Had a very stimulating conversation tonight over dinner w/
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willmagic and some very interesting pseudonymous intellectual figures.
There was much depth and breadth, and I should go to bed soon, so I'll give you my favorite tiny little nugget. Let's combine a couple observations.
1) One important thing that needs to change about libertarian activism is privatizing the good of freedom, rather than providing it publicly (Jonathan Wilde of DR and ATN has made this point a number of times). That's one reason why Ron Paul and the LP and other forms of Folk Activism are doomed - they require people to work hard for reforms that they will only share a tiny part of the rewards from. And that's why seasteading has a chance - I am working my ass off because if I create an awesome seastead I can live there, and the residents have incentive to create it for the same reason.
2) The mainstream social, political, and cultural consensus is full of bullshit. There are things commonly accepted as being true which are contradicted by the weight of the evidence - in some cases, enormously so. Much about democracy and political history falls into this category, far less about science. For those of us who want the world to work better, this bullshit is our enemy. Convincing people to break out of unquestioning acceptance of the lies and learn to use their critical faculties is thus quite important for fixing the world.
However, (2) is hard to do because of (1). To learn the truth behind a controversial fact, like say "
An Ashkenazi Jew is more likely to win a Nobel Prize than the average American, because of genes" offers no personal benefit. If anything, it offers the harm of having to either reveal taboo beliefs or hide your beliefs from those around you. And as Will pointed out, investigating all the modern controversies and obtaining a better estimate of the truth than the mainstream is *expensive*.
Which is where PUA, or the
David Deida view of male-female sexuality, come in. Here we have a crazy, controversial claim that men and women are different, that male assertiveness is hot while male supplication is not. It has all kinds of weird sociobiological implications related to how sexual dynamics have been changed by feminism, birth control technology, and the economic empowerment of women. Like any true theory, it cuts across obvious party lines - one can be in favor of feminism, birth control, and the economic empowerment of women (I am, for some definition of feminism), while being against the effects they cause to reverberate through society.
Yet for once, unlike global warming or any of the other bullshit mainstream ideas I'm always ranting about, PUA is actually a private good! Awkward guys can take Mystery workshops and use these theories (which contradict the mainstream and have society-wide implications) to get laid. Women who make the mistake of thinking that the same male-polarity behaviors that earn them success in business will let them flourish in relationships and get the kind of man they want can go to David Deida workshops and learn when and how to let the light of their feminine polarity shine through.
Hence, these beliefs a much better chance of spearheading a social revolution than the belief that IQ is real, measurable, important, and distributed inequally. It's much harder to stop something that people will pay to learn than to stop something that has to be given away for free. (How sick is it that libertarians are blind to this?)
The only other one of my contrarian beliefs that comes to mind with this property is diet & exercise. There, alternative beliefs (whether
SLD,
paleo,
crossfit, whatever) can have meaningful impacts on one's health and appearance.
(This totally needs to be a
Less Wrong post about how the rationality movement can succeed by focusing on privatizing the public good of rationality...hopefully I can find time to write that this weekend...)
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