(This thread is not so much about libertarian philosophy as it is about scepticism, so hopefully this is the right section for it. If not please move it.)
This is something I have never quite understood. Why is it that whenever I find a community of supposedly critical thinkers, a significant amount of them identify as libertarian? For example, the Less Wrong forums, which are not supposed to be about politics at all and are instead about rationality and overcoming biases, is about one third libertarian. And the James Randi forums also seem to have many libertarians around, though I don't know the exact number. This despite the fact that politically, libertarians are a clear minority in most countries. They seem very much overrepresented.
So why is this? I don't see any reason why critical thinking or just being smart should imply libertarianism, and yet libertarianism seems way overrepresented among smart free-thinking people. The most obvious explanation would be that libertarianism really is the most rational worldview, yet I doubt this is the case considering how it seems to be based more on idealogical preferences than rational argument. My current best explanation is that people make an intuitive leap from "I'm a free thinker and don't want others to tell me what to do, therefore nobody should ever be told what to do by the government", even though this doesn't really make sense.
Or, maybe I'm not giving libertarians enough credit? Maybe a lot of libertarians are more like Bill Maher, who called himself a libertarian because he wants to legalize pot? Or maybe a lot of Americans call themselves libertarian because they don't want to support either of the two main political parties there, and this is what skews the numbers?
You tell me, people at JREF, because I don't get it. :boggled:
This is something I have never quite understood. Why is it that whenever I find a community of supposedly critical thinkers, a significant amount of them identify as libertarian? For example, the Less Wrong forums, which are not supposed to be about politics at all and are instead about rationality and overcoming biases, is about one third libertarian. And the James Randi forums also seem to have many libertarians around, though I don't know the exact number. This despite the fact that politically, libertarians are a clear minority in most countries. They seem very much overrepresented.
So why is this? I don't see any reason why critical thinking or just being smart should imply libertarianism, and yet libertarianism seems way overrepresented among smart free-thinking people. The most obvious explanation would be that libertarianism really is the most rational worldview, yet I doubt this is the case considering how it seems to be based more on idealogical preferences than rational argument. My current best explanation is that people make an intuitive leap from "I'm a free thinker and don't want others to tell me what to do, therefore nobody should ever be told what to do by the government", even though this doesn't really make sense.
Or, maybe I'm not giving libertarians enough credit? Maybe a lot of libertarians are more like Bill Maher, who called himself a libertarian because he wants to legalize pot? Or maybe a lot of Americans call themselves libertarian because they don't want to support either of the two main political parties there, and this is what skews the numbers?
You tell me, people at JREF, because I don't get it. :boggled:
via JREF Forum http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=266061&goto=newpost
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire