John Carmack is a legend, but a fucken douche.
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The man’s a legend, but not without recent controversy:
And his explanation here:
My comments on BasedCon
It is unfortunate that Rob has made BasedCon so intentionally provocative. I told him as much after the event last year – I felt a little uncomfortable. There is a demographic that welcomes the in-your-face posturing, but it drives away sympathetic people that would otherwise be happy to talk about craft, stories, and technology.
Even when someone gives you a clear signal, it is a mistake to extrapolate it to an entire constellation of beliefs and behaviors, and then to assume they are contagious by association. That shortchanges a lot of people.
I’m not a culture warrior, and I don’t want to strike blows against anyone. I don’t follow activists on either side, including Rob, because I tend to think that all the negativity and resentment is detrimental to both the author and target.
The back story:
I like hard science fiction stories with a bit of competent libertarian vibe. I have ever since Heinlein, but it isn’t a mainstream genre. People here on twitter introduced me to a few contemporary authors that scratch that itch, and I have happily read a half dozen new books in the last few years from authors I would have otherwise been unaware of. It is great to be able to get a recommendation, read a book, then drop the author a DM and say “Hey, I liked your book!”
One of those authors was Rob Kroese, who had started organizing a small gathering of authors and fans that fell a bit outside the mainstream of SF/fantasy. This is a tiny niche of a niche, but I had had Twitter conversations with three of the authors attending, and I was interested in the contrast with the big commercial SF/fantasy conventions I had attended.
I was initially going to just show up as a fan, but I wound up giving a talk about AI and sitting on panels about aerospace and fact checking novels. I met several more authors, and came back with a backpack full of new books to read. Politics didn’t come up once in my conversations.
https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1659173689986883584
Meh, still annoying to me personally, his excuse that he likes libertarian sci-fi books so he went to see what it’s like vs “mainstream” cons, is pretty sus.
Always interesting how “nerdy” successful dudes with money gravitate towards libertarianism. It usually boils down to not having to pay taxes or reinvest in the communities they extract value from.
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Maybe it is for crypto bros and whatnot, but generally speaking, I think libertarians just think governments should largely treat adults like adults instead of children.
I consider myself libertarian, and the policies I support most would increase my taxes and “investments” in my local community. For example:
- balance the budget - would pretty much require taxes to be raised because there’s no way we’ll be able to cut enough with the state of politics as it is
- create a negative income tax bracket (NIT) - replace many tax credits and welfare programs with a cash based system; adults should use the cash as they need, instead of what the government thinks they need; this is largely a formulation of UBI
- as part of NIT, eliminate the social security tax cap
I also think we should abolish laws and policies that keep people on unequal footing, such as legalizing or decriminalizing recreational drugs (it’s better for a young father/mother to be with their family instead of in jail), ending qualified immunity, etc.
We should also change our education system so all students have the same access to school choice. We could do this by eliminating school buses in urban centers, making mass transit free for students, and requiring cities to ensure all students have access to most schools in the city through better routes and whatnot. If a child thinks they’d be better off at another school, they should be able to work with their counselor to get there, even if their parents are uninterested. We should also provide alternatives to the college track in K-12 schools, such as by allowing an apprenticeship to partially replace regular school so students can learn an in-demand school by the time they finish school.
And so on. Libertarians tend to have different solutions to problems than either major party, that doesn’t make this solutions worse or somehow intent on beating down the poor, it’s just a different perspective that in many cases can add to the wider discussion.
But maybe John Carmack is the bad form of “libertarian” who just wants what’s best for himself. IDK, but I can speak for myself.
I think technical-minded people tend to gravitate towards libertarian ideologies because they tend to underestimate the importance of human relationships to large scale systems. You can see it in the stereotype of the lone programmer who dislikes commenting or documentation, collaboration with other programmers, and strongly negative views towards their own project managers or their company’s executives. They also tend to have a negative view of customers/users, and don’t really believe in spending too much time in user interfaces/experiences. They have a natural skepticism of interdependence, because that brings on extra social overhead they don’t particularly believe they need. So they tend to view the legal, political, and social world through that same lens, as well.
