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Notes -
Some notes on stuff I read and the work of Luke Smith
I have been binge-reading the essays Luke Smith wrote on his website, LukeSmith.xyz, and have also finished more than a quarter of Watership Down. It is slightly harder to start reading physical books again, as I am used to my Kindle and mostly read short form on my computer and phone. Great book so far, but the comment is about Luke Smith.
Some essays by Luke Smith I liked
In particular, I liked his podcast on the book Against Method by Feyerabend, and I have been trying to draft out a post that is not haphazard, concise and makes a novel point.
His critique of libertarianism ending in feudal states was probably correct. My main point, though, is an admission of defeat, weakness rather. How do I survive in a world where the heuristics people hold holy on both sides end up being wrong so often?
You have religious reactionaries on one side who stick to their beliefs just because they were born with them; on the other hand, you have the rest of the world, where you find shades of post-enlightenment thought. In his essay 'Not Even Libertarians Believe in Libertarianism', Luke quotes Friedrich Nietzsche, in a rather casual manner
This later connects to his other podcast where he discusses Against Method, largely agreeing with Feyerabend's viewpoint of Epistemological Anarchism and in another podcast titled - When You're Too Rational To be Rational! notes the gaping flaws with Kahneman's book Thinking Fast and Slow with the help of Gerd Gigerenzer's books such as Simple Heuristics in a Complex World and later uses his other work Mindless Statistics to showcase the modern academic stat raindances in his podcast - The Flaws of Academic Statistics: The Null Ritual.
I provide this context because I feel unsure of what to believe in as a person. I grew up seeing a bunch of superstitions that made no sense, did not care much about god and slowly became a reactionary when I realised the cathedral or the modern elite simply used the scientific method as a garb to justify bioleninism or values like it. The essays I read have, however, made me question the very means and sources of what I can even trust. Do you simply agree to go along with your maulvi who is fine with you marrying a girl who is barely done growing up or do you deconstruct everything and reach a point where you can later either deny the existence of gender or worse, be an hbd obsessed online type who cannot see his own people as anything beyond iq scores.
The ancients here in India tried their hand at this problem with the Dharamsutras, before the lawbook of Manu, the Manu Smriti. These texts were not the word of god, something that is difficult to explain since the thinking and the people behind these ideals are long gone. I mean to simply ask how one can know what's right in a way that sounds dumb.
Is the world just humans trying to understand systems too complex for them, and all efforts are kinda wasteful, at least in the current model of the world? How do you decide what you think is wrong or right? The Maulvi example is helpful since people deny and outright ignore the existence of all religious mandates that are at odds with modernity. Modern banking and democratic values have dented a lot of orthodox people in parts that are not in the West. My post is terribly worded, but I cannot honestly tell people what is right or wrong in a consistent way, i.e. by seeing tradition as the all-knowing lindy culture machine fighting modern "logic".
This post will get downvoted badly, I cannot fully explain the entirity of my inability to grasp what is correct as both the opposing forces here are wrong in many ways, but I am unsure if you can live in a world that does not inevitably bend towards one and goes through pointless pain because of it. Marrying within your caste or race works; it worked before we understood IQ as a metric that has clear scientific backing and the very ideas of genetic tests with coordinates and a detailed breakdown of your haplogroup. At the same time, man evolved from a primitive state where religion, even though it came after a certain point, was the new thing compared to the pre-agriculture past. Is the answer to just never think, meditate and go on with my life, should I break down only some things with arguments, or do I simply find the first old scripture that agrees with me?
I know that the Dharmasutras did try something in this regard, and like most things religious, I presume they were ahead of their time. But yeah, I am beginning to question some things, not because I am anti-vaxxer or something, I am not, I do lean towards modern meds being good in nearly all cases, I just don't know how many of these Chesterstons fence issues we will face. Most religious preachers, popular ones, are mostly incorrect; my intellect can sense the outright stupidity and dishonesty in many things, and I hope I can get some personal anecdotes or any advice on how one deals with these issues. Learning philosophy to convince others of your preconceived notions, for instance, sounds dishonest, yet many do it.
