Тег: Science

The Myth of “Selfish Nature”: How Science Showed That People Are Naturally Generous

You have likely had to argue at least once in your life with fans of the “strong state hand” or amateur cynics who, with an air of wisdom, proclaimed: “Humans are extremely selfish by nature. Just look at small children; they behave like egoists and sociopaths until they are taught to adapt to society.” The claim is that this is precisely why we need a Leviathan with its taxes and regulations; otherwise, we would all tear each other’s throats out over an extra piece of bread.

Well, next time, you can boldly point them toward an excellent study that was recently featured in the journal Developmental Science. Scientists decided to check whether we are indeed born as self-centered egoists and tested the most “uneducated” people, those free from social attitudes—toddlers (children aged one and a half to two years).

What was the essence of the experiment? Imagine the scene: 134 children were invited to a laboratory. Each was seated at a table (the parents, by the way, sat nearby but wore headphones and kept their eyes closed to avoid exerting any influence). A scientist sat opposite them, along with a plush toy monkey. First, the toddler was given a bowl of treats—fish crackers. Then a game began with the monkey, who also “really loved fish.” The children were presented with different scenarios in a random order:

1) Watch the scientist feed the monkey.
2) Give the monkey a “foreign” cracker (from the scientist’s secret stash).
3) Take another cracker for themselves.
4) Share their own cracker from their own bowl (in science, this is called “costly altruism”).

It is important to note another point: the scientists didn’t just observe who exhibited greedy or generous behavior. They also video-recorded the children’s faces so that independent experts, who were unaware of the experiment’s goal, could rate their level of happiness and the sincerity of their smiles on a 7-point scale.

And what do you think? The children were happy and literally beamed with joy when they treated the plush macaque. But the most striking part: their level of happiness hit the ceiling precisely when they gave away their own cracker! The joy from voluntary charity was statistically significantly higher than the joy from simply receiving treats “for free.”

Skeptics will immediately jump in: “Oh, they were just happy to follow an adult’s command; children love to please!” But that’s not the point. When the scientist said, “Now take a cracker for yourself,” the children did so with complete indifference. No joy from obedience.

Some might also say: “Then they were just copying the emotions of the happy monkey!” Again, wrong. The monkey “rejoiced” exactly the same way in all scenarios, but the children smiled sincerely only when they themselves acted as the giver. There was no emotional contagion—the joy came precisely from the fact of the kind act itself.

Why is this important from a libertarian perspective? The point is that solidarity, mutual aid, and generosity are not artificial constructs that need to be hammered in from above. Humans are literally biologically programmed to derive pleasure from voluntary cooperation and helping others. Evolution made us empathetic because voluntary, mutually beneficial coexistence is the most effective way to thrive.

The problem begins exactly where a third force crudely interferes in this wonderful natural process—that is, when a stationary bandit comes along and says: “Right, now charity is an obligation. We will take your crackers under threat of a fine or prison and decide for ourselves which monkey to give them to” (spoiler: officials will eat half the crackers while carrying them).

Coercion kills the very essence of humanity. When your earned resources are taken by force, you feel not joy, but a dull irritation (and a sharp desire to Google tax avoidance schemes). The state does not make us kinder—it only atomizes society, forcing people to think: “Why should I chip in to help a neighbor or repair the street if I’ve already paid giant taxes for it?”.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Why the sated is no comrade to the hungry, and technology is driven by those whose asses are on fire

Do you know what a cozy chair at Stanford, a patent for 20 years ahead, and a lifetime grant from the NSF have in common? Exactly—the desire to change nothing. Why bother? The bread is already buttered, topped with caviar, the competition has been squeezed out by copyright laws and NDAs, and any new idea is a risk that your beautiful, multi-year body of work might become obsolete even before it hits the pages of Nature. Therefore, when yet another overfed professor curls his lip at a new technology, it’s not “weighted scientific skepticism,” but simply the instinct to preserve a comfortable spot.

