What do you think about Mike Huemer?

[teo123]

So, I am interested, what do people on this forum think about the philosopher Mike Huemer?
He explained his arguments for veganism here: https://reason.com/2018/09/26/propositi ... ns-shoul1/
He explained his arguments for anarcho-capitalism here: https://www.econlib.org/archives/2014/0 ... of_pa.html

[Jebus]

Just tell us what you think. You don't have to disguise every opinion you want to share as a question.

[teo123]

Just tell us what you think. You don't have to disguise every opinion you want to share as a question.

I find the Mike Huemer's argument for anarcho-capitalism "Politicians are in the position of medieval physicians, having some pre-scientific ideas about how society works and proposing treatments of societal problems based on those ideas." far more convincing than the much-more-common similarly-sounding argument of the Economic Calculation Problem. Economic Calculation Problem essentially claims that, well, the complex problem of economic calculation with the incomplete data can be solved much more quickly and accurately if the system solving it is distributed (capitalism) rather than centralized (socialism). I think a good response to the Economic Calculation Problem is that it is not really corroborated by computer science. In computer science, there is a thing called The Problem of Hidden Terminal, which can be said to be the opposite of the Economic Calculation Problem. The Problem of Hidden Terminal occurs only in wireless decentralized networks, and it is a crucial problem in them that makes large decentralized wireless networks impossible. It is when computers in a network can more-or-less accurately estimate the amount of data that is currently being transmitted through the network, but they drastically underestimate the number of computers in the network (as they are behind some barrier or simply too far away for the signal from them to get to the computer), leading to computers refusing to do anything because they are mistakenly thinking the network is overloaded. However, as far as I can see, you cannot make such a counter-argument to the Mike Huemer's argument for anarcho-capitalism.

[Red]

I skimmed the articles, and I'd say I agree with his position that if libertarians want to be consistent on the issue of freedom, they have no reason not to extend that to animals, otherwise they are hypocritical for supporting the enslavement and torture of animals for their own pleasure. I've seen a lot of libertarians try to justify meat consumption, and they tend to be extremely similar to arguments pro-slavery people were making two hundred years ago.

I'd also extend this to leftists who claim to care about intersectionality and climate change, while having no problem eating animal products that contributes to the oppression of animals and the ecological disaster that will kill hundreds of millions of black people. But hey, I guess their rights aren't important enough.

Of course Huemer seems to hold all sorts of unreasonable positions (like anarcho-capitalism as you've outlined) but to give him credit, he's one of the few libertarians I've seen that are actually consistent on this issue.

[teo123]

@Red, what makes you think this Mike Huemer's comparison of government to medieval physicians is incorrect? To me that sounds like an excellent comparison. Here is what I wrote on my blog:

One of the best quotes I heard about that is the quote by Mike Huemer that politicians today are in the position of the medieval physicians. Medieval physicians had pre-scientific ideas about how human bodies work and their treatments were usually worse than useless. Today, politicians have pre-scientific ideas about how the society works, and the best thing for them to do is to do nothing, no matter how disappointing that is. All until the 19th century, physicians thought bloodletting was a cure for many diseases. This even included anaemia. So, most of the time, it was worse than useless. How did the physicians convince themselves that bloodletting was useful? First of all, the "science" back then taught that most illnesses were caused by disbalance of bodily fluids, so it was instinctual to think bloodletting could help for many illnesses. Also, obviously, if the symptoms are caused by high blood pressure, bloodletting would appear to help. So, at the best of times, it relieved the symptoms, while making the underlying illness even worse (by stifling the distribution of oxygen by blood). Until the beginning of the 20th century, physicians thought a ketogenic (a low-carbohydrate low-protein diet) could cure type-2-diabetes. There is little doubt it made things worse, as low-carbohydrate diets lead to kidney problems in humans (and, contrary to popular belief, protein has little or no impact on that), and people with type-2-diabetes are even more vulnerable to that. As well, any real ketogenic diet is high in saturated fat which make type-2-diabetes worse and can even cause it in large amounts. But type-2-diabetes is often made worse by food allergies, which a severely restrictive diet coincidentally avoids (a low-protein diet, for example, does not contain milk or soy, the biggest sources of food allergies). As well, it is instinctual to think removing glucose and stuff that is easily converted to glucose (most amino-acids in protein) would help lower the glucose in blood. This was enough to convince the pre-scientific physicians that it helps. And the same is probably true for the modern-day government policies. Artificially lowering the interest rates seems like a good example of that. Low interest rates mean that it is less expensive to borrow money from banks, for some projects that may return that money back. But are high interest rates actually the problem? Or are they a signal something is wrong with the economy and that one should not start ambitious projects, as ambitious projects are likely to fail in the current economic situation? Quite a few economists think lowering interest rates, while they postpone economic depressions, they also make depressions worse.
Whenever people are using economics as a way to justify the belief in government, there is a hidden premise in their arguments. That hidden premise is that, if we do have a government, that government will follow sensible economic policies. That premise is obviously false. Nearly no economist today agrees tariffs are a sensible policy or that rent ceilings are a sensible policy. Yet, nearly every country has those things.
And let's say, for the sake of argument, that we have a form of government that guarantees it's the social scientists who make political decisions, rather than people ignorant of social sciences. What makes you think things would go well? Do you think we can trust social sciences enough for that? I have some idea about social sciences, as I have published some papers about linguistics, about my alternative interpretation of the names of places in Croatia. Based on what I have seen, I would say social sciences have very little to say about politics. Linguistics has little to say about whether it is politically a good move to claim Croatian and Serbian are a different language. It seems to me most linguists inside Croatia think it is, whereas most linguists outside of Croatia think it is not, but that neither of that is based on evidence. Most linguists think it is a good thing to try to preserve nearly-extinct languages, such as Istriot in Croatia. But that also does not appear to be based on evidence. What makes you think economics is different? In case there is some ambiguity, I am not saying social sciences are without merit. I am saying the parts of the social sciences that deal with political issues tend to be without much merit. Microeconomics, based on what I know, probably has much more merit than macroeconomics. Microeconomics can be studied empirically and is not related to politics. Macroeconomics is politicized and is very hard, if not impossible, to study empirically. Social scientists sometimes do worse than average people in predicting politics. For example, almost no social scientist thought the Soviet Union would collapse, but some (very few, but still a noticeable number) people who were not social scientists did. Social scientists really do not have a good track record when talking about politics. And that's recent history. Social sciences have not changed much since then. Of course, further back in history you go, the worse it gets. Most social scientists at the time, just like most people at the time, thought World War 1 would not be nearly as bloody as it turned out to be and believed that it would end all or nearly all wars. I generally don't agree with Greta Thunberg, but I like how she said that economists that they talk about fairy tales of eternal economic growth (economists are arguably far more optimistic about economy than other people), and when those fairy tales prove false, they fail to agree what caused a recession. Well, that is almost the opposite of science. I don't know how to make social sciences better. Many people say social sciences rely too much on statistics and too little on common sense. I do not agree with that. In fact, in my alternative interpretation of the names of places in Croatia, I did some statistical calculations which include the Shannon's entropy (which is rarely done in that part of linguistics). But we need to stop pretending that we have indisputable sciences which tell us what people should be forced to do. Because we do not. So, I don't think social sciences are scientific enough to justify taking away peoples' freedoms. Especially not those parts of social sciences that are usually cited to justify that.

[Red]

@Red, what makes you think this Mike Huemer's comparison of government to medieval physicians is incorrect?

I literally never said that.

[teo123]

@Red, what makes you think this Mike Huemer's comparison of government to medieval physicians is incorrect?

I literally never said that.

Then, do you think it is not a good argument for anarcho-capitalism? Why?

[Red]

@Red, what makes you think this Mike Huemer's comparison of government to medieval physicians is incorrect?

I literally never said that.

Then, do you think it is not a good argument for anarcho-capitalism? Why?

No, it's just that anarcho-capitalism is not a reasonable position, that's all. There aren't any good arguments for it (though some might be better than others, doesn't mean it's a position grounded in reason).

[teo123]

I literally never said that.

Then, do you think it is not a good argument for anarcho-capitalism? Why?

No, it's just that anarcho-capitalism is not a reasonable position, that's all. There aren't any good arguments for it (though some might be better than others, doesn't mean it's a position grounded in reason).

If governments are like medieval physicians, then anarchy is good. Before the middle of the 19th century, going to the doctor if you are sick was a bad idea. If governments do not base themselves on science (or are basing themselves on proto-science, which is, let's face it, what modern social sciences are) when trying to fix the problems they are trying to solve, then it would be better if governments did not exist.

[Red]

Then, do you think it is not a good argument for anarcho-capitalism? Why?

No, it's just that anarcho-capitalism is not a reasonable position, that's all. There aren't any good arguments for it (though some might be better than others, doesn't mean it's a position grounded in reason).

If governments are like medieval physicians, then anarchy is good. Before the middle of the 19th century, going to the doctor if you are sick was a bad idea. If governments do not base themselves on science (or are basing themselves on proto-science, which is, let's face it, what modern social sciences are) when trying to fix the problems they are trying to solve, then it would be better if governments did not exist.

So why not try basing them on science then? Why not bothering giving that a chance?