This is interesting. For some time, I’ve had my anti-authoritarianism (and anti-governmentism) sort of filed away in the back of my mind as “review this opinion when I think I can handle finding out I’m wrong” Sounds like you’ve been through the process already.
How much of your change of heart would you attribute to explicit reasoning, aesthetics, and personal experience respectively?
How much of your change of heart would you attribute to explicit reasoning, aesthetics, and personal experience respectively?
Good question. I wouldn’t say it breaks up so nicely.
First of all, the aesthetic appreciation basically got uncovered when the big aversions went away. It was like, “ok authority can be practical a lot of the time, and oh, look, now that I’m not afraid of it, it’s kind of beautiful after all.”
The personal experience (having been an anarchist, running a LW meetup, etc) mostly just provided a bit of extra verification fuel once anti-authoritarianism was being seriously questioned.
The thing that actually got me to explicitly formulate the whole process was reading Moldbug. He pointed out some glitches in the matrix, so to speak.
I don’t know how to weight the importance of these, or what that would mean. Is there a more specific question you’re interested in?
I think you’re failing to distinguish between authority one voluntarily submits to (potentially even reserving the right to reverse the decision), e.g., meetup organizer, and authority backed by a monopoly on violence, i.e., the modern conception of government.
This is interesting. For some time, I’ve had my anti-authoritarianism (and anti-governmentism) sort of filed away in the back of my mind as “review this opinion when I think I can handle finding out I’m wrong” Sounds like you’ve been through the process already.
How much of your change of heart would you attribute to explicit reasoning, aesthetics, and personal experience respectively?
Good question. I wouldn’t say it breaks up so nicely.
First of all, the aesthetic appreciation basically got uncovered when the big aversions went away. It was like, “ok authority can be practical a lot of the time, and oh, look, now that I’m not afraid of it, it’s kind of beautiful after all.”
The personal experience (having been an anarchist, running a LW meetup, etc) mostly just provided a bit of extra verification fuel once anti-authoritarianism was being seriously questioned.
The thing that actually got me to explicitly formulate the whole process was reading Moldbug. He pointed out some glitches in the matrix, so to speak.
I don’t know how to weight the importance of these, or what that would mean. Is there a more specific question you’re interested in?
I think you’re failing to distinguish between authority one voluntarily submits to (potentially even reserving the right to reverse the decision), e.g., meetup organizer, and authority backed by a monopoly on violence, i.e., the modern conception of government.