A case that should be tattooed on the forehead of every skeptic: EUV lithography. In the mid-1980s, Japanese engineer Hiroo Kinoshita from NTT became the first in the world to produce an image using extreme ultraviolet light and reported it at a meeting of the Japan Society of Applied Physics in 1986. The reaction from the room? To quote Kinoshita himself: “The audience was extremely skeptical. However, my faith did not change.” During the same period at Bell Labs, Aubert Wood and Bill Sylfvast tried to push the same idea in the US—and received an “extremely negative reaction” from reviewers: they claimed that even if every component were assembled, the system would be so complex that its uptime would be “negligibly small.” Now look at 2026. Every chip in your smartphone, every graphics card, every AI accelerator—all of it is made on machines that use the exact same EUV lithography that the mainstreamers laughed at. What would have happened if Kinoshita had listened to his “esteemed colleagues” and gone to teach optics to freshmen?

Now let’s move to the Ukrainian trenches. Remember how back in 2020, serious men from military academies chuckled at the idea of FPV drones? “Toys for children,” “unserious weapons,” “real war is tanks and artillery.” Military science is generally one of the most conservative swamps on the planet—careers there are built over decades, and you certainly don’t get patted on the back for “unserious ideas.” But in 2022, when the AFU faced a question of physical survival, it suddenly turned out that a dirt-cheap FPV drone with a shaped-charge warhead could take out a million-dollar tank. And the conservative soldiers, for whom all this was “not according to regulation” just yesterday, turned enthusiast home-builds into an entire branch of service in a year and a half. Because the alternative was to die. And death is an excellent motivator to cast aside corporate pride and take what works.

The pattern is simple: technology is not pushed forward by those who are “doing fine.” Technology is pushed forward by those who have a choice between “accepting the new” and “dying” (metaphorically or literally). So let’s list some categories of people who are truly desperate:

– Startuppers with no money. They have nothing to lose but their over-commits. That’s why garage teams, not IBM’s R&D departments, give birth to the things that change industries.
– Fighting armies of the weaker side. Ukraine with drones, Mujahideen with Stingers, Finns with Molotov cocktails. The stronger side always has the temptation to “crush with mass,” while the weaker side only has their brains.
– Scientists from the “wrong” countries and institutes. When you can’t get an NSF grant simply because you aren’t from the “right” laboratory, you are forced to make a breakthrough just to be noticed at all. Half of the Nobels in the last 30 years went to people who were first dismissed by the mainstream.
– Patients with incurable diseases. The most desperate drivers of biohacking and DIY medicine. They literally have nothing to lose, so they are the first to test gene therapy from a garage.
– Victims of domestic violence in third-world countries. When you have no option to turn to the police or social services against an abusive father, the covert addition of drugs to food to enhance a violence inhibitor no longer seems like some kind of psychosis.

The conclusion? If you want to see the future—look at those who have no choice. They are the true engine of progress. And the “esteemed experts” will catch up in about 15 years—once the technology can be used to defend another dissertation and they can quietly live until retirement.

P.S. Hiroo Kinoshita, by the way, lived to see it. And let’s hope that he sometimes smiles cunningly while reading ASML’s annual reports.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

How politics deprives science and medicine of the opportunity to develop

Imagine this: scientists are actively researching a new approach to treating various mental disorders, including depression, anxiety, alcoholism, and even violence. They are achieving decent results, which indicate that this approach has significant potential. But then politicians, relying on personal interests and considerations rather than scientific data, strictly ban this approach as something extremely dangerous and unacceptable, often not even allowing scientific research in this direction behind closed laboratory doors. At the same time, for some reason, they are in no hurry to ban other equally risky things so strictly. Do you think this is a fiction or the plot of some novel? However, precisely such a story has already happened in real life.

In the middle of the 20th century, psychedelic substances such as LSD and psilocybin were actively researched for scientific and medical purposes. Scientists saw immense therapeutic potential in them, which is also confirmed by numerous modern studies conducted in recent years. However, there is a gap of almost half a century between those and these studies. Why is that? The answer is simple: psychedelic substances became associated with a number of things that politicians found objectionable.