I think the modern world of software engineering has moved in a direction away from that, as code complexity has grown to the point where maintainability/documentation and collaborative processes have obvious benefit, visible up front, but you still see streaks of that in some personalities. And, as many age, they have some firsthand experience with projects that were technically brilliant but doomed due to financial/business reasons, or even social/regulatory reasons. The maturation of technical academic disciplines relating to design, user experience, architecture, maintainability, and security puts that “overhead” in a place that’s more immediate, so that they’re more likely to understand that the interdependence is part of the environment they must operate in.
A lot of these technical minded people then see the two-party system as a struggle between MBAs and Ph.Ds, neither of whom they actually like, and prefer that problems be addressed organically at the lowest possible level with the simplest, most elegant rules. I have some disagreements with the typical libertarians on what weight should be assigned to social consensus, political/economic feasibility, and elegant simplicity in policymaking, but I think I get where most of them are coming from.
I think you’re painting with too broad of a brush.
Libertarianism is a very large tent, and it includes a lot of people from both major parties that have decided to stick with one of the two so they don’t “throw their vote away.” I’m guessing you mostly have direct experience with one type of “libertarian,” and assume that because most of the libertarians you know fit a certain mold, that the majority of libertarians in the world fit that mold as well. It’s just like asking a Fox News viewer what liberals think, the sample will be quite biased.
On one extreme, you have libertarian socialists like Noam Chomsky who come from academia, and on the other end you have anarchocapitalists from an economics background like Murray Rothbard, and everything in between, as well as some even more extreme. What unifies them, broadly speaking, is a rejection of coercion.
And libertarianism absolutely relies on human relationships to function. Where it differs is that libertarians often disagree with the notion that a centralized government is the best way for those conversations to happen. Many libertarians prefer natural relationships like community organizations, businesses, and neighborhoods that are selected through competition and common interest vs other similar organizations. For example, instead of having one school system organized from the top down to give students an equal education, you could have multiple competing schools that parents and students can choose from, and the ones that parents and students prefer succeed and the others fail. The alternative is direct involvement of parents with the education system, which just ends up giving more power to the minority who have the time to get involved (i.e. probably not the type you’d want to get involved, at least in my experience). It’s a lot easier to switch schools than to try to effect change in a given school.
So libertarians generally believe that individuals should be allowed to make their own decisions instead of delegating to some central authority. To use your software development analogy, it’s the idea that people should cluster around projects that interest them instead of being grouped arbitrarily based on need. You’ll get a lot more out of someone that’s internally motivated than someone who is externally motivated.
Notice that your comment is framed from the perspective of what Libertarians believe, and analyzing from that context. Mine is different: analyzing a specific type of personality common in tech careers, and analyzing why that type of person tends to be much more receptive to libertarian ideas.
I’m familiar with libertarianism and its various schools/movements within that broader category. And I still think that many in that group tend to underappreciate issues of public choice, group behaviors, and how they differ from individual choice.
Coase’s famous paper, the Theory of the Firm, tries to bridge some of that tension, but it’s also just not hard to see how human association into groups lays on a spectrum of voluntariness, with many more social situations being more coercive than Libertarians tend to appreciate, and then also layering Coase’s observations about the efficiencies of association onto involuntary associations, too.
Then at that point you have a discussion about public choice theory, what the group owes to defectors or minority views or free riders within its group, what a group owes to others outside that group in terms of externalities, how to build a coalition within that framework of group choice, and then your nuanced position might have started as libertarianism but ends up looking a lot like mainstream political, social, and economic views, to the point where the libertarian label isn’t that useful.
Ok, I think I you’re saying that tech attracts self important people that self identify as libertarian.
The opposite is also true, in that it attracts self important people who self identify as socialists. Both think other people should follow their ideals because their ideals are obviously good for society. The difference is that the “libertarian” thinks they’ll get more of what they want with fewer rules, and the socialist thinks that more rules (and the right people) is what’s needed.
But I think you’ll find that if you put either in power, they’ll make similar changes (at least on the libertarian to authoritarian spectrum), but they’ll both justify them as being “good.”
The problem, imo, isn’t with a specific ideology, but the self importance that causes them to openly push their political opinions in a setting where that just doesn’t apply, like a workplace. Unless you’re working in journalism where your political biases could impact your work output, it’s just not relevant.
public choice theory
At a certain point you trade market failures for government failures, or vice versa. The bigger a government gets, the more susceptible it is to special interests. The smaller it gets, the less effective it is at correcting market failures.