This ties into culture war heavily, I know that having women not marry young, allowing heterogeneous societies, and deconstruction lead to chaos, do I need to wait for science to approve of it? Conversely, how can I deny the existence of many modern phenomena that I know are true? Hinduism conveniently has sects that do not care very much about any of this, but I want to finally see reality for people reading this who know more about the world than me
Wish I hadn't seen the libertarian critique. It was bad like most critiques of libertarianism are bad. Scott still holds the record for the only good critique I've ever read.
Every other critique makes it sound like libertarianism is a group of scolds that just want to take away the toy that everyone calls government.
I would push back here. Do you think anything in particular would demonstrate exactly what he says is wrong? He does have a bone to pick with economics as he later published articles against fiat as we see due to inflation but so far I do agree with a lot of what he said about drugs and other things.
Government rules are enforced through violence and kidnapping.
Libertarianism poses a simple question for any would be government bans: is the thing you are trying to ban worth killing and imprisoning people to reduce that thing?
For many libertarians there are things that definitely meet that criteria. Murder, kidnapping, serious bodily assault, etc.
They phrase it in the post as "who are you to ban that thing, why should we listen to you?" But really it is "who are you to say we get to kill people just because you think something is bad?"
There are a lot of things that are bad but less bad than killing and kidnapping people. And it sometimes feels like everyone is just playing signalling games when they say the government should ban something but can't affirmatively answer "yes it is worth killing people and imprisoning them in order to ban this thing" Meanwhile it feels like libertarians are one of the few groups acknowledging the on the ground enforcement costs of government actions.
I'm sorry, this is where I break with libertarians. What exactly do you think gives courts and contracts their teeth? Violence and kidnapping. Or sovereignty, as it is more commonly known. A monopoly on violence.
Suppose me and a few hundred thousand people came together and formed a corporation with salaried employees with the duties of ruling over contractual disputes, dealing with petty crime, and all issues related to security, and everyone involved agreed to defer to this body in binding arbitration and forgo their right to banditry and warlordism.
That corporation is a state. Congratulations, you've recreated statism with extra steps.
Libertarians aren't prophets in the wilderness screaming about the injustice of collective violence. Yes, it is worth killing people and imprisoning people over. People for thousands of years have valued law and order over the Hobbsian war of all against all and people are greatly relieved to have left the tribal experience of feuds and wergild.
I specifically said that sometimes libertarians agree it is fine to use violence. Its just that they want a high threshold for deciding when to deploy state violence or collective violence. Your point about corporations turning into states is more relevant to anarchist strains of thought.
They are specifically willing to deploy that violence:
Point 1 puts them in disagreement with various anarchist strains of thought. Point 2 puts them in disagreement with various modern progressive strains of thought and most marxist/socialist strains. And point 3 puts them in disagreement with just about everyone.
Point 3 is simultaneously why most people dislike libertarian thought, and why most critiques of them suck. Its all just special pleading by each specific author on why their specific social project deserves an exception. "Yes, it is good when libertarians want to oppose the social projects of people I hate, but the idiots don't realize that they need to allow my social project or society will of course collapse". The pattern becomes obvious after reading the same type of critique a few times, but I've had the misfortune of reading the same damn thing over a hundred times.
Four: Enforcing contracts, right?
What if some of the people saying this are right, though? That is, excluding the American frontier, which I think was historically unprecedented and will not be repeated, what if a stable society really does need a social code enforced by the state or an entity with equivalent power? I guess that would then pass your bar?
Contracts can pre-agree to enforcement methods. One of them is to just piggy back off of state enforcement and say that one party now owns stuff.
If a stable society needs some form of social enforcement that would pass my bar in the same way that property rights does. But I'm generally suspicious of such requests. Non government entities like religion have had more success and longevity enforcing such things through social means. After all violence is only one means for achieving social ends. You can try to convince people, pay them, or use negative social consequences. None of those things are what I'd consider "violence".
Fair enough. So in your proposed libertarian world, you would not automatically have the right to sue for breach of contract, damages, or debt? Unless these things turned out to be foundational.
I thought those things were more central to libertarian ideology.
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