First of all, in the pursuit of sensations, the media began to vilify them in every possible way, actively spreading reports about possible risks: psychoses, addiction, social degradation, and danger to youth. Of course, such risks cannot be completely denied, but they were extremely exaggerated. Claims of high addiction or mass social consequences had virtually no convincing evidence; the scientific basis cited in such claims was very limited.

Additionally, the spread of such claims coincided with the growth of countercultural movements, especially in the USA and Western Europe. Psychedelics became associated with hippies, anti-war protests, and broader cultural changes. As a result, drug policy began to be viewed not only as a matter of public health but also as a tool for social control. After all, one cannot expect a stationary bandit not to want to ban everything associated with movements opposing his policies. And psychedelics were caught in the crossfire.

The geopolitical context of the Cold War also played its part. The USSR and other Eastern Bloc countries actively used the topic of drugs in their propaganda as an argument against Western societies, depicting them as morally degrading. Naturally, in response, Western states decided to show that they were capable of controlling the drug problem and protecting public health.

Besides all the above, there was simply no one to protect psychedelics. Few would argue that tobacco, alcohol, as well as many sedatives and stimulants, pose no less risk to human health. However, their production had strong support from industry and governments. This helped them avoid the strictest restrictions. Psychedelics, on the contrary, had no powerful economic or political lobbyists; they were produced by the private sector, which gave politicians the opportunity to take harsher measures.

As a result, international policy regarding psychedelics was formed far from being based on scientific data about risks. Moreover, strict bans were imposed not only on their private distribution and use but also on their study. For example, in the USA, researching psychedelics was allowed only under the strict control of regulatory bodies, effectively closing this possibility to most laboratories, while the governments of France and the USSR at one point advocated for a total international ban even on limited scientific research of psychedelics. The policy of strict bans on psychedelics was shaped under the influence of cultural fears, political struggle, and institutional interests. This is precisely how science and medicine were deprived for a long time of the opportunity to develop a promising direction in the treatment of many disorders.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

When State Grants Disappear: How to Finance Science in the Age of Obscurantists

The state likes to present itself as the “sole savior” of science. Budgetary money seems like a reliable thing, but only until the next lover of “true knowledge” comes to power. And just like that—your field of science is immediately declared an “enemy of the people” and, in the best case, simply stripped of funding.

Remember how Donald Trump, with one stroke of a pen, cut funding for climatology and research in the field of renewable energy? Scientists had spent years accumulating knowledge, writing papers, and relying on promised grants, and then—bam—the funding turned into a pumpkin. Because of “I don’t believe it” and “I don’t like it.” Science isn’t Hollywood: there might not be a sequel if the money suddenly runs out. And scientists are left either to find a sponsor themselves or to sadly wind down their research.

And this is where alternative sources of funding come into play, many of which have already proven their viability time and again throughout history.

1) Since the Renaissance, people of art and science have lived on the support of wealthy patrons. Modern philanthropists, such as Bill Gates, Elon Musk, or even (who would have thought!) Pavel Durov, allocate millions of dollars to education, medical research, artificial intelligence, and even space exploration. Why? Simply because they like it. Or they want humanity to stop being so boring and monotonous. Who knows! In Russia, an example was Dmitry Zimin’s “Dynasty” foundation, which gave a second wind to many talented people until the state suddenly decided it was a “foreign agent.” But the idea itself didn’t die—funds like “Trajectory,” “Evolution,” and other initiatives appeared. In short, even here, science funded by private money is a reality.

2) Don’t laugh—sometimes asking the people for money is much more effective than asking stern uncles from the Ministry of Education. People are happy to support unusual projects, whether it’s the “Mayak” satellite launched by Russian students or gut microbiota research that raised over 350 thousand dollars on Kickstarter. Yes, the gut turned out to be far more charismatic than experts thought. It works simply: you make a vivid presentation, explain to people why it’s important (or at least fun), and the people vote with their wallets.

