Anger is a natural human emotion with its own proper contexts, but Less Wrong is not a good place for it. This is a place where it is safe to submit any idea for rational criticism and change your mind. Thus I would stay away from terms like “criminal stupidity” even if you meant that in a neutral and technical way, because it is hard to read in anything besides an angry tone.
The other thing wrong with this essay (as others have pointed out) is that after presenting multiple examples of appealingly simple ideologies that smart people fall for, you propose your own simple ideology, libertarian non-aggression, as if it were somehow obvious that this is not of a similar nature.
How are we supposed to know that we can safely say yes to non-aggression and no to happiness maximization? What about the universe makes it the case that happiness maximization is inferior to non-aggression? Personally I find it hard to conclude that there are not some kinds of aggression that I (and by extension, humans in general) would be willing to suffer in exchange for some kinds of happiness.
Anger is a natural human emotion with its own proper contexts, but Less Wrong is not a good place for it. This is a place where it is safe to submit any idea for rational criticism and change your mind. Thus I would stay away from terms like “criminal stupidity” even if you meant that in a neutral and technical way, because it is hard to read in anything besides an angry tone.
The other thing wrong with this essay (as others have pointed out) is that after presenting multiple examples of appealingly simple ideologies that smart people fall for, you propose your own simple ideology, libertarian non-aggression, as if it were somehow obvious that this is not of a similar nature.
How are we supposed to know that we can safely say yes to non-aggression and no to happiness maximization? What about the universe makes it the case that happiness maximization is inferior to non-aggression? Personally I find it hard to conclude that there are not some kinds of aggression that I (and by extension, humans in general) would be willing to suffer in exchange for some kinds of happiness.