As a wannabe engineer, I take offence with that.

What is it with engineers and libertarianism?

As an engineer, the only engineers I've met who are libertarians are terrible engineers.

exactly. you cant be stupid enough to be libertarian but smart enough to be a good engineer.



might work with physicists, though. as long as humans are perfect spheres and the economy is run in a total vacuum.

"...listening to an engineer try to convince everyone why Libertarianism is a great idea because everything runs like a machine."

Which libertarian told you THAT? I'd think that, if everything ran like a machine, then the optimal political strategy would be balls-out socialism. The problem is, society does *not* run like a machine - there are far too many variables for any one group of enlightened social-engineers to personally oversee the whole system! Society runs more like a complex biological system (possibly because it IS a complex biological system), and as such, the optimal political strategies tend to be those that favor openness, decentralization, and free competition - in other words, liberalism. Any libertarian engineer who thinks freedom is a great design choice BECAUSE society behaves like a machine, has her thinking back-to-front.

Now, I have met a lot of techie types who are libertarians, scientists and computer programmers in particular, _but I think that's got less to do with their mechanistic world-view, and more to do with their commitment to open-source methodology_. Professional values like transparency, decentralization, peer-review, and the constant questioning of received truths, tend to push geeky science-types towards anti-authoritarian ideologies, just as educators and bureaucrats, who are used to strict hierarchies and clearly delineated chains of epistemological authority, often favor paternalistic ideologies.

Anyway, I'd really like to start making my own video responses to Lindybeige. Do any of you know if he's willing to interact with his fanbase?

Sometimes, probably. The French tend to, and I've seen that in the US, too. Just a little room for the toilet. It's actually really nice if you're sharing a bathroom.

Often, yes. Bathrooms with just toilets and sinks are called WCs (or "half baths" here in the US). Toiletless showerrooms can also be found, but I believe they're less common, and usually only appear in older homes (example: my grandparents' home had one bathroom with a showerless tub and a toilet, one WC, and one toiletless showerroom which doubled as a laundry drying room)

Nobody says half baths.

I've never heard half-bath either.

Anyway, I'm talking about just a toilet in a room, not even a sink.