3) If your research smells even slightly of commercial perspective, it’s worth considering venture capital and business. There are plenty of examples: from Bell Labs and IBM, which gave the world transistors and lasers, to SpaceX, which made private astronautics a reality. Yes, this isn’t “pure science for science’s sake,” but it is business that can give a push to technologies that would otherwise remain as reports on a shelf.

4) Prizes and competitions. Once, entrepreneur Peter Diamandis announced a 10 million dollar prize for whoever first flew into space twice in two weeks on a private ship. In the end, the winner spent nearly 25 million on preparation, but that’s not the point. The competition spawned an entire industry of private space transport.

5) For the truly advanced: DAO and crypto-science. DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) allow people to unite and fund science via blockchain. An example is VitaDAO, which successfully raised millions of dollars for longevity research. Perhaps crypto-enthusiasts will vote for your idea with tokens?

6) Subscription to results: people and companies pay to be the first to get access to your scientific data and discoveries. The more interesting and important your research, the more subscribers. Almost like Netflix, but instead of series—your discoveries.

7) Imagine a prediction market where investors bet on scientific ideas and results. If your project looks convincing, you will receive funding from those who believe in your success and want to profit from an accurate prediction.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Science is a method, not a publication in a journal, or why it’s more important to try than to publish

In the comments on our posts, a discussion periodically flares up that deserves its own post. Frankly, we can even thank the skeptic “Sperry UNIVAC,” who constantly comments on our publications, for highlighting the problem so vividly. A classic conflict between two worldviews – institutional and free (or, as you might put it, hacker –) has emerged. The core of the complaint is simple and timeless: “Where’s your notarized printout? Where’s the publication in a peer-reviewed journal? If there’s no article, then there’s no science, and you’re just nobody.”

Let’s take a deep breath and break this down without aggression, from the perspective of common sense and freedom. There’s a dangerous misconception that science only happens when serious guys in white coats gather in an office, write complicated text, send it to other guys, and they put a “APPROVED” stamp on it. However, science is a method, a way of knowing the world through proposing and testing hypotheses. If I mix two chemicals in my garage and get a new molecule, that molecule will exist objectively. It doesn’t care whether I have a diploma, whether an ethics committee approved it, or if respected professor gave it a like. Reality doesn’t require bureaucratic validation.

Appealing to authority is not an argument! Our opponent writes: “I know biologists, I can ask them.” But the history of science is a graveyard of authoritative opinions that shattered against the enthusiasm of practitioners. The Wright brothers didn’t publish preprints before their flight. They fixed bicycles. And the “serious scientists” of that time wrote treatises about the impossibility of heavier-than-air flying machines. Steve Wozniak assembled the first Apple in a garage, not at IBM’s laboratory. If they had waited for review by “equal scholars,” we’d still be riding horses and doing calculations on abacuses.

We, libertarians, believe in spontaneous order and decentralization. We believe that a monopoly on truth is the most harmful of all monopolies. Modern academic science is in deep crisis. Firstly, it’s a reproducibility crisis – countless “peer-reviewed” articles cannot be replicated. Secondly, the influence of politics and grants – scientists often research what they are paid for, not what needs to be researched. Finally, gatekeeping – the system is structured to weed out “outsiders,” even if they have breakthrough ideas.

As for our project, the search for drugs to enhance the mechanism of violence inhibition isn’t being done for a line in a resume or an impact factor (citation index), but rather to solve a problem. Although we don’t have a “body” in the form of an article in Nature (although the experiments we’ve conducted on animals essentially repeat experiments from such articles), we have data, experiments, openness to discussion about substance, not form, and a proposal for anyone to verify what we say – all instructions are available on our website.

Of course, the skeptic is right in one thing: methodology matters. You can’t just drink a smoothie and say “I beat aging.” There needs to be control, a sample, honesty – things we strive for. But demanding that enthusiasts fully comply with the bureaucratic rituals of a large academy is like demanding that an indie game developer follow Ubisoft’s corporate standards.

