MisterSwig

And to echo myself, you again have completely ignored the prior arguments I have already made in favor of border security and immigration control. I can't force you to consider them. But I can claim to have made an argument, because I did.

I would also include spies. If there is a valid concern (circumstantial or direct evidence) that someone is trying to take state secrets to another country, I believe they should be held and investigated.

I wonder if this recent topic shift to immigration can be split and moved to its own thread in a political forum? It's a shame that it's being buried at the end of this one. I propose splitting it here at EC's post. http://forum.objectivismonline.com/index.php?/topic/31369-the-case-for-open-objectivism/&do=findComment&comment=356997

You seem to think it's my job to figure out the technical details of the screening process. That is the job of politicians and security professionals tasked with solving the problem. In general, though, the purpose of screening would be to identify the clear and obvious threats. We especially want to know if some sworn enemy is trying to cross the border with weapons. Also, if someone lies during their interview, for example, then maybe they escape detection. Just because the system isn't perfectly ideal, that's not an argument against trying your best to keep out the threats. But in this particular case we can take additional measures to control for the possibility of liars. If we are at war (or in a conflict) with a certain group of people and expect some of them to lie to us, then perhaps we should subject them to additional levels of security, such as psychological examinations, lie detector tests, a search of their social media activity, etc. But, again, these technical details are best left to professionals. In my prior posts I only tried to provide the philosophical justification for such a security system as border control.

No, I gave Eiuol an explanation of what I mean by "objective threat." You completely ignored my argument prior to that post.

Okay, let's imagine that Logos is the laws of physics, and it's not a metaphysical god. Would it actually be "laws" (plural) or a single law (Grand Unified Theory?) of which we now only understand parts? If the Logos is multiple laws, are they all equally important, or of varying importance? Is there an order to them? Supposing there is only one law, has it remained unchanged through all time, or is it capable of changing? If it changes, what might be the cause of this change?

I was addressing Intrinsicist because I don't agree with him and wanted to see if he would address my prior criticism of the Logos idea. If you have any new thoughts on universals, that might be something for us to discuss here. Though I think we exhausted that topic last year. It probably wouldn't be productive for us to talk about the Logos, since neither one of us believes in it. However, I am generally curious about this effort by people like Intrinsicist to convince us that the Logos is an irrefutable fact. I'm noticing this sort of idealism being applied in other threads about morality and politics too. I'd like to understand it better, and see if it goes any deeper than the Logos.

There are sedition laws. I believe it's still illegal to advocate overthrowing the government.

Here's the thing: an objective threat is not an intrinsic threat. So it would have to be identified in whatever context applied to your particular situation. In our current situation, I think we should screen immigrants for at least contagious diseases, criminal history, and anti-American beliefs. Given our conflict with Islamic terrorists, it might also be proper to keep out Muslims from certain nations, or investigate them more closely than non-Muslims. As for Mexicans, I don't see a reason for special scrutiny, except maybe checking for ties with violent drug cartels.

I did not base my argument on that. I see immigration laws and border control as public safety measures, intended to protect individual rights. Let's imagine that there were no government, and we lived in a small frontier settlement. We would have to worry much more about our general safety. Thus, it would be appropriate and right for us to organize like-minded folk and to initiate security patrols of the settlement's boundaries. We'd want to stop and question strangers before permitting them to get close to the heart of our community. Extend that scenario to a nation with a government, and we get a large security agency devoted to controlling the entire border. Its mandate is not based on violating your rights. On the contrary, it's based on protecting them. All rights are held within a context. The right to free association is held within the context of the society or nation which protects that right for you. Our government therefore has no obligation to protect or respect your desire to associate with someone from another country. It must first determine whether that foreigner represents an objective threat to the general welfare of the citizens it protects. And only after some vetting at the border can such a determination be made.

Maybe you should stop eating the neighbor's pets and order some pizza delivery instead.

I do claim that right. If your visitors represent an objective disturbance or threat to my life, I'm going to call the cops on you.

Restricting immigration can be compared to restricting visitors or occupants of your house. If you value your life and your valuable things, you should keep out people with contagious diseases, people who believe what's yours is theirs, and people who are so dumb that they can't be trusted with sharp objects and matches. Letting in such people, especially without any protective measures in place, is immoral, because you are not only irrationally endangering your own life, you are also unnecessarily putting your family members' lives at risk. This right to secure and protect one's own life and home is what we extend to the government, in allowing them to secure our nation and its borders. And if we don't like the immigration policy our current representatives support, then we need to replace them with representatives more aligned with our views on security.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been appearing on TV claiming that we should not dismiss her political ideas on practical, economic grounds, because her goals are moral. Objectivists easily see through this garbage, but for our non-Objectivist friends, I offer some thoughts on how to counter socialists like Ocasio-Cortez. First of all, avoid doing what Matt Christiansen just did. He is trying to push Ocasio-Cortez off the moral high ground. He makes the same attacks as most anti-socialists (historically socialism doesn't produce positive results, and it's analogous to theft, etc.), but he also attempts to describe his own view of morality. Ah, but Ocasio-Cortez is indeed making a claim on other people's property and rights. She makes this claim in the name of the social good over the personal good. And it's going to be impossible for Christiansen to take the moral high ground while completely ignoring the moral high ground. All that bluster about "nobody owns your stuff but you", that's not an attack on the enemy's moral high ground. It's not even a skirmish along the baseline, which is the principle of altruism. If you really want to stop socialists like Ocasio-Cortez, stop wasting effort and time on the moral high ground, and join the egoists' battle against the baseline! For nobody keeps the high ground without first gaining and maintaining the baseline.

