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gio

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Posts posted by gio

  1. I realized that the interviews comes from VHS, dsitributed by the company "No Free Lunch Distributors". (They distributed several interviews of Ayn Rand)

    Do you know if this company still exists? Or if they sell this VHS still today? Do you have your own copy of the VHS?

    This VHS can at least be borrowed (or seen) at three places, according to this page:

    • Loyola University Chicago
    • Pritzker Military Museum & Library
    • University of South Florida
  2. 2 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

    TV programs were shot with high quality tv cameras usually, which have inherent scan line limitations, not film.  If recorded they had some format, line limitations.

    Of course there is some kinds of limitations with the original material, but those are not the issue. This is irrelevant. The issue here is the digital low quality of the material on Youtube. Not other kinds of flaws or limitations.

  3. I'm not sure it's an issue of resolution at that time. Resolution is a current issue, related to digital content working with pixels. You can have movie from 1920 in 1080p or in 360p, depending how you digitalized or compressed it. Same for 70s/80s content, same for VHS. You have on Youtube some content (including TV content) that was shot way before Ayn Rand interviews but which were uploaded in much better quality, probably because they were digitalized and uploaded more recently. The kind of quality flaws due to the oldness are not those of resolution quality. Poor resolution is a purely current problem.

    Otherwise, Michael Paxton in his documentary could not have shown us part of the interviews in much better quality than Youtube.

  4. Do you know if there is any way now to see the interviews of Ayn Rand by Phil Donahue in better quality than the one available on Youtube?

    Is there any VHS of the show? It seems compressed from VHS on Youtube.

    As far as know, most Youtube interviews were uploaded by an account called "Jose Marabotto", do you guys know him?

    In the documentary: Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life by Michael Paxton, we see short passages of the interviews in much better quality than Youtube.

  5. 9 minutes ago, Reidy said:

    Thank you for the information. Did Laurent do any new research for his biography?

    No. As he said (in french) in the lecture with Yaron Brook, it's cheaper to reformulate what the others already wrote than to pay a translator. His book is mostly based on Ayn Rand and the World she Made by Anne C. Heller and The Godess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right by Jennifer Burns.

  6. On 5/17/2018 at 12:06 AM, Boydstun said:

    .Oh, I was just interested what is your impression for the parallel question to yours: What do the French today think of Guyau? I was just curious, since I have an interest in this French philosopher.

    They don't think of him. As far as I can tell, he is virtually unknown, except for very few people among those who are interested in Philosophy.
    I think, Ayn Rand is more known (or rather less unknown) in France than Guyau.

    On 5/17/2018 at 12:49 AM, Reidy said:

    A search turned up two full-length books, in French, that I'd never heard of. Is anybody here familiar with them?

    Ayn Rand or The Passion of Rational Self-Interest: an Intellectual Biography

    The Esthetic Philosophy of Ayn Rand

    The second seems to be a synopsis of The Romantic Manifesto, enabling readers to get familiar with its ideas while no French translation is available. Reminds me of the way ancient authors were preserved and disseminated before the invention of printing.

    You are right about the second one. It's a little summary chapter by chapter, available for free here. The author is a reader of my blog about Objectivism, and since he made that book, I've translated some chapters of The Romantic Manifesto.

    The first one is supposed to be a biography of Ayn Rand. It was the only book in french about Ayn Rand since recently. The book was written by Alain Laurent, the publisher of Atlas Shrugged in France, who was also last year in a lecture with Yaron Brook. I was in the public, so was the author of the second book The Esthetic Philosophy of Ayn Rand. And I asked a question. Alain Laurent is also the publisher of The Virtue of Selfishness, but he removed most of the chapters, as I say in my video, including the introduction, to publish his own introduction.