We live in the age of Open Source. Linus Torvalds released Linux not into a scientific journal, but into a mailing list. And this changed the world. Biocachers today are computer hackers from the 80s. They may call them freaks and marginals. But it’s often in “garages” that what will become mainstream is born. We respect academic science, but we don’t make it an idol. If you value a “game” (an article, a review, a status) – go to the university library. If you value “riding” (searching, trying, failing and finding) – welcome to the biocachers. And better argue about data, dosages, receptors, rather than measuring yourself by degrees and connections.

P.S. Our critic also mentioned Perelman, however the irony is that Grigory Jakovlevich just threw the whole academic community into hell with his rules, prizes, and rituals, publishing a proof simply on the internet. So thanks for the example, he’s playing for us!

Voluntarist, Bitarch

What do Medieval times, Akademgorodok, and Silicon Valley have in common?

Many of you probably think that “science must be free.” But let’s dig a little deeper – why is this important, and why should libertarians especially worry about the growing attempts by the state and politicians to tell scientists what to think and what to teach?

Of course, first and foremost we need to understand that science isn’t just boring guys and gals in laboratories. Science is the engine of freedom and progress. If we allow scientists and teachers to freely think, experiment and even make mistakes, then society wins out in the end.

As an example: when the first universities appeared in the Middle Ages, kings and popes didn’t understand at all what these strange fellows were doing in groups, talking in Latin about some “ideas”. Students and professors of the University of Bologna were so audacious that they wrested the right to self-government from the authorities. As a result, science flourished – and universities became islands of freedom even in gloomy feudal Europe.

Let’s move to the 20th century. The USSR – not the freest place, is it? But during Khrushchev’s thaw, an academic town called Akademgorodok was founded in the Siberian taiga. Scientists were allowed to research things that were forbidden in Moscow. Genetics, banned by Stalin, suddenly came to life, and Akademgorodok became one of the few places where you could freely argue and read banned books. A paradox emerged: a communist state built a tiny libertarian paradise in the middle of the taiga. For a short time – but even brief freedom spawned entire scientific schools of world-level quality.

Today, Silicon Valley is synonymous with innovation. And its formula for success is simple: you take universities (Stanford, Berkeley and others), add lots of freedom and a little bit of capitalism, thoroughly mix it up, and let it steep. The result – a place that attracts millions of talents from all over the world. But now imagine: what if officials or politicians decided which technologies to develop and which to ban for ideological reasons? Most likely, an iPhone would be the size of a brick and called “Gosfon-1” (State Phone – 1).

Now about the sad stuff. Recently, attempts by conservative politicians to interfere with university work have been multiplying around the world. This has already been happening for a long time in the USA, and during Trump’s presidency the situation only worsened, as the federal government doesn’t hesitate to impose its wishes even on world-class universities like Harvard and Columbia, forcing uncomfortable leaders into resignation, or trying to ban foreign students from studying there, which will quite likely lead to a reduction in their budgets and loss of competitiveness. In Russia, the state is simply trying to keep scientists fully under control, considering them rather inconvenient people. As a result, we have censorship and dismissals for views. And those who could be useful to their Motherland are leaving abroad. After the attempted coup in Turkey, Erdogan carried out a “purge”: over 6000 university professors were fired for political disloyalty. Just imagine – an entire university town disappeared within a couple of months.

Why is it important for libertarians to protect science? Because science is a free market of ideas. It’s that very competition that allows us to identify the truth and reject delusions. The more the state interferes in science, the greater the risk of error, because centrally managing knowledge is just as absurd as managing the weather.

What can be done? To support scientists facing pressure and censorship. To demand that the state stop interfering with education. To protect universities’ right to autonomy and self-government. Because freedom of science is not a privilege for scientists – it’s a guarantee of our common progress and well-being!

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Around Progress in 80 Days: How Technology is Changing the World Using Only What Already Exists at Hand

I was recently idly watching the film based on Jules Verne’s novel, “Around the World in Eighty Days,” and realized a thought that perfectly fits our picture of the world. What do the gentleman Phileas Fogg and, say, Steve Jobs have in common? It seems like nothing. One is a fictional character from the Victorian era, the other is a real titan of Silicon Valley. But the point is that both pulled off a brilliant trick that’s available to each of us. And they didn’t need endless government grants or major scientific centers for this.

