Radio Open Source had a show on about "free will" with a foody focus inspired by Clay Shirky's Edge response, "Free will is going away. Time to redesign society to take that into account." Megan McAardle offers a good skeptical and rational rebuttal to the emotive talking points spouted by some of the guests, nevertheless, I do think that libertarians (and I still consider myself one) must face up to the reality that advances in the science of the mind inevitably lead to "applications" which manipulate our mental architecture with greater precision and prediction than anything imagined by John Stuart Mill. I think in this case formally rigorous and empirically grounded models must cede ultimate ground to the common values espoused by a society. Shit, the libertarian SS will have their long knives out just for the last sentence. Oh, and they quote me 3/4 of the way into the show, just so you know.
Free will & food
Everyone always emphasizes the evangelical Right as running the Republican Party, but David Kirby and David Boaz -- writing in TCS -- argue that Republicans ignore the libertarian vote at their peril:
Seems that bloggers have a strong urge to post their scores for Bryan Caplan's Libertarian Purity
In an earlier post about Bush's stem cell veto, I mentioned that I am a libertarian. One of the comments got me thinking, and I want to answer it in detail. Posted by Quitter:
From Brian Caplan, the Libertarian Purity Test.
Free will has always been a trickier question than most people realizes, so much so that any clear statement either of the principle or its opposite tends to lead to dilemmas.