    Because he is the publisher of Ayn Rand and because of that book, Alain Laurent is viewed as the "expert" of Ayn Rand in France, so when the french medias talks about her, they have Alain Laurent as a guest. In my opinion, it's a scam, because Alain Laurent doesn't understand Objectivism at all (It's easy to prove, he disintegrates all ideas), commit some errors and is regulary very critical about Objectivism grounded on his non-understanding and errors.

    One single example (among plenty): In the book you mentionned, he advocates that Ayn Rand is not a philosopher and that she had never read Kant, and criticize her for never quoting other philosophers. He wrote the same in his introduction of The Virtue of Selfishness, where he also says that Ayn Rand advocate some categorical imperatives. Clearly, he has never read Causality versus Duty.

    And it's always like that : He regulary sees "contradictions" in Ayn Rand's philosophy...grounded on his own misunderstanging or ignorance.

    As he is the only French voice, visible in the media, who talks about Ayn Rand. Many French people learn about Ayn Rand through him, i.e. through his errors, his fallacies and his superficial understanding. I think that there is no one who does not harm Objectivism in France any more than he does, though I'm pretty sure he views himself as a fair spreader of Ayn Rand. He is also very critical of the Objectivist movement.

  7. 11 minutes ago, William O said:

    I'm just asking whether there is literature (books or articles) on a particular topic. I do not claim that physics contradicts the Objectivist view of free will. If there is no such literature then that is fine.

    But...if physics don't contradicts the Objectivist view of free will, there is no reason to reconcile them. I don't know if there is such litterature, it depends on what they conflicts with each other.

  8. 36 minutes ago, 2046 said:

    ...Rand hated "meritocracy" and called it "one of the most contemptible" fallacies in modern political parlance, and identifying it as a species of "tyranny."

    I didn't know that, do you have the reference? I'm interested.

    EDIT: Okay I found it. I had already read this essay but I had forgotten this piece.

  9. On 30/03/2018 at 4:52 AM, Sameak said:

    I always found it fascinating how much in common mainstream Objectivists had with the far left. Disregard for biological differences between the races and genders being one of them.

    1° There is no "maintstream Objectivists", as if there is "alternative Objectivism". There is only Objectivists, period.

    2° Objectivism could have common points or opposition with any political trend, it doesn't matter. Objectivism is not seeking to be "left-wing" nor "right-wing". To say that Objectivism share some view with anything (or is opposed to it) does not discredit it in any regards. If your primary goal is to oppose the left or the right (and not to seek the truth), then you can not claim to be Objectivist. For a rational person, the only thing that matters is not the conclusion, but the process: Why does Objectivism support such or such view? And: Is it consistent with the rest of its views?

  10. 27 minutes ago, Sameak said:

    What I said has nothing to do with whether one race is superior to another, east asians have the highest IQ and Africans have the lowest this is not racism but fact.

    You didn't simply said that, but more: you said it is genetically determined (as in your comment about Sowell). The name for the idea that some races have inherently various degree of ability is: racism. That's a fact. I have a friend who hold the same idea as you, and he has no problem to say he is racist.
     

    But actually, in my opinion, like all ideologies that seek to destroy the concept of responsibility, racism is an ideology of loosers which has more psychological than philosophical significance.

  11. I didn't call you racist at all in my previous message. I merely answered the question of what Objectivism had to say about race. But only since your last comment about Sowell, it seems that you are actually racist, because you seems to suggest that some races are genetically superior or inferior to others, and this is the definition of racism. I don't use this word as an insult to silence or bully you, but just as a matter of objective fact, because it's relevant to the topic of relation with Objectivism. Racism is obviously antithetical to Objectivism, there is no question about that. Objectivism is opposed to any form of collectivism, class or race determinism. It does not hold that certain genes correspond to behavioral patterns. It holds that man is born tabula rasa, that all behavioral patterns derive from your ideas, and that every man has the free will to choose his ideas. Some groups of humans (like man / woman) may have different needs, tendancy or inclination (+ physical differences), and it could be the same for races, but it is different than conceptual knowledge. You can disagree: then you disagree with Objectivism.

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