A number of people have been linking and commenting on the recent Neal Stephenson e-interview in Reason. As usual, the interviewer tries to make political points but Stephenson dodges them, declines to define or align himself, and sticks to his literary knitting about the human condition. Jonathan Wilde complains:

... it’s clear to me that he undoubtedly has radical libertarian views. Yet, in every interview I have ever seen him give, he either avoids any questions on his political views or goes out his way to distance himself from the word “libertarian".

Good. As Stephenson says:

Once they’ve settled on a totalizing political theory, they see everything through that lens and are hostile to other notions.

It isn't useful to self define or align if your objective is comprehension. Arguably, it isn't even useful if your objective is to influence social evolution or participate in society intellectually. If your ambition is merely to gain and hold political power then you choose turf, gather allies, and take a stand... but this is a power disorder of the sort Stephenson identifies as a social malady.

Wilde concludes:

Shunning the in-your-face approach of others, he writes about libertarian themes - technological empowerment, data havens, free banking, polycentric law, anonymous digital cash, holocaust prevention, Enlightenment ideals, cryptography, and distributed power - in novels that appeal to the mainstream without being overtly preachy.

I think this misses an important point. These are not "libertarian themes" so much as ideas that libertarians, among others, find interesting and attractive. Entertaining any or all of them doesn't align you with libertarians or any other power disorder. There is no doctrine to preach, there are interesting ideas that may illuminate aspects of reality, make of them what you will.

As Stephenson says, echoing many others, once you've settled on a political theory, define yourself in restricted terms and claim allegiance to a body of thought that you only grasp in part, you lose the ability to give useful consideration to other notions and tend to accept things that are within the pale without sufficient consideration. Not good experimental methodology. Likely to lead to several sorts of error and mung up the discovery machine. Independence of mind is more work but that work can be rewarding.