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  1. monart

    "Project Starship"

    ["Project Starship" is a very young and serious man's description of a romantic and philosophic vision of the future – and of the present, too. It's dedicated to the heroic genius of Ayn Rand, upon whose work this conception of starship is largely based. It's an answer to my previous post here, "What Can One Do?" ] ---------- Project Starship 3rd Edition Monart Pon © Copyright 1976, 2001, 2023 Monart Pon The Starship (General) In the boundless universe of stars, in a small region called the Milky Way Galaxy, is one star called the Sun. Spinning around this Sun, on a planet called Earth, is an organism called Man. This man is tapping the energy of the Sun and transforming the material of Earth to build his starship, his starship to seek, hold, and give the beauty that brings him his happiness. The starship that man creates is an expression of his mastery over his own destiny, a mastery that breaks the circle of nature with a straight line, a line that reaches from this earth to touch the farthest stars. The structure of the starship is the product of man’s shining his cool, strong light of reason upon the wilderness of reality to tame it into the home that supports his life. Growing from this work of discovering and unifying truth, goodness, and beauty, the starship is a selective re-arrangement of various aspects of reality into those forms that further his well-being. Abstractly, starship is a complex concept, integrating the knowledge that leads to the success of human life. Concretely, the starship is an artificial planet, an earth re-created into a hierarchical unity of arts and machines, performing the functions of sustaining and enriching man’s spiritual/material health. Symbolically, the starship is a badge that signifies man’s ultimate purpose, his central activity, his highest achievement. The starship for beautifying man can inspire him on his quest for new arts, new machines, new adventure: on a voyage that blasts off from this port of Earth and shoots outwards to other ports of other worlds--outwards to the countless stars of the countless galaxies of the unbounded universe. The Project (Introduction) Project Starship is an adventure to the stars, a romance for the ideal of starship--a consecration to the ultimate purpose of creating a world comprised of all those things from which comes the experience called happiness. Project Starship grows from the acceptance and expression of one’s responsibility as a special kind of being, whose honor is one’s volition and whose glory is one’s starship. Project Starship begins with understanding these facts: a. Starship is the integrated structure of knowledge and processes, of arts and machines, of ideas, values, and inventions that, together, can nurture the continual growth of life and happiness. b. The necessity of starship is based on the volitional nature of human life, the rational process of one’s consciousness, and the unlimited capability of one’s actions. c. The starship’s vital core is one’s conceptual consciousness, one’s mind, one’s reason, the basic faculty that discovers and invents the ship’s knowledge and processes. d. The starship’s most basic and crucial knowledge is philosophy, the knowledge of fundamental principles, the knowledge that integrates and guides all other knowledge, the knowledge that yields an attitude of romanticism for the wisdom as summarized in this way: Man is a rational animal, whose existence in objective reality is sustained by the volitional operation of his conceptual consciousness called reason towards the cognition, evaluation, and invention of his starship to happiness. I. The Basis Man is a living, conscious, volitional being. Starship is an expression of this volitional nature. Man, like all living things, is alive conditionally upon his generation of a series of successful internal-external actions to fulfill the needs for his life’s existence. Like other conscious living things, man uses his faculty of consciousness, his power of being aware of reality, to understand the meaning of the information gathered by his senses. This consciousness is a power to determine the good, or life-enhancing, and evil, or life-destroying, aspects of reality. It is a power to guide the course of actions towards the production of the good, and a power to experience, through emotion, the resulting state of life called happiness. Unlike other conscious things, however, man has volition. He has direct control over the operation of his process of awareness, and, therefore, over his life. He can choose to be conscious and live, or to be unconscious and die. He can choose to be sharply or vaguely conscious: he can raise his level of awareness, sharpen its focus, enlarge its field, increase its cognitive efficacy, or he can blur, shrink, blank out and sabotage its processes. Volition begins with the choice to drive the mind to the highest achievement of successful life, or to leave it to stagnate to a rotting death. Born ignorant and naked, man is innately ignorant of what is good or harmful to life, and is inherently naked of the tools to achieve the good and fight the evil. He has no instincts, no fur, fangs, or claws. To acquire knowledge and tools, man has to discover them by means of his mind. To fulfill the needs for his life’s health, he has to earn them by directing his mind towards the understanding of reality, the detection of possible good, and the invention of those extensions and augmentations to himself that can achieve the good. To attain the successful state of life called happiness, man must accept and express his responsibility as a volitional being: he must deserve his honor as the driver of his own mind, the master of his own life, the maker of his own destiny. This honor and responsibility of volition grants man the freedom of a potentially unlimited capacity of awareness, a potential to know the simplest, or most complex, part of reality, a potential whose limit is essentially determined by man’s own choice and desire. At his command, man can enhance, elevate, focus, his level of awareness, from the automatic but limited, perceptual state of non-volitional beings, towards the virtually unlimited, conceptual field that only he can achieve. The conceptual mode of consciousness brings into his grasp a vivid understanding of the nature of himself and his world--an understanding that can transcend the immediate moment and place around him, to ultimately span an eternity of time and an infinity of space. Given this kind of volitional awareness, an awareness unlimited in possibility of clarity, depth and scope, then the kind of actions possible to man is also unlimited. The sophistication of a conceptual consciousness can guide the most complex series of actions, the kind that can significantly alter the environment to suit human life, and that can enrich man’s health and extend his life-span. Man’s possession of a conceptual, volitional consciousness distinguishes his life as, symbolically, a straight line, an endless line transcending the immediate bounds of this Earth, of this Sun, of this Galaxy, to ultimately touch all parts of the vast realm of stars. To complement this volitional life, to clothe his nakedness and replace his ignorance, to glorify his honor as a master, to seek his happiness--man creates the starship. Starship could be the highest expression and achievement of human rational being. It is a ship of knowledge and processes: an integrated mobile environment that provides man with nourishment for growth, shelter against decay, and locomotion to explore his boundless realm. It is a starship because its primary source of energy and inspiration emanates from the stars. It is a starship because it is the kind of structure that can house and fly, comfort and move, man’s life on an astro-adventure. It is a starship because it can inspire man to be starbound, to seek new knowledge, new powers, new beauty--to seek his happiness and glory by sailing the endless sea of stars. II. The Constitution Starship is an integrated structure of the knowledge and processes, the arts and machines, the truths, goods, and beauties that, together, can enhance the continual growth of man’s life. The starship’s vital core is man’s consciousness called reason. Reason is the creator, commander, coordinator, of the starship’s every part. Reason builds, organizes, integrates and maintains the ship’s entire structure by forming ideas, values, and inventions. It conducts the long and complex process that begins with raw materials and energies of the universe and ends with pro-man products. Reason is the basic generator of man’s happiness and the starship’s potent dynamo. Reason performs the three general stages of starship-building: cognition, evaluation and re-creation. Cognition is the process of identifying the facts of reality, of discovering the properties and relationships of entities, of determining what is available for transformation. Evaluation is the process of detecting values and goals, the process of judging the possible good. Re-creation is the process of re-shaping, re-arranging, converting the raw elements of reality into those forms that can further life. The knowledge thus acquired, the ideas, values, and inventions, is integrated into the structure of the starship, constituting part of what may be called the starship’s intellect and spirit. Reason’s supreme power of creativity is made possible by its conceptual manner of perceiving and understanding reality. The rational, conceptual process is one of perceiving, identifying, and integrating the data received by the senses, condensing the multitude of observations into simplified groups called concepts. A concept is a mental unit concretized by a word and individualized by a definition. It is a condensed unit of knowledge formed by the differentiation and integration of essential attributes and relationships among entities. A concept reduces a multitude of facts about reality into easily grasped essentials, thereby freeing the mind from routine in order to study the new. Each concept thus formed is further combined with others to form larger concepts, or is divided into smaller ones, continuing this process of differentiating and integration indefinitely, bringing in ever-more organized knowledge, forever expanding the scope of man’s awareness. The starship’s knowledge may be divided into science and technology. Science is the faculty of facts, the faculty that studies what is. Technology is the faculty of fancy, the faculty that, based on the sciences, studies what could be. Linking the two is ethics, the faculty of morals, the department of philosophy that studies what should be. Directing science and technology is philosophy, the faculty of axioms and fundamental principles--the faculty that studies the basic nature of, and relationship between, man, reality, and the starship. Philosophy is the starship’s most crucial knowledge, the knowledge that unifies all the complexities of science and technology, the knowledge that gives a comprehensive framework of principles guiding and inspiring the conduct of all other knowledge. Philosophy identifies the underlying nature of existence, of that which exists, of what is real, describing reality’s meta-laws, defining the principles of reason’s conceptual process, and prescribing the basic principles of life-seeking actions. Two axiomatic concepts of existence that philosophy studies are “identity” and “causality”. Identity is the concept that an existent, any existent, if it exists, then it exists with an identity--with a set of characteristics that distinguishes it from all other existents, making that existent a thing, not a nothing and not just anything, but a something. Identity thus distinguishes the real from the unreal, the natural from the supernatural. Causality is the concept that an action or process is generated by specific entities, generated in a specific manner, resulting in a specific effect, according to the identity of the entity generating the action. Every action, every effect, presupposes an entity that generated or caused that effect. All of reality’s processes, including man’s, are accountable by certain properties or principles governing those processes. Causality thus distinguishes the kind of actions that an entity can generate from those it cannot, those actions that are explainable from those that are miraculous. These axiomatic concepts are the basis, integrator and compass of all other concepts of the starship, guiding the ship’s science and technology to study the specific identities of entities and their actions. Applied to man’s actions, “identity” and “causality” yield the ethical derivatives of “honesty” and “justice”. Honesty is the principle of being natural, of being true to reality, of perceiving reality as it is. It is the principle that since reality is objective and since man is a rational being, then to be true to nature, to be human, is to be conscious and conceptual. This means to pay attention, to understand reality with the clearest and fullest focus of the mind, with the widest context of knowledge, according to the law of identity. Honesty thus distinguishes the kind of thinking that man must perform to understand the nature and meaning of his life. Justice is the principle of being fair, of being true to man, of treating men as they are. It is the principle of men acting to seek, grant, and accept only the earned and deserved from each other. It is the principle that since every effect presupposes its causal agent and since one’s desired effects are not achieved without cause, then every part of the starship must be earned, earned by exerting effort in a specific manner according to the law of causality. Justice thus distinguishes the kind of actions that man must perform to achieve the happiness of his life. Honesty and justice form the basis of ethics, the set of principles (independence, integrity, courage, etc.) that guide the actions of the starship’s creation, the set of values that helps to unite the major faculties of science and technology, linking the facts of raw nature with the fancies of man’s desire. Science is the faculty that scrutinizes the kinds of entities and processes that exist. Science systematically analyzes the properties of existents, determines their relationships, defines the methods of measurements, and categorizes the results into ideas. Technology is the faculty that imagines the possible beauty that could come from the ideas of science and invents the techniques of re-creation to concretize the imagined ideals--creating the forms of artistry that enhance man’s spiritual life, and the forms of machinery that enhance man’s physical life. Thus, the starship is generally a structure constituted by the knowledge of science and technology, and by the products of arts and machines, integrated by philosophy for the purpose of man’s happiness. III. The Crew The crew of a starship is a society of individuals. Each member of the starship’s crew is guided by the principles of honesty and justice. He is a specialist in some industry of the starship for a certain period of time, trading his particular service for that of other members. Some may be scientists trading with technologists or philosophers with artists. Whatever the relationship, each concentrates his energy on some specific profession, and combines his effort with others in trades that yield industries too difficult for one man. Some benefits of this co-operation are the diversity of services and products, an amplification in the power of an individual to seek his happiness, and a more efficient, faster creation of the starship. The benefits of such a social starship are protected by an agency devoted towards the defense of a man’s right to his own life. This political instrument functions as a police and court to secure the individual from possible interference and destruction caused by the physical force of other men. It governs the retaliatory use of force to defend against initiated force, and may be called upon to resolve peaceful disputes. Today’s government at times protects the freedom of men to pursue their happiness, and yet, other times, commits (for the sake of cowards and parasites) the very crimes against which it is commissioned to fight. This legalized violation of rights causes injury, hardships, and unnecessary obstacles, and must be opposed morally and politically, in order to free man’s achievement of his starship to happiness. The Project (Conclusion) . Project Starship is a life-long purpose, an industry of philosophy, science, and technology, a career of understanding man, reality, and the starship--a study and practice of creating the starship’s basis, constitution, and crew. The first symbolic step in the starship project, for those who choose it, is the naming of one’s starship (e.g., Starship Pegasus, Starship Phoenix, Starship Prometheus). The name serves to symbolize and unify the specific stages of one’s project and serves as the banner of one’s quest, the emblem of one’s home. In the name of one’s starship, an introductory study of philosophy is undertaken. The study of philosophy begins with gathering the knowledge with which to understand such subjects as: the nature of objective reality, the nature of man’s mind and emotion, the principles of moral action, the preconditions of a rightful society, and the nature of the romantic spirit. This knowledge will aid in the identification of what the starship is, why man needs it, and how he can build it. The place to initiate the study of philosophy is Objectivism, the philosophy originated by Ayn Rand. Objectivist philosophy provides the principles for the starship project described in this article. Specifically, the starting point is Ayn Rand's essay, “Apollo 11", in which she wrote: "Nothing on earth or beyond it is closed to the power of reason. Yes, reason can solve human problems--but nothing else on earth or beyond it, can…. Let us hope that some men will learn it. But it will not be learned by most of today’s intellectuals, since the core and motor of all their incredible constructs is the attempt to establish human tyranny as an escape from what they call “the tyranny” of reason and reality….. If the lesson is learned in time, the flight of Apollo 11 will be the first achievement of a great new age; if not, it will be a glorious last--not forever, but for a long, long time to come." ("Apollo 11", The Objectivist, vol. 8, no.9, September, 1969; also in the anthology, Voice of Reason, 1989; also online ) ----------
    3 points
  2. Boydstun

    "Project Starship"

    Sight of Superlative Achievement Stephen Boydstun (2007) My favorite character in Atlas Shrugged is John Galt. One of the crucial traits of this character is his extraordinary technical ability. I can adore a fictional character, and part of the reason I adore this one is his possession of that trait. Adoration is one thing, admiration is another. Galt’s technical genius is admirable only in the derivative sense that I would admire that trait in a real person. I cannot admire a fictional character. I can admire the character’s creator as creator, but not the character. Fortunately, there are in our time many individuals whose mathematical and scientific accomplishments are at the high level of the fictional character John Galt. They are not well known to the general public. I want to tell you about one such man. Eli Yablonovitch invented the concept of a photonic band gap. He arrived at this concept in 1987 while doing research on making telecommunication lasers more efficient. Another physicist Sajeev John arrived at the concept independently that same year. John came to the concept in the course of pure research attempting to create light localization. Four years later, Yablonovitch was the first to create a successful photonic band-gap crystal. He used a variant of the crystal structure of diamond, a variant now called yablonovite. The structure was formed by drilling three intersecting arrays of holes, 400 nanometers in diameter, into a block of ceramic material. This structure, at this scale, was able to eliminate the propagation of electromagnetic radiation in the microwave range. Photonic band-gap crystals are yielding a new generation of optical fibers capable of carrying much more information, and they are contributing to the realization of nanoscopic lasers and photonic integrated circuits. The name photonic crystal sounds like a crystal made of light. That is incorrect. A photonic crystal is an artificial crystal (or quasicrystal) made usually of solids such as dielectrics or semiconductors. The electrical properties of a semiconductor are intermediate between a dielectric (an insulator) and a conductor. In a dielectric material, the valence electrons of the atoms are tightly bound to them. They are confined to energy levels within the band of levels called the valence band. Above that band of levels is a broad band of energies inaccessible to the electrons under the laws of quantum mechanics. That forbidden band is called the band gap. Above the band gap is a band in which electrons could move freely in the material if only enough energy were applied to them to raise them to that band of energy levels. This band is called the conduction band. In a semiconductor, the valence electrons are less tightly bound to atoms than they are in a dielectric. The band gap is smaller. A smaller boost of energy is needed to induce the flow of electrons, a current. The degree of electrical conductivity of a semiconductor can be precisely controlled by doping one semiconductor chemical element with small amounts of another. When an electron is promoted across the band gap, an effective positive charge called a hole is created in the valence levels below the gap. The holes, like the electrons, can be entrained into currents. By controlling the supply of electrons and holes above and below the band gap, carefully designed semiconductors are able to perform electronic switching, modulating, and logic functions. They can also be contrived to serve as media for photo detectors, solid-state lasers, light-emitting diodes, thermistors, and solar cells. The properties of an electronic band gap depend on the type of atoms and their crystal structure in the solid semiconductor. To comprehend and manipulate the electronic properties of matter, electrons and their alterations must be treated not only in their character as particles, but in their character as quantum-mechanical waves. The interatomic spacing of the atoms in matter is right for wave-interference effects among electrons. This circumstance yields the electronic band gaps in semiconductors as well as the conductive ability of conductors. A photonic band gap is a range of energies of electromagnetic waves for which their propagation through the crystal is forbidden in every direction. The interatomic spacing in semiconductors are on the order of a few tenths of a nanometer, and that is too small for effecting photonic band gaps in the visible, infrared, microwave, or radio ranges of the spectrum. Creation of photonic band gaps for these very useful wavelengths requires spatial organizations in matter at scales on the order of a few hundred nanometers and above. In the 70’s and 80’s, researchers had been forming, in semiconductors, structures called superlattices. These were periodic variations in semiconductor composition in which repetitions were at scales a few times larger than the repetitions in the atomic lattice. The variations could consist of alternating layers of two types of semiconductors or in cyclic variations in the amount of selected impurities in a single type of semiconductor. These artificial lattices allowed designers, guided by the quantum theory of solids, to create new types of electronic band gaps and new opticoelectronic properties in semiconductors. Photonic crystals are superlattices in which the repeating variation is a variation in the refractive index of the medium. It is by refractions and internal partial reflections that photonic band gaps are created. The array of holes that Yablonovitch and his associates drilled for the first photonic crystal formed a superlattice of air in the surrounding dielectric solid. Additional workable forms of photonic-crystal superlattice have been demonstrated since that first one. Costas Soukoulis and colleagues created a crystal of crisscrossed rods, and it has yielded photonic band gaps in the infrared part of the spectrum. Photonic crystals have been created mostly in dielectric or semiconductor media, but Shawn Yu Lin and associates have created them in tungsten. These may prove useful in telecommunications and in the conversion of infrared radiation into electricity. In 2001 Eli Yablonovitch co-founded the company Luxtera, which is now a leading commercial developer of silicon photonic products. Photonic crystals, manipulators of light, they are alive “because they are the physical shape of the action of a living power—of the mind that had been able to grasp the whole of this complexity, to set its purpose, to give it form.” –AR 1957 (re diesel-electric) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Scientific American 1983 (Nov) “Solid-State Superlattices” –G.H. Dohler 1984 (Aug) “Quasicrystals” –D.R. Nelson 1986 (Oct) “Photonic Materials” –J.M. Rowell 1991 (Nov) “Microlasers” –J.L. Jewell, J.P. Harbison, and A. Scherer 1998 (Mar) “Nanolasers” –P.L. Gourley 2001 (Dec) “Photonic Crystals: Semiconductors of Light” –E. Yablonovitch 2007 (Feb) “Making Silicon Lase” –B. Jalali Science News 1991 (Nov 2) “Drilling Holes to Keep Photons in the Dark” –I. Peterson 1993 (Sep 25) “A Novel Architecture for Excluding Photons” –I. Peterson 1996 (Nov 16) “Light Gets the Bends in a Photonic Crystal” –C. Wu 1998 (Oct 24) “Crystal Bends Light Hard, Saves Space” –P. Weiss 2003 (Oct 4) “Hot Crystal” –P. Weiss 2005 (Nov 5) “Light Pedaling” –P. Weiss Nature Photonics 2007 (1:91–92) “Bandgap Engineering: Quasicrystals Enter Third Dimension” –C.T. Chan Fundamental Papers – Physical Review Letters 1987 (May 18) “Inhibited Spontaneous Emission in Solid-State Physics and Electronics” –E. Yablonovitch 1987 (Jun 8 ) “Strong Localization of Photons in Certain Disordered Dielectric Superlattices” –S. John 1989 (Oct 30) “Photonic Band Structure: The Face-Centered-Cubic Case” –E. Yablonovitch and T.M. Gmitter 1990 (Nov 19) “Full Vector Wave Calculation of Photonic Band Structures in Face-Centered-Cubic Dielectric Media” –K.M. Leung and Y.F. Liu 1990 (Nov 19) “Electromagnetic Wave Propagation in Periodic Structures: Bloch Wave Solution of Maxwell’s Equations” –Z. Zhang and S. Satpathy 1990 (Dec 17) “Existence of a Photonic Gap in Periodic Dielectric Structures” –K.M. Ho, C.T. Chan, and C.M. Soukoulis 1991 (Oct 21) “Photonic Band Structure: The Face-Centered-Cubic Case Employing Non-Spherical Atoms” –E. Yablonovitch, T.J. Gmitter, and K.M. Leung
    3 points
  3. OO is supposed to serve a particular purpose, which is not the same as the purpose of Twit-Face or alt.philosophy.objectivism and its spawn HPO, if you remember them. When content deviates from that purpose, it is right for management to take corrective action. My judgment is that adherence to that purpose here is not strict, and it has gotten much looser since I first joined about 20 years ago. Every person who contributes here should be able to articulate their justification for contributing, to say what value you receive in exchange for your posts. If you can’t do that, you should re-evaluate your self-sacrifice. In fact, very many former contributors have done so (by which I mean, the vast majority). There are loose guidelines which state what the purpose of OO is and what contributors should and should not do. Intellectual honesty is one of those requirements, the problem is that intellectual dishonesty comes in many flavors, one being evasion and the other being unreasoned reliance on authoritative statements. The covid thread reeks of evasion and was worthy of closing on those grounds. I concluded that there was no rational value to be had in the thread, and that put paid to my participation there. I might, in another incarnation, contemplate whether just leaving the thread open does any harm. There have been many fora for Objectivism, most of which have fallen into complete inactivity. When you peruse the content of other Objectivist fora, ask yourself if you would want to be associated with that group and if not, why not? My judgment is, “No: crappy content” (NB this explicitly does not refer to HBL). The potential harm of crappy content to Objectivism should be obvious, so now we know the basis for closing crappy threads, what remains is a specific evaluation of one or more threads, to decide if they are overall above that crappiness threshold (I will not engage in a specific autopsy here). I would like to avoid reaching the “crappy content” conclusion w.r.t. OO.
    3 points
  4. The important questions are, where do you get your abstractions from, and how do you know they are correct? The Christian answer is that you get them from God (sometimes indirectly) and that you know they are correct by means of faith. The Objectivist answer is that you get them by reasoning from reality, and that you have to check them against reality. These are very different. It is one thing to reach, for example, egoism, from facts and reasoning, and it's another to reach it from God and faith. If a Christian's faith causes him to happen to wander into an Objectivist idea, what could make it "stick?" Bible verses? He could wander out of those ideas again just as easily. It's just a question of what seems to be coming from God at any given time. So it becomes completely ungrounded (or grounded, ultimately, only in their faith, only in their feelings). Some Christians can smuggle in bits of reason and reality (they have to, to survive), but enough of that causes God to wither away. The Objectivist perspective would seem to say, "rightfully so!" but that scares many Christians. -- There is also a skeptical pair of answers, that you make up abstractions arbitrarily, and there's no way of ever knowing if they're correct. Christians and skeptics are usually good at finding the holes in each other's theories, but Christians usually evade the holes in their own theories. Skeptics will claim that all theories have holes, including their own, so they claim the holes as proof that their theory is correct. Objectivism is the first philosophy that reality can't poke any holes in, although Aristotle's main ideas came close to that and helped make Objectivism possible. Skeptics say such a philosophy is impossible; Christians may say it's a sin, because it leaves out God, but then they want God to be necessary, so then they say Objectivism is impossible, too. Instead of asking "what could make an Objectivist idea stick in a Christian's mind," you could ask the flip-side, "what could make a Christian drop an Objectivist idea?" Reality can't poke holes in Objectivist ideas even if you hold the Objectivist ideas for the wrong reasons. But if you don't know why an idea is correct, there are still consequences, such as when the idea ends up contradicting another idea. How do you resolve the conflict if you rely on faith instead of facts? Facts may show that one idea is true and the other false, but if you hold ideas based on faith, ideas that might be clearly different in light of the facts end up being on an "equal footing" with each other. With no reference to reality, you could pick either. Usually people decide based on still other ideas, which themselves may not be correct. For example, some theologians say that, if there's a conflict between reality and God, side with God. What would a Christian do with his Objectivist ideas, then?
    2 points
  5. Do Christians really think that self-interest is immoral? That literally makes no sense whatsoever. They couldn't even live beyond a week thinking something so blatantly irrational/immoral. If they actually "believed" such a irrational thing they would all hold their breath, not eat, not drink water, do absolutely not and just die.
    2 points
  6. Correct, Monart. This got to be a longer road than I had in mind at the beginning, but that is giving it full due weight. And I'm going to get to each promised component.
    2 points
  7. monart