Libertarianism, to me, isn’t an end goal (there is no libertarian utopia), but a direction that attempts to solve problems with more liberty rather than less. Sometimes it’ll misstep, and sometimes it’ll look like the two major parties, but the approach is usually the same: how can we solve a given problem with more liberty rather than less.
And that’s the difference. Conservatives want to solve problems by preserving some set of values, and progressives want to solve problems by adding some new government service.
And yeah, there are a lot of questions to resolve, but they’ll be addressed from the perspective of liberty. Public choice is certainly one of those problems, and it’s at least partially resolved by libertarian paternalism, but again, it’s a process instead of a destination.
Replying to say I appreciate your discourse and can empathize with some of your views. I think it’s important to level set, and that level currently is your perspective and identification of a libertarian is one data point, and some of your perspective includes some nice, popular opinions:
Everyone wants policies and rules that empower, not limit. (Don’t treat me like a child).
Hell yeah, balance the budget, nobody wants their money going to waste, that’s a no brainer.
Drugs clearly won the war, and the program did what it was intended to do: throw minorities in jail and destroy families. You’re against it, so am I.
Now, instead of outright providing counter arguments to the things I’m not on board with, I’d like to suggest a route where instead of divesting from resources under the banner of “choice”, what if we invested resources into communities into the way they’re built? For example why bus students from a poor district to a rich one when you should leverage equity to bring communities up to par? I think that solves more problems than it adds.
Anyway, I’m sure the libertarian community is pretty diverse and I’m sorry for generalizing them. Again, I appreciate your perspective.
why bus students from a poor district to a rich one
For the same reason that universities have different curriculum despite all being accredited. It’s less a case of which one is better funded, but more which one has the program you want.
I think kids (and adults) do better when they have a say, and I also think they do better when they’re learning things they’re interested in.
My ideal is for a city to have multiple schools all with different emphases. Maybe one focuses on fine arts, one on STEM, and one on debate/communication. They’d all cover the same core curriculum (e.g. Common Core), then add what makes them special on top. Then students and parents decide where to go, and the counselors help figure out transportation. If we do it right, kids will have employment prospects right out of high school because they gained specialized skills through their school track.
I’m not suggesting we divest anything, I’m suggesting we change the funding model to get the same dollars to work better. If we can combine school and city buses, we save money that can instead go toward attracting better teachers or providing specialized equipment. But more importantly, we can have schools specialize without excluding lower income students whose parents can’t afford to take them to school every day.
So, anecdotally, the school I had to go to didn’t have a robotics program, or laptops to lend out to students, but other schools (probably in other districts) did. My colleagues today who did have those things, have experiences that are different from mine as a result, arguably better as they had earlier exposure.
My school did offer sports and orchestra I participated in, and with people closer to where I lived where I could hang out with before and after school.
I don’t think being sent to a school farther away in a different community would be an ideal solution, or necessarily make me a better person as a whole. Besides being treated like an outsider and the unavoidable stress and time loss that comes with travel, I would probably be stressed out and struggle to be happy in that environment.
Again, I’m speculating but school isn’t just about what job you want to have, it’s about exploring and developing, not only as an individual but also as part of a community. I think my ideal is one where communities have more access to opportunities, rather than limiting opportunities to specific locations. To clarify that location matters a lot, and I think history (redlining as an example) provides guidance to that.
Either way, it sounds like we both would like folks to get access to the resources they want and need so I’m cool with that.
different community… outsider
Sure, but that’s only because you “belong” to the school that’s closer to you, so going somewhere else feels different than if you didn’t have a default. If nobody had a default, everyone is an “outsider.”
What do you think would happen if most people in your neighborhood went to a different school? I think your notion of what a “community” is would be quite different. That’s the case for my kids, there are ~10 kids of elementary age in my neighborhood, and they go to ~5 different schools. They still play together, and my kids play with kids from their school, we just need to drive them around a bit more. When my kids finish elementary school, they’ll go to the local public school for the rest of their education, so they’ll get that experience as well.
If you had 3-4 schools to pick from that were all equally “far” in terms of bus access, wouldn’t you prefer to go to the one that interests you more? You’d make friends with similar interests instead of just friends who happen to be in the same class as you, which means your extracurriculars are more than just a place to hang out with friends.