There might be an argument for restricting immigration based on individual IQ, but not racial IQ. In the future, if we discover that a certain IQ is necessary to understand the political principles of a nation, then perhaps those with insufficient IQ should not be made citizens. (We already kind of do this with a citizenship test.) Also I could concoct emergency situations in which an IQ policy might be of critical importance. For example, if the survival of the country depended on genius-level problem-solving during a war or other crisis, then priority for citizenship should be given to genius-level immigrants.

The issue I have with your rhetoric is that you assume the existence of racial IQ while attempting to argue against applying it to immigration. You say you want to widen Azrael's thinking, but from my vantage point, it looks like he has narrowed yours instead. Do you truly believe that racial IQ exists?

As long as the robot self-identifies as a human, I'm sure it would be allowed.

Not according to Intrinsicist, who believes that the Logos is only a part of what defines God. He believes the Logos is "rationally irrefutable," and I'm genuinely interested in whether he has convinced any Objectivists, who, as you well-know, are very much pro-rationally irrefutable arguments.

Is it my imagination, or did a lame thread about Open Objectivism turn into another analysis of racial IQ? It strikes me how similar some Open Objectivists are to idealists. They seem to believe that there is an ideal kind of Objectivism apart from Rand's version. As if Rand's Objectivism were a mere imperfect example of the yet undiscovered ideal form. Instead of applying Objectivism and creating one's own ideas, they argue that we should instead "amend and complete the system," because the first manifestation was flawed and lacking. Such rhetoric is also applied to segregation. Humanity's first attempt was not ideal, because it was based on skin color alone. What we really need, they argue, is segregation based on race and IQ combined.

They have the same exact profile picture. Maybe we're dealing with a self-replicating bot from Logos Land.

A reminder that I addressed your belief in the Logos (metaphysical idealism) seven months before you finally admitted to believing in it. I must be a psychic! Have you made any progress convincing Objectivists of the reality of the Logos?

Let's not forget the other targets of 9/11: the Pentagon and the White House.

Circumstantial evidence points to an orchestrated effort to remove Debbie Wasserman Schultz and her friends in the DNC. People try to link the DNC email theft to an attack on Hillary, but it was aimed at the DNC leadership, and resulted in the resignations of several top DNC officials. The stolen emails were dated up to May 25, 2016, which happened to be during the very vocal campaign to undermine DWS's position as DNC chair. Consider this CNN article, DNC Chair On Thin Ice, which was published (coincidentally?) on May 25, and near the end cites three anonymous "Democrats with ties to the party's power centers." Two months later DWS was gone, indeed, after a very "messy" ordeal during the national convention. And her departure was very much seen as a sacrifice to Bernie's altar. Hillary was then immediately allowed to hire DWS for her campaign, and Bernie supported Hillary. On the surface the Party was one big, happy family again. So, I guess the Democrats should be thanking the Russian hackers for intervening and helping get rid of unwanted Party leaders who might have cost Hillary even more Berniebot votes in November.

How do you get from "we act based on mental entities" to "mental entities have causal power over decisions"? If I act based on what my girlfriend tells me, does that mean she has causal power over my decisions? Or does it mean she has influence over me? If I were willing to accept the consequences, I could simply ignore my girlfriend. Likewise, I could ignore my mental entities. I don't have to do everything that pops into my head. Or even everything I want to do. Right now I want to go have a meal, but I could starve myself for a couple days before hunger pain would finally compel me to find some food. So, aren't mental entities more influential than causal when it comes to volitional action?

You present an example (the abyss) where the subject's life depends on the choice, and he knows the life-saving option (don't take a step forward). But what if he doesn't know the correct choice? What if he's stuck on an island and manages to build a makeshift rowboat. However, he doesn't know which direction is the mainland. So does he head toward the rising sun, the setting sun, or something in between? And what if his life does not depend on the choice? Let's say he's sitting at a table preparing to eat at a restaurant. On his plate are a steak, mashed potatoes, and asparagus. They all look very good. Which item does he taste first?