Don't get me wrong, I really like Peter Thiel, but it's hard to consider him 'Libertarian', whilst selling advanced snooping software to the U.S. government.
The HN version of this is
"we wanted a thoughtful discussion about his ideas, instead we discussed the finer points of being a libertarian."
Discuss.
And I would extrapolate a third "disruptive" belief: that a quick discussion on a web forum by persons with a vague layman's understanding and absolutely no data beyond links to popular science articles (perhaps some of whom skipped college at Thiel's instigation) believe they can bring insight to these topics.
I would imagine anyone knowledgeable enough to discus these issues has left the building, likely to watch the Fonz jump the shark.
I believe they genuinely can not tell the difference between a domain expert and a random post on the web. They will not have herd of peer review let alone read journals such as Nature.
In other words, if you aren't thinking about it, then you shouldn't abdicate your moral responsibility so facilely like that.
I do have expertise in some small amount of things myself, so I can recognize it in others. An easy heuristic is: the ability to make detailed predictions, and to specify where and why one is able to make detailed predictions.
Because decades of research by countless independent teams has not been invalidated by data and methods so poor they aren't extensively acknowledged in peer reviewed journals.
If you think that process is corrupt, have you ever looked at the actual data and methods yourself? If we are dismissing peer review then show us that data and how you came to your conclusions.
The story you refer to was created by those philosophically upset by climate change and is in the form "we can't tell if it warmer in this cherry picked area therefore climate change is false" then cloaked that story in jargon. It is identical to the argument used by less bright conservatives "there was snow on tv in Peoria therefore climate change is fake"
The disappointing thing here is that people who could genuinely to look into climate change if they were honestly interested don't and instead choose to convince themselves of blatantly false views from biased media outlets for ideologically reasons. If there were knowledgeable people here, this has certainly chased them off in the same way there are no evolutionary biologists chatting on fundamentalists websites.
But maybe you are saying that papers on climate change in peer reviewed journals are only there due to cronyism and corruption. That the theory of evolution has come to prominence mainly do to that too.
I imagine many have not heard the extent of this conspiracy. Perhaps there is a quote from Thiel about it.
I also understand climate change posses the same threat to laissez-faire capitalism theories as Darwin did to bible literalists and that is why it is such a visceral topic.
http://www.walterblock.com/wp-content/uploads/publications/b...
*fixed, thank you kind sir
I'll crawl back into my hole now. :)
Seriously, libertarians have no idea of the history of the political movement they are involved in.
For example, I frequently hear liberals say that if libertarianism were pushed to its logical extreme, you'd end up with Somalia. For some reason, liberals are insulated from the question on what happens when leftist ideology it pushed to its extreme.
US modern liberalism, on the other hand, has basically no pure ideological component other than beliefs in humanistic morals, pragmatism and empiricism. (And, of course, pandering from politicians). Most of us really distrust overly strong ideologies, so that's what we poke fun at. Liberalism isn't the opposite of libertarianism in terms of ideology, we're not in favor of nationalizing industries, it's the opposite where we don't think there's a one-size fits-all narrative to define everything.
I only ever see that in discussions where libertarian participants attack every criticism drawn from real-world experience with "but, that's only because of government, but in a real libertarian system, that wouldn't happen".
> For some reason, liberals are insulated from the question on what happens when leftist ideology it pushed to its extreme.
Except in the real world, where conservative arguments often start with some caricature of what leftist ideology pushed to an extreme would be presented as exactly what everyone even mildly to the left of them actually wants, at a minimum, and immediately. (And, yes, the reverse happens from liberals to conservatives frequently, too.)
I try to split beliefs between small-l libertarianism for what I believe (which is not ideologically pure), and capital-L Libertarianism for the party platform. It's the only way to reconcile liberals and conservatives with their presumptive parties, though Libertarians, not having won anything, aren't as compromising.
Well, it helps that liberals are not leftists. "Leftist" begins at social democracy (think of Elizabeth Warren) and goes from there.
Because they keep espousing positions that have proven to be terrible ideas. They forget about history, and why things like government regulations came about.
Not all but some libertarians are arguably more familiar with history, because they understand the degree to which regulation historically has been twisted (generally: to screw over the poor), wheras their detractors have been sold the line that exists to defend the status quo on any given regulation.
Your post doesn't make sense to me at all. What is this about levels of being an anarchist? I'm an anarcho-capitalist, basically, which is quite different than the typical leftist "anarchists".
>Seriously libertarians have no idea of the history of the political movement they are involved in.
Kind of a pointless remark don't you think? I'm pretty well-versed in the history of libertarian anarchism and lest-"anarchism".
Libertarianism was strongly rooted on the far left for a long time - Lenins "Left Communism - An infantile Disorder" was aimed at libertarian Marxists, for example.
The "modern" right wing libertarianism is the new kid on the block.
Now if only my In-Laws that just spout out whatever Glen Beck says with mixed in "small governemnt" people say gets them to believe liberty is best experienced in Anarchy :)
But that's not the point: most "libertarians" seem to believe that the ostensible usefulness of the nanny state can be eliminated by people choosing to do good and engaging in market activity with others who do good.
So profiting from something that's so evil is, to this way of thinking, counter-libertarian.
Bernie Sanders is a civil libertarian.
I am not trying to start a political argument here. I am only adding to the OP's statement.