their property.

So you get to a point where mass surveillance is justified by the anti-crime angle; there is no contradiction, libertarianism logic where you can live and let live requires no crime...

> Libertarianism doesn't mesh well with reality; the government doing less is part of it, but it also requires a way for people to efficiently protect their property. > So you get to a point where mass surveillance is justified by the anti-crime angle; there is no contradiction, libertarianism logic where you can live and let live requires no crime...

Whatever technical definition of Libertarianism you're using is very narrow. Nobody is under the delusion that Libertarianism requires no crime.

It does if you don't want a worse privately owned government. Either the government will stop crime, or Palantir and the Pinkertons will stop anything they seem to be crime, or there never was any crime.

No it doesn't. Libertarianism is just fine with the government working to prevent crimes. That is one of the main roles libertarians feel the government should fulfill!

The definition of crime is anything that libertarian doesn't like, of course.

>technical definition of Libertarianism

You see, that's the great thing about Libertarinaism, it can be whatever you want, and when there's something you don't like you go "but that's not real Libertarianism"

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