And yeah, it’s not all about getting a job, it’s about learning how to learn, as well as learning to set and achieve goals. And what better way is there to do that than to realize that you actually need those boring classes to really do what you enjoy? For example:
- if you love political science, you need some math to be able to run statistics to research a policy proposal
- if you love programming, you need to be a competent writer to collaborate on projects
- if you love music, you need to understand theory to really understand music structure
And so on. Kids should be exposed to a variety of subjects, but they should also be encouraged to pursue their passions, and the boring stuff should help them with what they’re truly interested in.
limiting opportunities to specific locations
And that’s always going to be an issue.
Let’s say a city has three schools:
- A - inner city school with mostly working class families, and therefore limited parental involvement
- B - school in a wealthy area with many single income households, and thus lots of parental support
- C - rural school with mostly farmers and day laborers; limited parental involvement
If funding is exactly the same, where do you think teachers are going to want to go? Obviously the one with more support from parents. And the inner city school is likely to be more difficult because the kids likely have less support at home, so they’ll struggle with independent learning. So I guess we could pay teachers more to teach at the other two, but does that really solve the problem?
Instead of trying to equalize the schools, how about moving the students around as needed? Pardon the stereotypes, but let’s say school A has a great sports program, school B has a great STEM program, and school C has a great fine arts program. Inner city kids could choose to go to B or C if they aren’t interested in sports, wealthy kids could go to A or C if they’re not interested in STEM, etc, and the only difference would be which bus they get on. You’d get better mixing of students in classes, kids would likely be more engaged because they chose that school, and if kids are already familiar with taking the city bus, they can experience what life is like from a different background.
Growing up, I had friends from various economic and ethnic backgrounds because my school covered a wide range in its boundaries, and now there’s a new school that separates the wealthier area from the poorer area. I want my kids to have that exposure that I had and mix with those of different backgrounds, and having school choice is a great way to get that.
we both want folks to get access to the resources they want and need
Absolutely. We just differ on who decides what those resources are and how they get them.
I think spontaneous order is a great thing and want to encourage more of that, whereas the two major parties think their respective solutions are better so they push a top down solution. I certainly believe that there’s a place for top down solutions, but I think they’re relied on too much.
I miss seeing policies from other libertarians like this!
So fucking sick of the ancaps and how most people view libertarians as just an extension of conservatives that want small government now. They pretty much took over r/libertarian the last few years and pushed out the “socialist” libertarians.
Yeah, I hate that sub. It was okay ~5 years ago, but the last few years it’s basically just nonsense.
Essentially, if you don’t see libertarian socialism and anarchocapitalism as valid extremes of the same ideology, your view of libertarianism is flawed. Anarchocapitalists view private property as their core principle, and libertarian socialists don’t recognize it at all, yet they both consider themselves libertarian. The focus should be on the anti-authoritarian nature of libertarianism, which imo revolves around the Non-Aggression Principle, not property rights. Yet when I look at that sub or most “libertarian” crypto bros and whatnot, they look more like fascists than libertarians.
My favorite libertarian “spokesperson” is Penn Jillette, and his main focus is on the use of force. A quote:
My question is: What would I personally use a gun to accomplish? I would use a gun to stop a rape. I would use a gun to stop a terrorist attack. I would not use a gun to build a library. My morality is such that if I’m not willing to use violence myself, I’d never use violence because I’m a coward, but theoretically if I’m not willing to use violence myself then I can’t condone the government using violence.
You end up having to draw a line somewhere. I just draw the line towards more freedom.
So that’s it for me. When it comes to a policy, I look to see if there’s a way to solve the problem with more freedom.
I don’t like the NIT, but I see it as an improvement over welfare programs because it gives people more choice in how to use those allocated dollars. I don’t like raising taxes, but the alternative to solving budget problems is screwing with monetary policy, and to me that’s worse because most people don’t understand monetary policy. And so on. I want transparency and simplicity from government, and generally lean toward freedom when faced with a decision.
What? Left libs took over that sub and we had to invite statist right-libertarians to the ancap subs because you couldn’t talk without being downvoted.
Well that’s just painful to read. I wonder how political a conference could be named before he thinks even showing up is no longer the neutrality he thinks he is showing. “BasedCon” is by its definition a political name, and simply showing up shows you are at least receptive to the message, or willing to ignore it.
I do get that he might be wanting to disassociate the Con from the craft, but if I take it further, would he go to PolPotCon? I doubt he would, even if the interest aligned.