What was Fogg’s genius? Did he invent super-fast steamboats? Build a personal hyperloop? No! This guy didn’t invent anything himself. His bet became possible only because, by 1872, the world was already covered with ready infrastructure. Steamships were running, rails had been laid across America and India, telegraphs were buzzing. All of this was created by different people, different companies, at different times and for different purposes.

What did Fogg do? He simply looked at all these disparate pieces and first saw in them a single system. He didn’t just see “the ship to Suez” and “the train to Calcutta,” but a global transport network that could be “hacked”—that is, used not for its intended purpose (just getting from point A to point B), but for a crazy, ambitious task—flying around the planet on a bet. His breakthrough was in the new combination, not in a new invention. He was, essentially, a brilliant project manager who found synergy in what everyone else had lying under their feet.

And now let’s move to our time. Don’t we see the same thing happening with the greatest breakthroughs of the last 50 years? For example, the personal computer. It wasn’t an invention of something single. It was a brilliant combination of existing things: microprocessors, hard drives, monitors, keyboards, mice. The breakthrough was in the idea of putting it all together and placing it on a desk for an ordinary person. Or the internet—just a set of common rules (protocols), the language that already existing computers had agreed to communicate with each other. Genius was in creating this “language,” this universal interface. Don’t forget about smartphones. Steve Jobs, during the presentation of the first iPhone, said: “This isn’t one device. It’s three: a phone, a widescreen player, and an internet communicator.” Apple didn’t invent mobile communication, touchscreen displays, or GPS. They took the best that was already on the market, brilliantly combined it into one body, wrote intuitive software, and gave us the Swiss Army knife of the digital age.

The most important thing is that such breakthroughs don’t require an accelerator or a NASA budget. What’s needed is freedom of thought, observation, and the right to experiment. You, the reader of this post, can come up with tomorrow how to combine two known technologies and get something that will change the world.

What prevents this most of all? Of course, the good old bureaucracy. Imagine if Foggu had to get a visa for every border crossing, like residents of many countries with “weak” passports? He’d still be filling out an application somewhere in Mumbai. It’s state regulation, with its passion for “organizing,” “certifying,” and “checking,” that kills the very flexibility and speed needed for combinatorial breakthroughs. While officials are writing regulations on using drones to deliver pizza, free enthusiasts are already figuring out how to use those same drones and neural networks to monitor forest fires.

So, friends, the next great breakthrough is probably already here – just in the form of disparate parts. All the necessary technologies, services, and ideas are already on the table. What’s more, our project to find drugs to enhance violence inhibition was achieved with minimal means by analyzing existing neuroscience research and re-checking widely available animal drugs. And between you and me, ethology doesn’t end on the problem of violence, nor do our studies!

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Why do Western professors and scientists not understand that the world does not revolve around their cozy campus?

Imagine you’re reading some hefty academic journal from Harvard or Oxford, and suddenly there’s a brilliant council like: “to reduce crime, we need to increase the work of police and social organizations,” or “when confronted with violence, boldly turn to court.” It all looks logical. But what if you don’t live in Basel or Silicon Valley, but in some country in Latin America, Africa, or the post-Soviet space? Going to court to achieve justice would then be like going to a casino – only with even smaller chances of winning.

The thing is, most academics publishing in prestigious journals live in prosperous and well-off countries, and they’re often representatives of what’s called the “crème de la crème” – that is, people from the highest social layers of their countries. And they genuinely believe that the rest of the world is arranged similarly. Their worldview resembles an old anecdote: “Why don’t poor people eat pastries if there’s no bread?”