    Motive Power

    Motivation is a key to human action, to its initiation, sustenance, and completion. Based on one’s values, motivation comes in many forms, such as financial, legal, ethical, promissory, logical, intellectual, and esthetic. At its core, motivation is emotive, i.e., e-motion: that which “-moves out”, that which is the motive power of action. An example of esthetic motivation is the following. Motive Power The motive power of life is the engine of directed motion, the generator and creator of life’s ambition, driving actions forward in life’s continuous sustenance and realization. In music, as in life, there’s a motive power that pulls music outward, a keynote that carries the flow of melody in harmony on a constant beat toward resolution and arrival. In literature, as in music and in life, there is a motive power that draws out the words and names the concepts that inform and inspire thought onward to envision real ideals. The source of motive power, in literature, music, and life, is: integration – it’s choosing to clarify and unify words, tones, and actions with integrity and purpose, all aiming for the climax, crescendo, and ecstasy that await. As three models of motive power, behold: In real life is the person and character of genius and benefactor Ayn Rand (see 100 voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand and The Letters of Ayn Rand, In music and literature, are the following two complementary works: one a motion-picture in sounds, the other, a motion-picture in words; the music “Collision” may be heard as a short prelude to the scene from Atlas Shrugged. All models are worth repeated visits for reflection and re-motivation. ===== “Collision”, by John Mills-Cockell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiIe3PjiYp4 And his other similar earlier works from 1970s, such as “Melina’s Torch”. “Tillicum”, “Aurora Spinray”, “December Angel”, "Appaloosa and Pegasus" – all can be heard on Youtube. Also, especially noteworthy is his 2004 Concerto of Deliverance, commissioned as a tribute to Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged. http://www.starshipaurora.com/concertoofdeliverance.html ===== Dagny riding the John Galt Line (especially p. 245-246, Atlas Shrugged😞 She felt the sweep of an emotion which she could not contain, as of something bursting upward. She turned to the door of the motor units, she threw it open to a screaming jet of sound and escaped into the pounding of the engine's heart. For a moment, it was as if she were reduced to a single sense, the sense of hearing, and what remained of her hearing was only a long, rising, falling, rising scream. She stood in a swaying, sealed chamber of metal, looking at the giant generators. She had wanted to see them, because the sense of triumph within her was bound to them, to her love for them, to the reason of the life-work she had chosen. In the abnormal clarity of a violent emotion, she felt as if she were about to grasp something she had never known and had to know. She laughed aloud, but heard no sound of it; nothing could be heard through the continuous explosion. "The John Galt Line!" she shouted, for the amusement of feeling her voice swept away from her lips. She moved slowly along the length of the motor units, down a narrow passage between the engines and the wall. She felt the immodesty of an intruder, as if she had slipped inside a living creature, under its silver skin, and were watching its life beating in gray metal cylinders, in twisted coils, in sealed tubes, in 'the convulsive whirl of blades in wire cages. The enormous complexity of the shape above her was drained by invisible channels, and the violence raging within it was led to fragile needles on glass dials, to green and red beads winking on panels, to tall, thin cabinets stenciled "High Voltage." Why had she always felt that joyous sense of confidence when looking at machines? -- she thought. In these giant shapes, two aspects pertaining to the inhuman were radiantly absent: the causeless and the purposeless. Every part of the motors was an embodied answer to "Why?" and "What for?" -- like the steps of a life-course chosen by the sort of mind she worshipped. The motors were a moral code cast in steel. They are alive, she thought, because they are the physical shape of the action of a living power -- of the mind that had been able to grasp the whole of this complexity, to set its purpose, to give it form. For an instant, it seemed to her that the motors were transparent and she was seeing the net of their nervous system. It was a net of connections, more intricate, more crucial than all of their wires and circuits: the rational connections made by that human mind which had fashioned any one part of them for the first time. They are alive, she thought, but their soul operates them by remote control. Their soul is in every man who has the capacity to equal this achievement. Should the soul vanish from the earth, the motors would stop, because that is the power which keeps them going -- not the oil under the floor under her feet, the oil that would then become primeval ooze again -- not the steel cylinders that would become stains of rust on the walls of the caves of shivering savages -- the power of a living mind -- the power of thought and choice and purpose. She was making her way back toward the cab, feeling that she wanted to laugh, to kneel or to lift her arms, wishing she were able to release the thing she felt . . . . =======
    2 points
  8. tadmjones

    "Project Starship"

    Nay, you shall see a bold fellow many times do Mahomet's miracle. Mahomet made the people believe that he would call an hill to him, and from the top of it offer up his prayers, for the observers of his law. The people assembled; Mahomet called the hill to come to him, again and again; and when the hill stood still, he was never a whit abashed, but said, If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill. So these men, when they have promised great matters, and failed most shamefully, yet (if they have the perfection of boldness) they will but slight it over, and make a turn, and no more ado. Bacon, Francis, chapter 12, Of Boldness, in his Essays.
    2 points
  9. Commenting on just this part: If you torture a man for 14 years and he dies a month later, you don’t say he died of natural causes. Good grief. What’s under the ellipsis – “the Devil or” – mocks the truth.
    2 points
  10. Craig Murray in the UK has written extensively about the incarceration and trials of Julian Assange. About the publication of the unredacted documents see "Julian Assange’s Grand Inquisitor" by Chris Hedges. But what the WSJ (mainstream media beholden to the Deep State) says as well as the above is irrelevant. The CIA is in large part a pack of murders – good riddance to bad rubbish.
    2 points
  11. A forum is a space for discussions/debates. What you are describing is an unmoderated forum (= zero control over content). The owner defines what, who and how. It is not "pretty much true by definition" that a forum is unmoderated. My understanding is that @Boydstun described various choices as to how to moderate a forum, not choices as to how to exercise one's free speech. One does not have an a priori freedom of speech on a private forum. It is implicit in the attributes of private property. The non-owners are guest and are subjected to the rules of the house. Harmed is that owner who does not want his property to be used in ways he does not desire, for example to spread ideas he hates.
    2 points
  12. monart

    "Project Starship"

    That's right, given the continual innovations in science/tech, not only is there plenty of land (and ocean) on Earth for habitation, as any orbital views of Earth show -- but also plenty of petroleum to be tapped, inexhaustible according to the claim of the abiogenesis of petroleum rising from deep in the Earth. But whether or not overpopulation is a real problem and moving into space is a solution to it, living and working in space is a positive advancement in civilzation, not only an escape, just as the settlement of America was.
    1 point
  13. Boydstun

    "Project Starship"

    @tadmjones Here is an intellectual high-altitude perspective on possibility of superluminal signals, in flat spacetime, without getting into conflict with special relativity in its confines to E-M fields, etc. Although, the paper points to no known physical fields whose differential equations imply causal cones that do not coincide with light speed: Faster than Light? by Robert Geroch (at 13 minutes in this lecture, he speaks of a theorem which, if I understand correctly, rules out the possibility of negative mass in GR which I gather is the situation under which Alcubierre drive would be possible.)
    1 point
  14. EC

    Oldest Forest

    Were they fossilized when they when fossilized? Not being rude but unless I'm misunderstanding what you are actually asking the answer is clearly yes. Also remember, that the vast majority of that ancient plant life is what we now use to run our vehicles though. In walks the mystics: "Hey guys, you know none of this is possible because everything is really only like 8000 years old!" LOL
    1 point
  15. tadmjones

    Oldest Forest

    Would the proto-types of the proto-types of modern trees have been fossilized at the time their fossilization occurred? And I suppose we are still the New World, lol. But certainly not on a young Earth , well relatively anyway
    1 point
  16. tadmjones

    "Project Starship"

    Unbound or not traversing the distance is the stopper (for now?), so terraforming is probably more in the range of energy expenditure/production/directed utilization we can handle before we break out of our Newtonian limitations, so walk and chew gum ? A ‘warp drive’ concept is in the realm of acceleration? Serious question , as my limited knowledge of physics makes me believe travel at the ‘speeds’ to make interstellar distances even conceivable for human survivability means developing systems that would sustain everything we know about stuff like the Kreb’s cycle and what know about metabolism is based on earth exact conditions , notwithstanding what effects such acceleration would and to the mix. I’ve heard the Higgs field is kind of sticky stuff with mass adds a little drag to the mix, too, no? I also think this thread is more suited to an appreciation of the inspirational/ aspirational and physics would be better in a discussion on a separate thread.
    1 point
  17. AlexL

    "Project Starship"

    I hope it only sounds like BS, but I am not so sure, and this is very troubling for this OO forum...
    1 point
  18. Video on this page. (Start viewing at 1:30 because the video begins with an excerpt which you will see later in its place.) She did a great job, very impressive.
    1 point
  19. monart

    "Project Starship"

    "Prometheus" - the Bringer of Fire and Light - a noble name. Mine is Starship Aurora - "Aurora", the Golden Dawn. So you possess the knowledge to build advanced starship tech? And you're being persecuted because of that? How have you been protecting yourself? Have you been able to document your knowledge, maybe to file patents? With such valuable knowledge, have you tried getting onboard with Jeff Bezos' company, Blue Origin? Mr. Bezos was inspired by Gerard O'Neill's vision and plans for building autonomous orbital habitats for private citizens. Stay away from Elon Musk and SpaceX, whose aim, in contrast, is a planet-bound Mars colony for science/tech specialists. Hostile and dead Mars - compared to which, Antarctica is paradise.
    1 point
  20. Regulars here know that I take issue with the way touchscreens are deployed in many (if not most) newer cars. Granted, they provide a viewer for a back-up cam, cut costs for controls, and allow for greater dashboard functionality through software. But because much of this software is written poorly and controls are indiscriminately moved to the touchscreen, the result is often a frustrating mess of poorly laid-out controls and nested menus that is a real safety hazard because many simple things drivers used to be able to do by touch, like adjust fan controls, now require them to take their eyes off the road. In today's nanny state, the first impulse most people will have will be to scream Force manufacturers to have buttons and knobs again! Not only is this an abuse of government, such abuses are at least partially responsible for the current predicament: American manufacturers are required by law to include backup cams. Since I have long opposed the government regulating every facet of our economy and frequently argue that whatever legitimate functions it wrongly arrogates into regulatory agencies could be done better by watchdog groups and the like, I am pleased to have an example of exactly this, and doubly so because this problem annoys me so much![T]he automotive safety organization European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) ... says the controls ought to change in 2026. "The overuse of touchscreens is an industry-wide problem, with almost every vehicle-maker moving key controls onto central touchscreens, obliging drivers to take their eyes off the road and raising the risk of distraction crashes," said Matthew Avery, Euro NCAP's director of strategic development.And, much later:Crash Hall of the IIHS, a non-government safety organization. (Image by Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)... Euro NCAP is not insisting on everything being its own button or switch. But the organization wants to see physical controls for turn signals, hazard lights, windshield wipers, the horn, and any SOS features, like the European Union's eCall feature. ... Euro NCAP is not a government regulator, so it has no power to mandate carmakers use physical controls for those functions. But a five-star safety score from Euro NCAP is a strong selling point, similar to the (American) Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's coveted Top Safety Pick program here in the US, and it's likely this pressure will be effective. Perhaps someone should start bugging IIHS [the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety --ed] to do the same.Yes. Although some automakers have been dialing back a little on this insanity, non-government watchdogs like the NCAP and the IIHS could help marshal market forces to improve automotive safety more quickly, not to mention help customers who want better options than touchscreens for everything. -- CAVLink to Original
    1 point
  21. You @EC unexpectedly closed the thread "Remembering the CG Computer-Generated Pandemic Tyranny" and did not provide a reason. I was waiting for an important answer from @monart... Some more transparency would be welcomed...
    1 point
  22. EC

    "Project Starship"

    Mine is definitely Starship Prometheus in this allegory. The stuff I've spoken of is being done to me is being done because I possess the knowledge to create a non-allegorical Starship and other technology such as AGI and the powers-that-be falsely believe Man isn't ready for it, and also they are afraid of extreme asymmetry in terms of technology leading to immediate world war as soon as other nations learn that it is capable of being developed quickly here. Sounds like bs, I know, but I've been nearly murdered and have had my life destroyed because of it. They are purposely holding back the exponential advancement of mankind and technology while destroying, torturing, and murdering myself in the process just to stop it. It's evil done simply for the sake of evil. They made the asymmetry argument directly to me at the start of all of this, so I'm not just speculating. It was a direct assertion at the time.
    1 point
  23. An essential feature of the Objectivist ethics is that man is not a sacrificial animal, hence the rejection of self-sacrifice. Objectivism does indeed require the integration of all facts, but not all statements represent facts. The only “fact” involved in an irrational statement is that so-and-so uttered a statement, and a rational man has no obligation to consider such statements. Case in point, a rational man on OO has no obligation to assimilate, address and refute some arbitrary communist racist woke screed – an arbitrary string of words is not ipso facto an “argument”. There is a point at which “argument”- and viewpoint-rejection are valid responses (I would say after a half dozen attempts to elicit signs of rationality from the author, another more-hopeful person might set the threshold at a dozen tries). A person who advocates self-sacrifice isn’t acting like an Objectivist anymore. A person who refuses to engage in moral evaluation isn’t acting like an Objectivist anymore. A person who sanctions evasion isn’t acting like an Objectivist anymore. I do agree with your call for the forum to practice Objectivism (all of it, not just epistemology). Evasion is the antithesis of Objectivism, and I am glad that you now accept that point. Indeed, I would hope that people would be more scrupulous in calling out evasion when it happens
    1 point
  24. I should add something: this whole topic about what to allow on this forum is essentially philosophical and, more specifically, epistemological. If this is an Objectivist forum then it should practice the Objectivist epistemology. An essential feature of the Objectivist epistemology is the rejection of evasion. Objectivism requires the integration of all facts. It does not countenance the propping up of false abstractions through the suppression of counter-examples or counter-arguments. It rebuts false arguments, by identifying them as false (or in some cases arbitrary or irrelevant), but it does not evade or suppress them. Rebuttal should not be hard. OPAR shows that it's possible to use abstractions to group arguments and rebut them all in a single blow, e.g., by identifying an argument as "Primacy of Consciousness." Banning people from the forum because of their arguments is evasion of those arguments, pure and simple. (But it is proper to ban things which are not arguments, such as spam or harassment etc.) The people who run this forum are free to run it however they want, just like they are free to evade in their own minds if they want. But when they start burning heretics, they aren't acting like Objectivists anymore. (Further, such action incorrectly suggests that Objectivism is no different from any other philosophy or religion).
    1 point
  25. You are free to create such a forum, but you cannot expect that a given forum owner, for example of this one, will tolerate on his premises the broadcasting of views he abhors. Or tolerate irrational behavior in a debate, for example when a person refuses to justify his claims, the concept of evidence-based debate etc. This requirement will stop nothing: any idea may be found to have something to do with Objectivism😁 I am not proposing to initiate force against anyone. Not sure what you mean... In any case: force is not the only form of harm.
    1 point
  26. Related to what happened on the closed topic: --- Tripping Over the Truth [I paraphrase and expand on a quote ascribed to Winston Churchill: “stumble over the truth”.] Tripping over the truth, on the pathway to somewhere, some people, too busy to give attention, hurry onward. Some, like a sleepwalker, will yawn and slumber on, unchanged. Some, embarrassed by the stumble or by the truth, will pretend it didn’t happen. Some will kick it away, angry at yet another intrusion by reality. But there are others, curious and caring, who will pause, look, pick it up, and bring it with them -- hopeful, excited by truth’s potential for goodness and beauty. And some, remembering later that they had tripped and passed over something strange yet attractive, now curious and recognizing a need, return to retrieve it
    1 point
  27. As opposed to slow-walking the decision to hear the appeal on absolute immunity for ex-presidents, the Supreme Court could very well have been in an interval of trying get enough Justices to agree to hear the appeal from the appellate court decision and opinion, with some Justices initially undecided and open to persuasion. We don't know. But Gus neglects comparison of the speed of the Supreme Court (and them slowing things down by earlier throwing the appeal back to the DC appellate court for decision) with the Supreme Court speed in the Nixon case* and in the Bush v. Gore case. Unless the Court gives their decision in this coming week, it will look very like the political-party alignment of the Court in Bush v. Gore. Delaying until end of June to give their decision and opinions could very well say all Yes to the lengthy opinion of the lower appellate court, say that ex-Presidents are not immune from criminal prosecution, while, having slow-walked the time-sensitive case, made the ruling de facto inapplicable to the one case that has ever come up. (Although, I must admit, it is not clear that most American voters would not vote for Trump even knowing that he was convicted in the pending criminal cases. I've apparently in the past credited the American people with too much valuation that America be a constitutional democratic republic. Now they just deny it ever was such a thing, rationalizing their own instigation of its downfall.) On the slowness of the prosecution bringing the DC case and the Georgia case, that could easily be a matter of the time needed to gather sufficient evidence to have a high chance for conviction, even when the accused is a rich litigant and a former President.
    1 point
  28. If you exercise editorial control, it ceases to be a "forum" at all, and becomes a "magazine" or a "journal." That's my point. If I write a book I can control everything in the book. But it's not literally a "forum." It's a book. (My biggest concern is that no one would read it, which is one reason why I like having access to open forums.) (Maybe this is more like a continuum than an either-or thing.) I can't find the exact quote, but I believe Rand said somewhere (perhaps in "What Can One Do?") that as long as free speech exists, the right ideas have a chance. I will agree with @Boydstun that there are a lot of choices as to how to exercise one's free speech. But the thing about a forum is precisely that it does not constitute an exercise of one's own speech -- it constitutes giving others an opportunity to speak, which is a different thing (and can be valuable too, including to the giver of the opportunity). Of course when you provide that opportunity it's pretty much true by definition that you give up control over what those others are going to say. You are signing up for surprises. Some of them may be pleasant, some not. The pleasant ones are what make it worthwhile. (But also, a person may run or participate in an open forum because he wants to test his own thinking and ideas by being exposed to those of others.) Peikoff writes that lies are "impotent" because the underlying reality is still there and will be discovered. This is why people who live by lies end up having to resort to force (because the lies alone are never enough). It's also why a free society can afford to have free speech. So in that sense there shouldn't be any harm in allowing people to speak their minds. (I'm excluding stuff like harassment that would render the forum useless). The truth will come out eventually. Even posting the truth here isn't necessarily going to end the discussion, though, because people have to see that truth for themselves, and they have to see it in reality, not just in the forum. Discussions end when there is nothing more to add. My concern is that the calls to exercise more editorial control are actually rooted in the idea that lies are not impotent, that lies have to be censored because they'll "mislead" people. This is rooted in the primacy of consciousness, but not in the usual way: most people familiar with Objectivism know better than to think that lies "create reality." We all know that I can lie and say I have a gold bar, but the lie doesn't create the gold bar. But there is a "second order" version of the "primacy of consciousness," if you want to call it that -- the notion that if false ideas spread around, people will believe them, and then act on them, and then this will give rise to oppressive governments and cultures. So well-meaning people then conclude that the spread of the false ideas has to be stopped. False ideas need to be refuted; that's the only way to really stop them. The possibility that people will believe bad ideas called "free will" and is metaphysically given, and there's nothing we can actually do about that. We can try to put the right ideas out there, and also try to explain why the wrong ideas are wrong. Trying to fight the metaphysically given is why it's a second-order version of the primacy of consciousness. We can't stop people from thinking bad thoughts. If refutation is not enough then the human species is doomed anyway. I think that setting up forum rules to ban the discussion of certain ideas only serves to create the impression that Objectivism cannot withstand those ideas, which is not true. Further, the ideas are not "gone," they just go to other forums. Merely hiding the arguments we disagree with doesn't help; it can even amount to self-deception. I will admit that sometimes people raise the same tired old objections to Objectivism over and over. In that case it should be sufficient to refer to them to places where the objections have already been answered. However, it is possible that the answer to the tired old objection was somehow incomplete and so another question may need to be answered. There are also people out there who would expect you to "prove" that 2 + 2 = 4, and they won't accept anything you say, so that they are either trolling or their reasoning is irreparably defective. In that case, just stop. There is nothing you can do. (Why get all upset about it?) The correct thing to do, the only thing we really can do, about the evil in society, is try to patiently explain why having an oppressive culture is a bad idea, and how to make a better one -- which is sort of what Objectivism is about in the first place. -- There is a second concern, too. The forum owners may say that they don't want their resources to be used to promote bad ideas. The thing is, when the forum is open, and somebody posts a bad idea, it doesn't count as a "promotion" in the same way it would if it had been approved by editors. This is because people know that the forum is open and that just about anything can be posted. If everybody wins an award, the award is not very meaningful, and that's an instance of the same principle.
    1 point
