dhthomps

Extra information: The talk should be ~40-50 minutes with an open Q&A afterwards.

The Students of Objectivism at Georgia Tech will be hosting an event that is free and open to the public. No RSVP is required. Capitalism Without Guilt: The Moral Case for Freedom Who: Dr. Yaron Brook, president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute When: Tuesday, November 3 at 7:00pm Where: Instructional Center (IC), Room 105, 759 Ferst Dr. NW, Atlanta, GA 30318 Description: Many regard the financial crisis as a failure of the free market and “greedy” businessmen. But is capitalism really to blame for our current economic mess? In this talk Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, will argue that today’s crisis is a failure of the un-free market. Massive government intervention, from Washington’s affordable housing crusade, via Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to the Federal Reserve’s easy-money policies, laid the groundwork for the crisis. Dr. Brook will go on to evaluate the government’s response to the crisis and suggest alternatives. Dr. Brook also will explain why the free market has taken the blame for a crisis caused by government intervention. While most people are quick to blame capitalism for any evil because it encourages selfishness and rewards the profit motive, Dr. Brook will argue that these traits are precisely what make capitalism a moral system. Contact the club for more information: [email protected] or just reply to this thread Event flyer attached. GT__20Brook_2011.3.09.pdf

My philosophical path was also from buddhism to objectivism (with a bunch of liberal academia in the middle). I eventually rejected the Buddhist world view but continue to practice meditation for the same reasons many people have listed here. The act of concentrating on your breath (breath meditation), walking (walking meditation), or any other action (what most people just refer to as concentration or focus) is just a mindfulness exercise. I value being able to focus on the task at hand, and therefore increasing my productivity. I casually practice meditation, especially when stressed or overwhelmed. You don't NEED to meditate to build up concentration, but similar to practicing anything it's often easier to do it away from distractions. Additionally, axiomatic is completely correct. If you're curious about many of the conclusions drawn from some of the "premises" meditation provides to religion try listening to zencast.org or 21st century buddhism. To paraphrase it's something like "you see how clear your thinking is now? therefore nothing matters and we're all one big entity."

I value the physical health of my body as much, if not more, than productivity. Therefore I sleep between 7 and 9 hours a night. There are nights when I break these rules such as midterms, but I've made the conscious decision to rank sleep highly in my personal priorities.

We viewed this lecture today (3/02/09) at the weekly meeting of the Georgia Tech Objectivist Club (unofficial, there is no official one as of yet). What does John Allison mean about the failure of mathematical models? Is he referring only to contemporary, modern, or popular mathematical models? He specifically calls out normalized financial models that inherently under represent the far reaches of the probability distribution, but I doubt that BB&T ignores modern financial mathematical models.

I've had personal experience relapsing into habitual video game playing during spells of boredom in my life as well. Usually about halfway through the semester after the grind of midterms. There is achievement in many things, but you have to consider why you desire this achievement. If your goal is to "have a good time" then by all means continue to pursue the hobby, but if after rationally considering your values you find that other things are more important to you the video game hobby will likely fall to the way side. Edit: I would also like to add that DaveOdden's advice is excellent and I wish I had read the advice about 5 years ago.

I've personally tried to "manage this dichotomy" by trying to forget it. Similar to career choices and sexual relationships, friendship should be an off shoot from your values, not a value in and of itself. Not raising your standards, but now in accordance with your true standards. Depends on the situation. If I really like conversations with my boss, and he introduces me to such and such because we are really friends then I would call it moral. If I evade the idea that I'm not being myself and continue to barrage my boss with a person that isn't me, and therefore fake person gets promoted (if your boss is this gullible change companies) then I would consider it immoral.

The moral advantages of working at a private school are outweighed (in my opinion) by the average pay being significantly less at private schools. As a side there are some private schools that pay well more than a public school, and it is my eventual goal to find employment at such an institution.

I am interested in other's thoughts about this topic. In the next year I will start work on my master's in education, my undergrad is in nuclear engineering. I aspire to found a private school, but from my analysis the best job in association with my values is teaching secondary high school (physics) for a number of years. I had an unrefined/casual conclusion similar to Odden's, that as long as I wasn't the police or lawmaker forcing the school attendance, I could teach at that school and still live in accordance with morality. Am I in denial?

Thank you for the link.