Western academics often don’t understand that in most of the world, police aren’t your friend and helper, courts are places where righteousness doesn’t win, but a thicker wallet or closer connections to power do, and social organizations, at best, exist for embezzlement. As a result, the articles from academics are about as useful as the advice “just don’t be sad” to someone with depression. Scientists constantly forget that many of their theories are based on the experience of people from “strange Western educated industrialized rich and democratic” countries – which is often abbreviated WEIRD. And indeed, this is an exception when considered on a global scale!

For example, Western studies often propose to strengthen regulation and control over the spread of information to defeat fake news. This idea may even seem good to people with mainstream political views in Scandinavia, because they trust their local government. But in some place like Nigeria, such a law would be used gladly to silence opposition and shut down media outlets that don’t please those in power.

Another excellent example is bioethics. Western experts in articles on the topic of moral amplification often write that this cannot be applied even to brutal murderers as long as they voluntarily agree to amplify their aggression inhibitor. And sometimes the very idea of studying the biology of behavior is rejected. They think it “violates human rights” and is “ethically unacceptable.” Of course, it’s easy to think like that if you live in a cozy apartment in Boston or Oslo – you just call the police and the aggressor will be taken away under armed guard. But in a huge number of countries it doesn’t work that way. There is no police or courts capable of actually protecting against domestic violence or bullying. Ultimately, it turns out that adding drugs to an aggressor to amplify their aggression inhibitor, for example, in food, is often the only accessible way to stop the violence and literally save their life or health.

Why is this important to us, libertarians? Because this Western “academic blindness” plays into the hands of the state and regulation. Scientists from prosperous countries are used to considering the state a reliable protector and helper, so in their research and recommendations they constantly demand even more regulation, control, and funding from it. But in countries with corrupt bureaucracy, these advice works exactly the opposite: more regulation – more repression.

If we really want to help people outside of the cozy Western world, we should admit: less state and more freedom is the only realistic path. Local communities and free initiative solve problems more effectively than officials who sit in distant offices and have never encountered real life. And for now, we should pay close attention to those who offer to “increase control,” especially if they do it from comfortable offices in prosperous countries, because in the real world everything is much more complicated.

Voluntary, Bitarch

Technologies are born in garages, not in barracks: the truth about the role of the MIC

Let’s talk about a common myth that everyone has surely heard: “without military development, we would be without the internet, smartphones, and GPS.” In other words, it is believed that war and the defense industry are the main drivers of technical progress. But is that actually the case?

Take the internet, for example. We are told it was supposedly invented by the Pentagon in case of a nuclear war, but the facts do not support this. In reality, ARPANET (the ancestor of the modern internet) was originally a civilian project handled by various American universities; it was simply funded by the military budget. The military provided the money, but all the work was done by university scientists and programmers. And the famous HTTP protocol, which we are using right now to read this post, was actually devised in Europe by physicists at CERN—purely for the convenience of exchanging scientific articles. The army had absolutely nothing to do with it!

What about GPS? Yes, in this case, the military really did launch satellites so that missiles would land more accurately. But why did GPS become available to everyone? Because civilians turned a military toy into a “people’s” technology. President Reagan opened GPS to everyone after the tragedy with a Korean airliner to improve flight safety, and ultimately, civilian developers transformed the navigation system from a military secret into a popular app for finding the nearest pizzeria.

And do you know who created the first microprocessor? No, not generals or intelligence agencies—it was developed by Intel for a calculator. Meanwhile, the army was conducting its own classified developments that the world wouldn’t have seen for at least another 30 years if not for civilian engineers. While the military was worrying about how not to reveal secrets, the market was already fully utilizing commercial processors.

Space? You would think that here, the military is definitely ahead of the rest of the world. Yes, rockets were first created as weapons, but real space achievements happened mainly thanks to NASA’s civilian programs, and today, private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin. While the army argues over the best way to shoot from space, Elon Musk has already launched a rocket that returns on its own.

Why aren’t the military always the coolest innovators? Because for the military, the main priority is reliability. They prefer proven technologies and avoid risks. Try suggesting experimental equipment on a battlefield to a general—he will look at you as if you are crazy. Entrepreneurs and scientists, however, are not afraid of risks; that is why most real breakthroughs happen in Silicon Valley garages, laboratories, and universities, rather than in the classified basements of intelligence agencies.