  29. Yours is only ONE conception of what a forum must be or should be. There is nothing in the technology requiring that model, and any conventions about it were born yesterday and should anyway be rattled with experimentation. Over at Objectivist Living, the owner openly restricted content to: do not criticize Nathaniel or Barbara Branden. In the later years, he had the covert content restriction: do not criticize Donald Trump. It's still a forum. The highly content-restricted forums (FB Groups) named "Ayn Rand Group" and "Leonard Peikoff Appreciation Group" are still forums. An electronic forum could have all the topic-restrictions and scholarly-level requirements I put on the Objectivity journal and it could have management such as the absolute monarchy as I did it there, and it would still be a forum. And it might be a useful forum for some writers and readers because of those considerable restrictions on content. The Comments section of online magazines are also forums. In the case of Philosophy Now, the owners have adopted a sufficiently hands-off policy that anything favorable to Ayn Rand or even accurately representing Rand will be met with vicious personal attack on the commenter as ignorant and idiot. The management allows that routine dynamic, and they evidently get the participants and product suited to their project.
    1 point
  30. A forum can be run however the owners want to run it. There will be consequences in who wants to participate or read, but that's it. Owners can monitor as little or much as they please. There are forums within Facebook for which each post is monitored and each thread-origination has to be pre-approved. That's fine, and the owners will get satisfaction (or not) from who all participates and what sort of things bloomed in the forum they created. One thing about forums (at least ones of any interest to me) is a circumstance not set by the owners: It is written language. There are choices set by the owners (ultimately) that are firm constraints on participants, such as time limits on editing a post or eliminating your post. I created, published, and edited the hard-copy journal Objectivity for eight years. My choices of constraints on it were simply my design for it. The options open to the designer are really very wide; there can be many variations of such options while still counting as a journal. Similarly, it goes for a forum such as this one. Constraints I laid on Objectivity* included: no political or cultural topics or commentaries. No basement or garage science or kook science; only standard science (mostly physics and developmental psychology). No advertisements. Writers had to go through an iterative process with the editor on addressing in the content any pertinent external literature, and there was always a lot, of which the writer knew little at the outset. I did not agree entirely with everything in any compositions not authored by me (and I often came to disagree with things in my own compositions in later years). I was pleased with the quality of the production. It was a worthwhile, challenging project. For my efforts, I prefer these later years to simply write for venues others have set up. I appreciate this one and the intelligence and background training showing here in writings of its participants.
    1 point
  31. The reason it's closed is because you are arguing against the facts of reality in a prejudiced manner without ever stating the core purpose behind it. But this isn't the place to have a second flat earth game/discussion. And yes, your argument and style is exactly the same as those that do the flat earth thing while knowing the truth and just trying to practice argumentation for the sake of argument and arbitrary skepticism contrary to the facts of reality. Stay in reality because that is what is discussed here.
    1 point
  32. The US government has a lot wrong with it, but it is much more rights-respecting than the Belarus regime. They are not equivalent. MAGA consists of people who have let the lying demagogue Trump stir up their emotions to dangerous levels.
    1 point
  33. It seems like some of the most controversial threads of late have been on point; the main question is always how to discover what the facts are. This can get into questions of what sources you trust, and under what conditions you trust them. Objectivism obviously reaches different conclusions depending on what facts you put into it; if Objectivism were impervious to facts, it would be arbitrary! It's proper to reject claims of fact when they clash with lots and lots of well-founded abstractions, though, the way perpetual-motion machines clash with the known laws of physics. It's also proper to identify situations where a fact really doesn't make any difference, like whether Abraham Lincoln ever dyed his hair. It should be possible to integrate everything without contradiction. So I think part of having an active mind is to read a lot and see if you can integrate what you are reading with what you know. (This includes identification of claims as falsehoods or as arbitrary, where appropriate). Writing some of your conclusions and seeing how people answer can be valuable and thought-provoking as well. My inclination was to think it would not have done any harm. For myself, I figured I had said my piece, and had nothing further to say. So as far as I was concerned the thread was already dead and it was time for me to move on to some other topic. I suppose there could be "vampire" threads that could refuse to die and suck the lifeblood out of the rest of the forum... such a thread would need a stake through its heart... but was this thread really one of them? (Probably the worst thing is unneeded repetition. I don't like reading the same thing over and over, and I don't like saying the same thing over and over, either...) Often people leave not because of the forum itself but because they have a "life event" such as a new job, a marriage, birth of a child, or a funeral. Life events are why I left and came back, and not because of anything wrong with the board itself. Right now I have time to participate but other times I have just been too busy. If the administrator of a board has such a life event, the board itself may come to an end. This sort of thing is not the fault of the content. People can also leave because they are no longer interested in the topic, or because they find the forum "unfriendly." Moderation can help with keeping things on-topic and civilized. That sounds a lot like "guilt by association." Lots of, e.g., Metallica fans, don't necessarily like each other. A forum is not like a magazine where the content can be completely controlled (for quality or anything else). It is proper to remove spam, and stuff that is off-topic could probably also be removed. But you'd know it was off-topic because nobody who is interested in this board in particular would be interested in it.
    1 point
  34. To me that thread seemed to boil down to a flat earth type of thread where any rational argument or evidence was denied while looking for specific "evidence" from a conspiracy theorist even though it exists in countless forms. Again, explicitly name the exact reason honestly for the thread.
    1 point
  35. I am curious about this notion of a “permanent government” in the US. Now we know that Lukashenko has been the absolute ruler of Belarus ever since it separated from the Soviet Union, Putin been has ruler of Russia de jure or de facto since 1999. Many African nations have been ruled by single absolute rulers for decades, e.g. Equatorial Guinea, China is controlled by a de facto permanent ruler. Iran and Burma are essentially run by permanent councils / juntas with an irrelevant figurehead. In the US, OTOH, we change president relatively often, and Congressmen individually last about 4 terms in the House and 2 terms in the Senate though there are individuals who last for decades. Of course, the federal appellate judicature is composed of life appointees. Clearly, this permanent government of which you speak isn’t composed of the executive, legislative or, realistically the judiciary. What I’d like to know is, what or who is this permanent government in the US? I suppose you might be talking of career military and civil service employees. In what sense to the various park rangers, TSA agents, clerks in the bureaucracy, embassy grunts and so on constitute a government? And if you aren’t speaking of the clerks and cops, who are you speaking of? In what was was this supposed government “disrupted” by Trump (and how was that disruption not exactly the same as the “disruption” created by the Carter-Reagan, Bush-Clinton, Clinton, Bush, Bush-Obama or Trump-Biden transitions)? Is this government distinct from the shadow world government run by the Illuminati?
    1 point
  36. A ‘cold’ or saying someone has ‘a cold’ means to describe a person experiencing mild to moderate symptoms from a non specific upper or lower respiratory tract infection. Actually “cold symptoms” is redundant, yeah? The OP is arguing that the existence of a specific contagion hasn’t been shown with sufficient scientific rigor. Though I’m not convinced of that, your attack of it is an ad hominem based on what seems like a non objective use or understanding of terms. My silly idea was to prompt you to see that by equating the concepts you were not addressing the argument.
    1 point
  37. Separately, let me address the rational thought / rights question. “Rights” derive from man’s nature: our proper means of survival is reason, not e.g. superior force as in the case of lions. More specifically, man’s actions are chosen, not automatic / metaphysically given, and man uses reason to devise a moral code guiding his choices. “Rights” are a part of that moral code specifically devised for existence in a society, that is, when we live together through voluntary trade (the natural outgrowth of living cooperatively in a society). An alien species might well have aspects of the faculty of reason yet be compelled to survive by superior force, hence the fictitious Kzinti. In the Man-Kzin Wars novels the cats seem to be in an evolutionary middle stage, that they have language and space ships but cannot freely resist the compulsion to kill and eat. The human concept of rights and surrender of the use of force for survival to government monopoly is simply not applicable to a Kzin. The connection between language, the faculty of reason, and the concept of rights as applied to humans does not come from the ability to group individuals together under concepts, or to form communicative propositions, and it does not come from the fact that we can perform logical computations like “If A then B; A is true; Then it follows that B is true”. Rather, it follows from the fact that we can freely chose our actions, and that we can survive using our wits rather than our claws.
    1 point
  38. How did life on Earth begin? The chemical puzzle just became clearer. Story by Kasha Patel <snip> People have long scratched their heads trying to understand how life ever got going after the formation of Earth billions of years ago. Now, chemists have partly unlocked the recipe by creating a complex compound essential to all life — in a lab. </snip>
    1 point
