(Classical) Liberalism [CF Article]

Ah, cuz threats rely on at least an implicit threat of force or background context of force being used, and cuz fraud is like stealing someone’s stuff?

Regarding force and fraud … like if you rob someone’s house, you might take their new iMac. If you use fraud to take money from their financial accounts (and leaving aside the issue of them being made whole by the bank or insurance or whatever), then you might take money they would have used to buy a new iMac. In either case, they don’t have an iMac that they are entitled to by the fruit of their voluntary exchanges. In one case, brute physical force was used, in the other, maybe deviousness or trickery was used, but same result in the end.

I think part of the reason I may have some idea that the robbery is worse is that there is a real risk of physical danger or even death that you are exposed to in a robbery and that doesn’t come up if like, someone uses your credit card without your authorization. But maybe that’s kind of a tangential point. Like, the enhanced risk of death in a robbery is a legit issue for criminal law and criminal sentencing, but the fact that robbery is worse in some way doesn’t mean there’s not a connection between fraud and force.


:+1:

@JustinCEO IDK if open criticism is welcome in the #elliot-temple category, but I have some if you’re interested:

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My main question with the vid is what was your goal?

I put your video on while I was doing some minor chores and found it difficult to keep track b/c there wasn’t an easy way to sync with where you were at. Like, if you had highlighted relevant text as you went (and left it highlighted until you needed to highlight something else); I think that would have made it easier to follow.

Sometimes you do that, like around 3:30 link – but those instances sorta make the problem worse because you jump around.

I think your point around that part was about how an idea is obvious only once you know of a way to frame it, but not necessarily beforehand (particularly the bit about intolerance, end of para2). But it’s not easy to tell that without following closely.

It seems like, at least in the few minutes after that, your thoughts are a bit disorganized (e.g. 5:10).

I skipped ahead a bit (to around 8:40 coincidentally) and I liked the discussion around 11:00 b/c it reminded me of an old FI conversation where I talked about why I wasn’t libertarian (I thought thinking was more important than freedom) and someone (Elliot, I think) made the counterpoint along the lines of what good is thinking if you’re not free (e.g. in a soviet gulag) – I think you were involved in that thread too (it might have been one of the flux threads or a tangent of those). I like that there’s a (v similar) counterpoint to both cases that one is more important than the other.

@admins pls LMK if this is not okay in this category (like, are the rules the same as #friendly or #unbounded or neither?)

Re: goal, I’m just trying to comment more, say more stuff, try making vids or writing posts or whatever.

ya gp

yeah it’s basically stray comments here and there

Right. You think primarily so you can figure out problems and act in the world in some way. If you’re not free to act in ways that implement your thinking (and don’t violate other people’s rights), then thinking is impotent and kinda pointless. (Trying to think up illegal plans to overthrow the tyrants or escape their control becomes the overriding imperative before you can do anything else). Thinking about this, it seems like the more comprehensively authoritarian the society is and the more people’s plans are thwarted, the more the “pressure” will build for a violent revolution, because there will be more and more people who’s plans are being thwarted and fewer and fewer options for trying to “route around” government control. This reminds me a bit of how the more comprehensive a system of price restrictions and controls, the more chaos is introduced into economic planning. I think there is some kind of connection there - like the greater the scope of plans being thwarted by the government (whether economic or personal/life plans or whatever) the more havoc will result.

My wild guess is that it would be like unbounded but I’m not actually sure. I checked the “About” post for the Elliot Temple category but it didn’t say much. So don’t worry about having posted to the wrong place, since it’s not actually obvious to one of the admins :slight_smile: Worst case is we can move it.

btw i was a bit hesitant to share video initially cuz of that part. i was worried about saying something foolish about slavery

https://www.elliottemple.com/essays/liberalism

Criticizing or commenting on the published work of authors or content creators is partially asymmetric. They are voluntarily putting themselves out there in a way people leaving a comment are not. This is difficult to capture in formal rules, but a rough idea is that creators should not escalate – which roughly means don’t respond with harsher criticism than a commenter used. (It’s fine if you ask first and they want something. Asking when unsure is a method others can use too. You can also often make reasonable guesses about what is OK with people, without asking, if know them and are familiar with a lot of their discussion history.)

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Also, if saying something is within normal social rules and it’s not mean then it’s generally fine. In other words, as usual, convention + no major problem = OK. This relates to the attitude of starting with convention and making modifications to fix (significant) problems, which is pretty different than trying to make up an ideal system from scratch.

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Yes!

This seems like a pattern I’ve started to notice elsewhere (there are some other work-related examples I can’t mention yet). One example that immediately comes to mind is transmitting data via waves (sound, EM, voltage, etc) – e.g. a square wave requires an infinite max frequency (and has infinite bandwidth). Basically that’s because you need to add an infinite number of sine waves together to make a square wave. Square waves sound good (we use them in computers a lot) but trying to make a perfect square wave is futile (and making a system that expects a clean square wave, without enough error correciton built in, will fail). There’s a natural limit to how that works in the universe, and trying to get around it produces unpredictable/garbage results.

It’s maybe a bit of leap to say it’s the same pattern, but what sticks out for me is the idea of people trying to control something without understanding how to work with reality. Obvs we have lots of knowledge about data-transmission and waves, so there’s no big issue wrt that, but there are lots of other cases where people think that X should be possible so they try to make it happen and, even if it seems to work for a while, it’s unstable and when it fails they won’t understand why. (UBI might be another example, and mb pure direct democracy in large populations)

I thought that bit was actually pretty strong and effective (argument wise). I was thinking particularly about slaves in the 1800s or so, and my guess is that many of them would take freedom over bedding/housing if they were given the choice. There might be exceptions (e.g. if someone owned slaves but treated them extraordinarily well), but my intuition is that many would choose freedom.

This reminds me of 2 sections of this vid (covering homeless veterans in LA): “Veterans of War” and “A House, Not A Home”

The point is made that they (the vets) are choosing freedom over the state-sponsored housing (two examples are mentioned). It also stood out to me near the end of that first section when the interviewer says:

Sounds like you like America, what it represents …

And the vet cuts him off

No, no, love; love America

https://www.elliottemple.com/essays/liberalism

https://www.elliottemple.com/essays/liberalism

And what’s the point of thinking if it has no bearing on reality?

I made a mental connection here to “locked-in syndrome”

https://www.elliottemple.com/essays/liberalism

hmm legibility isn’t great, will try different format

Paragraph 6 (Elliot quotes in italics, Justin labels in CAPS).pdf (36.3 KB)

ok done, added PDF link

I was trying to go through Elliot’s essay on Liberalism carefully, make trees, make videos with some comments. I’m now wondering whether that was a good idea. I’m not sure.

I think the essay is good, and I think good things are worthy of careful scrutiny and analysis, so that’s not the issue. I am having difficulty self-evaluating whether what I’ve been doing is worthwhile, so maybe I should stop (since I can’t self-evaluate, which is a bad sign). Thoughts welcome (from anybody).

I did get useful feedback about the audio levels in my videos (bit too low) and plan to revise production of my videos going forward in response to that.


EDIT: Clarification: I think part of the goal here was to make some effort engaging with some CF material in some kinda substantive way, and part of the goal was to practice making videos. So I guess what I’m doing is okay for those goals?

This video has some audio issues (mainly a weird rumble that got picked up and caused silence removal to work less well)