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Nate

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Everything posted by Nate

  1. I don't see this as a valid application of your suggestion. To apply this suggestion consistently ('labor' bad, 'leisure' good), x would also have to quit. That being said, it appears that I'm already about 3 pages behind on this thread.
  2. I don't see what your balance sheet should have to do with the number of hours you spend engaged in productive work. The only possible exception for me would be: if I was in a situation in which, in order to survive or escape a short-term crisis, I had to work a number of hours which, if I continued, would have longterm consequences ... and then I was able to remove myself from that situation. I would not say "oh, I have a million dollars now, I quit, no more." I suppose this goes back to what it means to live long-range. According to your standard, reducing your 'labor' to zero and your 'leisure' to all the time would be ideal. Is this your proposed goal then?
  3. Charlotte, I'm sorry to hear about your loss. Thanks for sharing the inspiring story. I hope her strength inspires you in this tough time.
  4. grr ... accidentally deleted C doesn't follow from B "Reducing X’s labor increasing X’s leisure is another good" where does this come from? good intrinsically? Is "D" supposed to say "would accomplish C" ? makes no sense as is. E contradicts A
  5. I think its quite possible neither the control center nor the pilot made the mistake. We have no way knowing whether the allied ground troops in the area failed to provide proper notification to the control center(s). Perhaps someone at another control center failed to relay information. Etc, etc. I agree with sNerds assessment. I can not say for certain what they have been trained to do in this type of situation.
  6. Nate

