[extropy-chat] FWD (SK) Is libertarianism a faith position?

[Keith Henson]

At 10:47 PM 2/9/2006 -0800, Fred C. Moulton wrote:
>On Mon, 2006-02-06 at 21:56 -0700, Terry W. Colvin wrote:
> > by Edward Leser [edited and abridged]
>
>First just in case anyone is trying to track this down I think the name
>is Edward Feser not Edward Leser.
>
>I am all in favor of criticism, but to be useful it needs to be accurate
>and properly focused.  Feser seems to try but it was disappointing to
>me.  Unfortunately the piece by Feser has inaccuracies such as the
>statement: "... Richard Posner's book 'Sex  and Reason', which attempts
>to account for all human sexual behavior in terms of perceived costs and
>benefits."  Posner does present economic concepts in examining sexual
>behavior, marriage practices and other similar phenomena but that does
>not mean he ignores other fields.  Posner writes in his book "Despite
>the emphasis I place on economics, my study is antispecialist in its
>refusal to limits its method to that of economics.  I have drawn heavily
>on research in other fields, especially biology (to such an extent
>indeed that my approach might be described as bioeconomic rather than
>economic) but also philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology,
>women's studies, history and of course law.  There is no fundamental
>incompatibility either among the fields I have named or between them and
>economics."   I do not have reason to think that Feser was being
>malicious when he wrote the remark about Posner but if Feser was going
>to include Posner in the piece it might have been well to at least spend
>a paragraph or two on how the Law and Economics movement has contributed
>to the study of law and social sciences.  Or at the very least give a
>more accurate description of Posner's book.

Interesting.  It sounds like Posner wasn't far from applying evolutionary 
psychology.

Had he shifted his viewpoint a bit to genes he probably could have 
accounted for not only the main stream activities that look like the result 
of reasoning, but the weird corner cases that don't.  (The corner cases 
were involved in a *heck* of a lot of selection!)

Genes of course were selected to build bodies and brains/minds that were 
good at getting the genes that built them into the next generation.

Genes build brains that induce people to do things that are completely 
irrational from the individual's viewpoint but completely sensible from the 
viewpoint of genes in a person who is surrounded by a band of close 
relatives.

Once you fold in Hamilton's inclusive fitness, it makes genetic sense for a 
person to *die* if doing so improves the survival of his relatives who 
carry the same genes (most of the time his).

I might note that Heinlein understood this aspect of humans even if he 
didn't have the intellectual tools at hand to understand its origin.  But 
then, the *reason* popular writers are popular is that they have a good 
feeling for evolutionary psychology even if they never heard the word.

snip

>As I said I am all for criticism of Libertarianism, Extropianism,
>Socialism, etc but I urge that we also should expect high standards for
>extropy-chat.

I agree.

Sorry if I sound like a one note player, but evolutionary psychology, or 
evolutionary biology does seem to be a particularly powerful way to view 
otherwise mysterious human behavior.

>It may also be worth considering having a special list
>set up called extropy-politics where those who want to discuss politics
>can go.

Or take it up to a meta level.  I think arguing politics without 
considering where humans came from is like chemistry before the periodic 
table or disease before Pasteur and Koch.  So much becomes obvious (even 
the rewards of S&M) when you start thinking about what our ancestors were 
selected for back in the Stone Age.

Your exchange with Marc Geddes deserves an EP analysis with examples.  Lots 
of things are "like" cults or "like" religions on a spectrum from a bowling 
team to the old L5 Society to scientology.  I once proposed you could get a 
rough measurement on how much one meme was like a competing class by seeing 
how much having one reduced your changes of having another.

A bowling team probably has little effect on reducing the chances a person 
in it was a Methodist so in most cases a bowling team would not be 
considered a religion.  But identifying yourself a Lutheran or a Baptist 
reduces your chances of being a Methodists to near zero.  So this group 
(plus others) are in a memetic competition for an exclusive "religious meme 
receptor site."

Being a Communist probably reduced your chances of being in *any* of the 
religions so much that it should be considered either to be a religion or 
in some more inclusive class that includes religions and competes for the site.

You gotta take this with a grain or two of salt because Extropians (as a 
guess) don't identify themselves with religions very often.  The question 
is, if they were not Extropians would they be members of something 
religious or that competes with religions?  Whatever Extropianism doesn't 
seem to compete with Libertarianism or at least libertarianism.

I think a better measure of how much a person is a cult member or political 
partisan will come out of the work (recently cited here) by Drew 
Westen.  (I think the terms overlap and are mild manifestations of 
inclusive-fitness, survival-critical traits from the stone age.)

So there probably are people who have a mental reaction to all your x(s) as 
if x were a cult.  (Present parties excluded of course :-)  )

I can recount a bizarre historical event about how two groups of 
Libertarians reacted emotionally to an article of mine on memetics.  It was 
a mystery until I ran into Dr. Westen's work a few weeks ago and ran his 
work through an evolutionary psychology model.

It is a long story and analysis so ask if you want to see it.

Give my best to our mutual friends in Silicon Valley

Keith Henson
(From his hideout in the Mortmain Mountains)