Source: Bet On It
by Bryan Caplan
“Alas, thoughtful apostasy is vanishingly rare. Not only do most humans dogmatically stick to whatever Big Picture views they embraced when they were 15-25 years old. A large majority of humans who do apostatize do so negligently. Instead of pinpointing subtle inconsistencies in their initial view, they emote. If they even bother to explain their prior intellectual errors, they attack a straw man version of what they used to think, using arguments that they previously would have dismissed as unfair and obtuse. … In recent years, I’ve had the same experience with libertarians becoming culturally conservative. While immigration is almost always the wedge issue, once libertarians turn against immigration, they commonly move on to a bunch of other culturally conservative views. And once again, the more I listen to them, the more I wonder why they changed their minds.” (08/24/26)
https://www.betonit.ai/p/libertarianism-against-cultural-conservatism