knb comments on Our society lacks good self-preservation mechanisms - Less Wrong

12 [deleted] 12 July 2009 09:26AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (105)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: knb 14 July 2009 10:29:09PM *  3 points [-]

I would have a much easier time taking libertarianism seriously if its advocates weren't all in obvious affective death spirals.

This kind of absurdly absolutist statement achieves nothing but display personal animus toward an ideology. It is true that many libertarians are in death spirals, but I know of no political group that does not have large numbers of supporters in Affective Death Spirals. In case you were unaware, this is a universal tendency for idea-based groups.

And politics is the mind-killer, no matter your politics.

I agree with this, though:

Libertarianism does not handle tragedy of the commons scenarios well at all, and that's exactly what most existential risks are.