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gjm comments on Revitalising Less Wrong is not a lost purpose - Less Wrong Discussion
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Out of curiosity: Which individuals and which views? (If you fear retaliation, feel free to answer by PM rather than here.)
I don't see why I should fear retaliation as I've already left this site, for all intents and purposes.
The only issue is that I don't want to give the impression of having left over some petty argument and being bitter over it. The reality is the opposite. The reality is that there were never any heated disagreements. It was just me observing a very clear irrational, politically extremist bias in many people's comments, especially the ones most frequently in the 'top 30 contributors' panel (which shows that their beliefs in general match up with the overall beliefs in this community). In a few cases this bias went even to the extent of denying basic accepted science. In the end I realized that instead of trying to debate on LW rationally, it would be a better use of my time to go elsewhere.
What irrational, politically extremist positions have you recently seen a lot of on LW?
Neoreaction, libertarianism, and related ideologies.
Libertarianism is an irrational, politically extremist position?
I think passive_fist was saying that they considered certain comments irrational, and that those fell into the (broad) category of libertarianism. That c is an element of set I and set L, not that L is a subset of I.
What surprises me is that you would even ask that question... what rational justification is there for libertarianism?
Interesting. So you truly believe that libertarianism has no possible rational justification, so much nope you can't even steelman it?
I've tried before to steelman it and failed because the arguments constantly shift around and are hard to pin down. Tailoring arguments to every single person's interpretation gets tiring after a while. But if you can provide an explanation or link to what you believe then I'd read and try to steelman it to see if I understand your position correctly.
Here, though, I'm arguing on a more meta level - even assuming that it comprised a coherent set of beliefs, and assuming you had a well-defined utility function you wanted to maximize, how would you possibly go about providing a truly rational justification that libertarianism applied to a large mass of complicated human beings would result in the desired outcome? This also applies to capitalism, socialism, communism, etc. Essentially anything other than pure utilitarianism, but even utilitarianism requires a lot of fleshing out before you get to anything resembling a working procedure for governing people.
That's not an argument against libertarianism, that's an argument that people with a fairly diverse set of views call themselves libertarians. I think that happens to be true.
On a sufficiently high level of abstraction I'd probably say that the two main features of libertarianism are (1) an unusually high preference for liberty/freedom; and (2) a far-off-the-center position on the individualism vs collectivism axis. Point (1) directly leads to a strong suspicion of power structures such as the state.
I don't quite understand the question. If you have a "well-defined utility function", well, you just try to maximize it to the best of your ability. You seem to be thinking of a scenario where you're a god-king who gets to arrange the society (and individual values) as he sees fit. That is obviously incompatible with libertarianism at a basic level. And then you are talking about capitalism and socialism as if they were "working procedure[s] for governing people", but they are not. Economic systems are not power structures.
I don't know what "an unusually high preference for liberty/freedom" means. Every single political philosophy claims that it is pro-freedom. Even totalitarian regimes claim to be pro-freedom. Without reference to specific policy positions, claiming to be 'pro-freedom' seems meaningless to me.
So that reduces your definition of libertarianism to 'far-off-the-center position on the individualism vs collectivism axis'.
For a stable society to exist, at some level everyone has to agree upon some central authority with final say over disputes and superlative enforcement ability. Do you agree with this or not?
To me libertarianism is more a community than a specific set of doctrines. There are certainly core values and epistemological underpinnings which define the ideological innovators and leaders in the libertarian community, and contrast them with those of opposing movements. But your discovery that the arguments for libertarianism "constantly shift around and are hard to pin down" is simply expected for an evolving community.
In terms of epistemological underpinnings, I'd say what best defines the libertarianism movement is a peculiar recognition of the nature of partial knowledge in thought and action. Hayek went to great lengths over the course of his career to explain why individuals who find enjoyment and skill in mathematics, physics, and so forth tend to react with skepticism to the arguments of libertarianism and free-market economics. To delve into the full depth of his thesis, begin with this book. For a quick summary, see the first few minutes of this video.
You say that libertarianism is obviously irrational. When we look at libertarianism as a community rather than a specific set of doctrines, your claim seems to boil down to the following: "The people in the libertarian community are clearly irrational." I assume that means they're incompetent and misguided? That they're unlikely to put into effect real, useful, and sustainable change in the world's economic and social systems?
I have a related question: What do you think about Bitcoin?