My tone was not meant to be accusatory. I re-read my post and can't recognize where you drew this conclusion but I am very open to constructive criticism. This wouldn't be the first time my intended meaning or tone got lost in the written word. I accept your premise that it was "malevolent and destructive in intent", and that it "snarked at any kind of benevolence, affirmation of the beauty of life". But I don't draw the same conclusion that a bad motive/intent/meaning makes for a bad movie. On the contrary, if the Coen brothers WANTED you to be sad or disgusted and they succeeded would it not be a good movie? For example if the best directors, actors, actresses, etc joined forces to make the most stunning film advocating socialism I would be disgusted at the moral of the story, but would not write it off as a bad movie. The acting, cinematography, editing, sound, etc could still be first-rate.

I thoroughly enjoyed the movie experience. I usually judge a movie initially by how well it keeps my attention/focus and the Coen brothers do this masterfully. Movie-making: 10 out of 10 Moral of the story: Depressing The topic on this thread seems to be veering towards something along these lines: can a work of art have a theme of evil, sadness, etc and still be a "good" work of art. I'm not sure how we'd want to define good. From your first post Jaskin it seems like you don't enjoy looking at the sad side of humanity and, though the "moral of the story" is still being argued, the overall feeling of this film was a bleak one. Different strokes for different folks. I don't like all of my movies to have the good guys winning, the bad guys losing, and a positive moral to the story. Why? If I want to learn about the way the world should be I'll read AS. But I'm always curious to understand how others see it. Would the Coen brothers and I get along very well? Probably not. But the way they see the world and most importantly how they portray it artistically is well done. From the IMDB glossary: Mise-en-scene Literally translated as "what's put into the scene", this is the sum total of all factors affecting the artistic "look" or "feel" of a shot or scene. These can include shot selection, shot composition, production design and set decoration, as well as technical camera properties such as shutter speed, aperture, frame rate, and depth of field. Mise-en-scene is often contrasted with montage, where the artistic "look" of a scene is constructed through visual editing.

The idea that millions of Americans take Obama's word as scripture saddens me. The solution to our economic woes may end up being a revolution. Can you provide the link for the top quote?

Thanks for the responses. I'll try to center my arguments on individual rights next time and see where it leads. Today's status was [ME] is leaving a big carbon footprint. No bites yet.

Along with my new year's resolution of being more mindful of my words I've also resolved to partake in more activism. Not wholly unattributed to http://www.titosays.com/2009/01/why-be-activist.html from objectivismonline.net. I'd like to work on some LTE and more mainstream activism but I have to start somewhere and today offered that opportunity. My facebook status: [ME] is scared of socialism. [Friend]: If that is a reference to the current Obama administration, then you have a pretty loose definition of socialism. [Me]: In a 2005 commencement address, Obama described the conservative philosophy of government as “to give everyone one big refund on their government, divvy it up by individual portions, in the form of tax breaks, hand it out, and encourage everyone to use their share to go buy their own health care, their own retirement plan, their own child care, their own education, and so on. In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society. But in our past there has been another term for it, Social Darwinism, every man or woman for him or herself. It’s a tempting idea, because it doesn’t require much thought or ingenuity.“ Obama has rejected this free market vision of government, preferring to see the power of the state as something that can serve the public interest. According to Obama, ”We’re going to put more money into education than we have. WE have to invest in human capital.“ [ME]: And government "temporary" ownership of banking institutions and insurance companies is socialism bordering on fascism. Socialism - a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole. I would argue that most people's definition of socialism is too forgiving. [Friend]: The notion that the temporary assistance provided by a democratically elected government to restore the economic quagmire initiated by profit-driven corporations borders on fascism is certainly an exaggeration; and I find your argument unpatriotic, disheartening and irreverent to a nation that has provided us all with so much. [ME]: "temporary assistance" to whom? with whose money? and by what right? this is not a roll government should fill "economic quagmire initiated by profit-driven corporations" i urge you to rethink this premise; the "quagmire" has been driven by our regulated economy, a free market would works its way out of a recession naturally "unpatriotic" what is more patriotic than supporting capitalism and arguing for my rights? i don't think this rational conversation needs to make its way into personal insults, I've thoroughly enjoyed the dialogue so far Since I have had a similar conversation before I wanted to ask the community two questions: 1) Do you see any flaws in my argument? Along the same lines and probably more importantly do you see any major points I missed? 2) Often when I bring up a topic my friends respond to me "broadly", for example: "the free market doesn't work". No premises, just conclusions. From an activist point of view how do you approach this situation? Do you try to focus the conversation to a topic, respond in a broad/general statements, or other strategy? 3) If you had 30 seconds to formulate an argument against socialism in casual conversation what do you think would carry the most bang for its buck I keep my tone level, and I will sometimes sugarcoat sentences if I consider the friend worth keeping. But in general my major goal is to have others rethink liberal premises they take for granted.