  39. Professionally speaking, (*sigh*). This animal language nonsense apparently will never go away. The first relevant division in cognition that has to be made is between “symbol” and “concept”. Very simple organisms with nervous systems can at least respond to physical stimuli. We don’t know anything significant about bug-cognition, but we do know that honeybees have the ability to communicate information about good (via an iconic dance, where the signal is directly related to the message (direction and distance). When we get to birds and mammals, people increase their metaphorical talk about “language” (though they say the same thing about bees and in fact in extremely metaphorical cases, about inanimate objects). There is a fair amount of evidence that some birds and mammals have something along the lines of “self-awareness”, thus they utter the message “Me. Me. Me”. There is a lot of variation in the form of the message, so that the signal may be stored and repeated for a short while (i.e. “today” or “this season”), or maybe longer terms. This is simple a label a name. Humans have a unique ability, which is to for concepts, which is (first) the mental grouping together of existents defined on some perceptible basis and (second) a label attached to that grouping. Thus we have in English the words “dog”, “cat”, “rat”, “mammal”, and “animal”, each of which refers to a different thing. We use these discrete labels to communicate to others. Concepts can be formed by grouping other concepts together, to form a new concept (mammal, animal, pet, etc). The various labels can be combined into sentences which communicate propositions. Sequences of propositions can be organized into “reasoning”, as exemplified by Atlas Shrugged and ITOE. The ability to self-identify is not the same as having a rational faculty. Even the ability to learn to group immediately-evident classes of existents under a communicable label is not the same as having a rational faculty, and there is no evidence that dolphins or apes have even that rudimentary capacity. The “signal complexity” claim is a red herring. What is lacking is evidence for discrete generalizability and combinability. Words of human language are made of cognitively-discrete combinable sound units, like “k”, “s”, “i”, “m” and so on, but the physical reality is continuous modulation of an acoustic waveform. (That cognitive fact is why we can write with distinct letters to represent the infinitude of physical symbols). The whale/dolphin language-advocates have yet to establish that the emited waveforms of those animals have an analogous cognitive status: construction of complex structures built on concatenation of cognitively discrete units which are realised as physical continua. We have known for a century that bee dance superficially looks complex because there are very many possible signals, but they don’t reduce to complex and structured combinations of atomic units. Us linguists object to misusing the word “language” to refer to things that aren’t language, like “the language of music”, or talking of DNA as being a kind of “language”. You can call the laws of physics the “language of reality”, but it ain’t a language. Abstraction and recursive structure build on lower-level abstractions is the essential feature of human language, and no animals on Earth have it, other than the rational animal.
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  40. Seriously? Why are you guys playing these silly games?
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  41. Yes, and these corrupt "people at the top", known or unknown, wield their power and influence such that, in this case of the covid tyranny, the majority of the medical profession just believe and follow their leaders, do their jobs, keep their eyes and heads down, so as to keep or advance in their positions -- while others who do speak up are dismissed or punished as purveyors of disinformation, "conspiricists", or "covid deniers".
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  42. Incidentally, no falsification crime is a strict liability crime (unlike underage sex of drunk driving charges), the prosecution must prove that the defendant knew that the statement was false.
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  43. One aspect of this case which is ignored by the media is that this cannot be taken to be a real effort to defraud, forge or falsify. The submitted documents do not even marginally resemble actual certificates of ascertainment, they are clearly political theater in the fashion of leftist political theater of the 1960’s. The recipients did not, would not, and could not take serious the premise that these are real and official documents, given what the real thing looks like. The “Electoral College of Michigan” is an invention. The Sec’y of State does not address the certificate to specific individuals, the document is created by the SOS not a supposed “chairperson” of a non-existent entity, the actual certificate lists all nominated electors including write-in candidates and various minor party candidates. Crucially, vote totals for everybody are included. None of this is included in the theatrical documents. Compare the fake document and the real one. Michigan law does not state what it means when one “falsely makes, alters, forges, or counterfeits a public record, or a certificate”. Conviction will hang on proving intent, and proving it beyond reasonable doubt, which means, showing that alternative intentions must be objectively non-credible. However, since this is a political trial, defendant mental state will simply be assumed and will not be critically scrutinized. It is even possible that some number of them are willing to sacrifice themselves, in order to enhance the impact of conviction and imprisonment of the opposition, for a protected political-expressive act. No aspect of Michigan election law addresses “legal authority for the false electors to purport to act as ‘duly elected presidential electors’ and execute the false electoral documents”, in fact the electors were actually nominated (it’s just that their candidate lost), and the documents do not purport to legally report vote totals, which is what determines which nominated electors get to vote in the final event. Thus the Michigan AG falsely and fraudulently purports elements of a non-existent crime. The AG falsely, abusively and fraudulently disregards the obvious political-theater purpose of these documents. This is a prime example of the serious rot that has infected objective American law, that anything not sufficiently proven to be true is “fraud”. This is not what fraud means, but it is how the term has been redefined (on the other side of the fence, the right also flashes out charges of “fraud” at incautious statements, as an educational tit-for-tat example above I have accused the Michigan AG of fraud). Because the First Amendment protects political theater, the left and right could easily join forces to fight against their common enemy and obstacle to political control – the First Amendment.
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  44. The "mainstream narrative" is subject to the same standards as any other "narrative" -- and sometimes fails them, especially lately. I still think it's psychologizing. On the other hand there are cranks, quacks, and crackpots out there, and the only way to identify them is that their claims clash with reality. If you have a proper hierarchy of knowledge then you can use abstractions you have already proved to identify false claims. However, this only works to the extent that your abstractions are solid all the way down. Lots of people reason as if their beliefs have been "proved" when those beliefs are not true at all. In a mixed economy, it's easy to imagine that corrupt people could work their way up to the top. These days I'm not so sure it's even necessary to imagine, because you can look at the people at the top and see that they are corrupt. However, it is possible to have a medical industry without corruption, and I think such an industry would accept the existence of viruses on the basis of the scientific evidence. Well it's a good thing we have people like you here to point this stuff out But really, it does not seem that @monart is claiming to speak on behalf of Ayn Rand or Objectivism on these matters, and also, as long as it is an open forum, we don't have to worry too much about falsehoods going uncontested. Besides, people shouldn't believe everything they read, anyway.
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  45. A. The implication of your wording above is that "official, authorized(??), mainstream narrative" is mostly wrong, which in itself is a conspiracist claim😁 B. Yes, the labeling "conspiracist can be used to intimidate etc., but the fact that it is used does not necessarily imply intimidation: it can be a true factual statement. In our case: 1. You approvingly cite Christine Massey, a quack and a conspiracist: consider her YogaEsoteric [sic!] and FluorideFreePee [sic!] sites, her unscientific, ridiculous "No Records Found" research and her general denial of the existence of viruses; 2. You (and C. Massey) approvingly and with no caveats refer to the book Virus Mania as an authoritative source, although the title itself is very telling: Corona/COVID-19, Measles, Swine Flu, Cervical Cancer, Avian Flu, SARS, BSE, Hepatitis C, AIDS, Polio - How the Medical Industry Invents Epidemics, Making Billion-Dollar Profits At Our Expense The respective viruses allegedly do not exist, the bad and greedy medical industry invented them, and epidemics, for enormous profits at our expense. It is obviously a conspiracy; it had to start at lest 120 years ago (Poliovirus, 1909) and had to involve, since, dozen or hundreds of millions of medical professionals spreading this alleged fiction. It is a shame to refer to that person and to the book approvingly and with no caveats - on this Objectivism forum.
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  46. If there didn't exist facts relative to deeming the therapy 'safe'( this term has specific meaning when applied to medical interventions and coming from medical experts) there was nothing to investigate. So what facts did you investigate relative to safety? It seems you just accepted an argument from authority and then reasoned your way to a rationalization, people do that all the time. Two times in this thread you have asserted that you will not be participating in the discussion and then continue. Is this a good look for a moderator of an O'ist forum? (It feels like lying)
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  47. Reason and investigation of the facts. Also, the context that my grandfather had just died of it a couple months before and to protect my mom who I was staying with at the time who has COPD. Just because there is a standard time for testing doesn't mean in context of a disease that nobody has natural immunity to that individuals such as myself can't take vaccines or medical drugs that have not went through the full process of testing outside of that context as it would be a potential sacrifice of one's life to do otherwise. It would be similar to someone with cancer taking an experimental treatment. Also, why is any of this important as it's a personal choice. I don't even fully understand the full purpose of this entire thread about denying the existence of a disease where essentially every fact of evidence and perception proves the existence of while no evidence exists that shows that it doesn't. It's just arbitrary although I have some ideas why someone would claim this against the overwhelming facts of reality. This is just a very strange discussion.
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  48. No, that would be secondhanded, I did it to prevent myself from getting Covid and studied mRNA vaccines before taking the vaccines. This is ridiculous and I'm not taking part in this strange discussion anymore and will read to moderate it against arbitrary conspiracy theories and from those seeking to ignore reason, evidence, and proper epistemology.
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  49. I'm down, but you have to make the plans.
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  50. They aren’t Objectivists, nor are they conservatives. They are both brilliant, two of my favorite modern day intellectuals. They are fact driven, rational, insightful, courageous and morally upright. The more I live the more I appreciate how great they really are. Leftists don't seem to produce those kinds of people.
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