The history of the USSR is a vivid example of how relying exclusively on the defense industry leads to technical backwardness in everyday life. Remember the joke: a Soviet microwave is so reliable that you can hide in it during a nuclear strike—because it is a secret defense device weighing half a ton. A civilian economy handles innovation better because competition and freedom create powerful incentives for breakthroughs. Military technologies usually only catch up to what has already been created by civilians.

By the way, if you think the army funds fundamental science, you are mistaken again. The military needs guaranteed solutions here and now, not research that will yield a result in 30 years, which may not even be suitable for combat. Fundamental research is conducted by universities and private laboratories. They are the ones giving the world quantum computers, new medicines, and the materials of the future. The army simply takes ready-made technologies off the shelf.

Another example: IBM, Apple, and Google register thousands of patents every year, while defense departments register only a handful. Commercial companies compete in innovation, whereas military competition is often limited to budget tenders, where the main thing is not quality, but friendship with the right people in ministries. Therefore, when someone tells you that progress is impossible without war, remind them: the true driving force of humanity is peaceful curiosity, creative freedom, and normal market competition, not missiles and tanks.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

On the Non-essentiality of Libertarian Metaphysics

A post titled “On the Necessity of Libertarian Metaphysics” was recently published on the “Classical Liberal” channel, which caught my attention. The author accuses modern libertarians of drifting away from the clean and clear concept of God-given natural rights and instead engaging in some kind of atheistic nominalist nonsense. He argues that because their ideology stands on a foundation as shaky as nominalism (that is, the denial of the real existence of ideas and the assertion instead that the world consists of unique objects, and any generalizations are merely terms), libertarians are unable to prove anything to anyone.

Of course, the idea of God-given natural rights is completely shattered by a simple objection: no, Odin gave me natural rights because I honor him, and he also gave me the right to rob you and take you into slavery; he gave you no rights because you don’t even know how to hold a sword.

Nominalism lies at the very heart of the scientific method. By observing countless unique objects and phenomena (more precisely, simply receiving signals from the sense organs), a person notices patterns, proposes a hypothesis about the nature of the observed regularity, tests this hypothesis, and integrates it into a theory. Theories exist within a scientific paradigm, but the process of observing the world does not cease, which means new hypotheses, theories, and paradigms will emerge that describe and explain what is observed more accurately.

Libertarianism as an ideology has existed for as long as there has been the power of man over man and, accordingly, the desire to avoid power over oneself. The concepts used to describe this ideology differ across different times and societies. One can only conditionally trace that, for instance, the concept of self-ownership appeared in the 18th century, and the beloved NAP appeared in the 20th; perhaps in another two centuries, some other fashionable principle will be on the lips of the libertarians of that era.

Building a system of logically correct conclusions from non-contradictory postulates is not such a difficult task. Rebuilding the system in accordance with the redefinition of one of the concepts used is also not a problem. The problem is how to make this system generally accepted, or at least dominant, or at least authoritative, or at least known. An old theory has many advantages over a new one: it also explains the world, it also predicts facts, and additionally, it already belongs to the dominant paradigm. The new one still has to prove that its descriptive and predictive power is higher and that it interfaces better with other theories. How does it do this? Usually quite simply: it just survives until the carriers of the old paradigm physically die out (hello, Odin).

Therefore, libertarians do not need to prove anything to their opponents. Their task is to preserve and gradually expand the core of supporters, accumulate experience in applying their theories, and gather useful technologies that work within libertarianism but malfunction within other ideologies… And, of course, not to physically die out before their opponents.

As for how the concept of “human” will be defined by the time libertarianism becomes dominant, that is purely a matter of convenience of application. For some, “a featherless biped” will suffice, for others “a representative of the species Homo sapiens,” and for some, the concept of “human” may already seem redundantly narrow, so they will operate with some “legal agent.” And so be it.

The Battle of Scientific Paradigms