    Pragmatism

    Ahhhh!! (incoherent babbling here) ... Cue tape recorder: :: nod ::
  7. Alright, I'll bite. Are you talking about something beyond the simple distinction he already made? Groovenstein, that was hilarious.
  8. I'm confused. So now you are disputing life as the standard in favor of total subjectivism? What is this cause? Whatever he feels like, as you seem to have suggested above? Do you agree, at least, that the use of force always entails SOME negatives?
  9. I'll try this another way. I'm taking for granted life as the standard of value. I'm also taking for granted the basic explanation of man is a conceptual being. I'm also taking for granted that you understand that man uses these concepts to make value-judgment based on this standard. When you reach the question of how to obtain value from other men, you are faced a fundamental choice: force or trade A basic example of trade: one man we'll call hunter, another we'll call farmer. One day hunter and farmer realize that hunter isn't very good at farming or gathering, and farmer is not very good at hunting. They see that if they both instead focus on their respective strengths, and exchange value for value, that they will have both more grain and more meat. Both benefit. A basic example of force: in another part of the world, there are two men very similar to hunter and farmer, with one important exception. Hunter doesn't exchange meat for grain. Instead, he takes it, using his bow and arrow to prevent Farmer from stopping him. Additionally, since his grain is now insufficient to supply him and his farm animals, he is producing less and less grain every year. Additionally, another man, Fisher, has caught wind of these events. He doesn't see any reason to exchange any fish with Farmer for his grain when he can just take it in the same fashion. One day Farmer decides he's had enough of Fisher and Hunter. He doesn't see any incentive to produce grain if it will just be stolen. He decides to: ___________. You can finish this story any way you like, but there are no happy endings. In the first example, both Hunter and Fisher benefit. In the second example, Hunter *thinks* he is benefiting, but he is really harming himself in the long run in the following ways, among others: 1) He is directly damaging or destroying the producers ability to produce. Grain doesn't last for ever. What is he going to do once he runs out? Even if he later sees the errors of his ways, what is he now going to buy with his meat? The producers have since been damaged or destroyed, and now their products are less available or completely unavailable to him by any means. 2) He is removing the incentive to produce. This is a corollary of the first. Why would the producer continue to produce? What is he going to do instead? He may either stop producing any excess, or leave and go somewhere were there are men who are willing to exchange value. 3) He is sanctioning this course of action, thereby encouraging others to do the same (as opposed to producing). This is by far the worst of the these three. Even if he is not "caught" in the sense that you are talking about, other people will likely be aware that "someone" committed the act.
  10. You didn't answer. Weigh them HOW? Risks or gains as determined by WHAT? Here, I was not talking about psychological consequences (at least not to one's self). This is what I meant by "but I would argue you have omitted the worst of it." My point was that in reality, you can not ever "get away with it." As DO has already pointed out, man is a conceptual being. It is through a process of conceptualization that man makes decisions regarding what will benefit his life, as opposed to the animal, which is born with an automatic means of doing so. Man has no such automatic means. Say one decides to steal a million dollars, and he is relatively sure that he will not get 'caught' in the sense of the word that you use... S/he still has not escaped the reality that man must survive in the manner DO described above. The million dollars is not going to do the subsequent reasoning that your continued survival requires. Take the example of a professional criminal organization. For this example, think Ocean's 11. There is necessarily a double-standard at work. The use of force is somehow approved outside the organization, but (sometimes) not within it. How do you decide when to use which (reason or force)? How does someone else know when you decide 'oh, I think I'll use reason this time' that you will not resort to force? How do you know that they will not resort to it? It is either reason or deuces wild. Do you see any contradiction in these examples?
  11. Rather than post off-topic regarding Antonio's paraphrasing of Leonard Peikoff, I'll just post the statement I think he is referring to.
  12. Actually, there aren't. You seem to know this at least implicitly. In your own examples you list SOME of the negative consequences, even though I would argue that you have omitted the worst of them. The whole idea is that you can't just take out the scale and weigh the benefits against the drawbacks since you've already thrown out the scale. How then do you decide whether or not the loot is worth committing these various degrees of suicide?
  13. test edit: 5-minute rule add-on to this test post follows below... The timestamps on (all before the time change?) posts and pms has been pushed forward and hour, yet the forum time displays correctly for me and the timestamps for recent posts, such as my test post above are correct.
  14. This type of integration, of the vice of force and its relation to the virtues, is very important. You can not extract one virtue (or vice) from the Objectivist ethics, break it down, put it back together, and then expect to have full understanding without reintegrating it with the others. They are interconnected elements of a whole; failing at one is, necessarily, failing at all of them.
  15. First, welcome to the forum! Next, allow me to kindly introduce you to my good friend, the search button. You can locate her at the upper right hand corner. Please don't hesitate to call on her for aid in finding threads on the topic you are interested in before creating your own. You can find a couple of relevant threads here and here. You can probably find others as well. Now, on to the topic at hand: "But history and current events are full of examples of men who prey on other men and often survive quite well." By survival here, Rand is talking about long range survival qua man. "But stealing from productive men is hardly an impossibility, in the sense that sprouting roots on one’s feet and leaves on one’s hands is." Stealing is not impossible, but stealing and surviving as described above is. Your second point "But a general decline in productivity does not necessarily bring about the destruction of the slave-owner or the dictator" is really the same issue. Briefly, the reason that this is so is that man must reason to survive. Unlike animals, man has no automatic means of doing so. The use of force is clearly not compatible with reason. In fact, it is the negation of reason. While instances of the use of force may not result in immediate death, they are a step towards it. It appears that you may be struggling with the concept of principled action. Clearly, you must understand why you should act on principle before you can go about determining what those principles are. Therefore, I recommend listening to Leonard Peikoff's lecture entitled "Why Act on Principle?" You can access it for free at the registered users page of aynrand.org here: http://www.aynrand.org/site/UserLogin?NEXT...e%3Dreg_welcome
  16. Craig Biddle will be lecturing at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin on March 9th, 2007 @ 7:00 PM. The topic will be: "Ayn Rand's Morality of Selfishness: An Introduction to Objectivist Ethics"
  17. I was just about to post exactly what sNerd said. Edit: Recent post lists obtained at the same time, obviously.
  18. How many times have you clicked on a topic on the main page under "recent posts" or on the RSS only to find that it is a spam or troll thread? How about omitting posts in the trash can from these, or giving them some type of notation? Example: "TC: Come buy my widgets @ widgets.com!" Edit: topic title was too long and got cut off
  19. IGNORED! j/k ... sonic is good too but I haven't played sonic since gamegear
  20. You meant favorite video games? Not a huge gamer, but ... Mario Games Mariokart FIFA Soccer, which is odd because I generally don't like sports games or soccer Final Fantasy, especially tactics Ultima Online (Siege Perilous) Civilization IV ... I'd probably enjoy similar games if I played them, both Sid Meier titles ... and games of a similar TYPE i.e. rome total war, rise of nations, etc 1) Zelda, all of 'em
  21. Thanks, James. Dr. Brook is lucid as usual. You're not kidding James ... Mr. Finkle: "I don't see the individual rights as superseding community rights ... the idea ... is abhorrent to me. ... If you can not pay for a meals on wheels program or police and fire services because there is no tax base left in a community, I argue that it is the responsibility of the local leadership to figure out how to pay for those services first, and if it means TRAMPLING on somebodies personal property rights, then TRAMPLE on them." I had to hit the pause button after I heard this. I don't know how, but no matter how many times I hear things like this I am still momentarily stunned every time. I started writing a reply to Mr. Finkle's arguments, but quickly discovered I'd have gone on for pages and pages. Mr Finkle has a strongly malevolent outlook and has fallen hard for the practical side of the false dichotomy of the moral vs the practical.
  22. In this case, this seems like a bad idea. I think there is a pretty good chance someone actually uses that address.
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