All Activity

He's not a person who reads, and we know this. He has major narcissistic tendencies, and one of those is exaggerating about the truth of things habitually. Plus identifying with Roark isn't even a quote, so we don't even know if he identified Roark by name. For reference: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/04/11/donald-trump-interview-elections-2016-ayn-rand-vp-pick-politics-column/82899566/ I thought that Trump failed to display any wit or ingenuity in his responses. The whole thing was mostly interruptions, and proceeded to get worse. So, I wouldn't call it beast mode at all

At the first presidential debate Joe Biden and Chris Wallace started interrupting President Trump soon after the initial round of two-minute answers. Trump then went into beast mode, like any self-respecting man might do who was being attacked from both directions. He verbally smashed Biden like an action hero smashing henchmen in order to reach the big villain. "Biden as henchman" is an apt analogy, I think, because he is just a little man with little ideas. He's a weak human shield for the pack of thirsty socialists peeking over his shoulder. Listening to Biden debate was like watching

Advocates of renewables may also ignore subsidies. This article says: “Renewables are muscling in on natural gas as the preferred choice for new electricity generation. In fact, according to RMI, what happened to coal is now happening to gas. What is needed, the organization argues, is a move away from the monopoly markets that have been the norm in the utility industry for more than 100 years and toward more open competition. Because when renewables compete head to head with thermal generation, they win hands down 95% of the time.” However, there isn’t one word about subsidies. “Subsidi

Advocates of unreliable wind and solar energy frequently make the claim that these two energy sources are "cheaper" than fossil fuels -- as if countless individuals with power bills would fail to notice. (They do, but not because they are stupid. Read on.) A recent such claim popped up on a tech news aggregator I frequent, and drew a pretty decent comment in reply. The reply is, in part: Image by Annie Spratt, via Unsplash, license. These comparisons solely account for the production costs and not for the system costs of solar energy and are therefore completely useless. Solar panels w

Maybe the following Venn diagrams will help. Venn diagrams offer a means of categorizing things as compatible or incompatible, i.e. mutually exclusive. “No conflicts of interest” translates to only mutually beneficial relations (trade, cooperation). The top set of two circles depicts what I construe as Rand’s perspective on conflicts of interest, and in effect, mutually beneficial relations. I was quite charitable to Rand to include ‘no COI’ in the right circle, since she nowhere endorsed it in her essay The “Conflicts” of Men’s Interests. She wrote, “Only an irrationalist … exists

Black Rednecks and White Liberals #1 Black Rednecks and White Liberals #2

I honestly wish I could do it, because it is nerve wracking for me. I just question the wisdom. You may have more sources of information than I do, that may allow you to be less "dependent" in a sense. I really learnt alot from the Wolf program from Yaron, but his comments about "look at how he sneers", " he's a horrible person", I ignore. But all in all, I have also learnt a lot from Wolf in his Libertarian debate at Soho, about the problems with Crony Capitalism. So I feel "ignore" has to be carefully qualified. Ignore when you see X, Y and Z. Rather than stay away, you can figure it ou

I was under the impression that you were an admirer because I see 2046 in the chat system. Agreed Rand herself started this with the excommunications that would routinely happen. And then it continued with the institute. But I have discounted that, as I believe most of us have. The work that she has done stands on its own. In that sense I would agree, one can ignore the noise around her. Having said that ... how would any of us have known that she had major character flaws if we had ignored all those people around her. The reason I bring this up is that we have no choice a

That and the primary purpose of most of these people is to channel new converts into the Objectivist lecture/books/course/conference/membership ecosystem, which is the primary monetization enterprise, aside from convincing rich people to donate money to them. I'd just recommend steering clear of them altogether, there's only a few of them that are even good at what they do. Let's take a look at the following propositions that DO mentioned: 1. The facts and logic always lead to only one conclusion 2. If two people come to different conclusions, then one if them has betrayed reaso

Of course, because Branden has a PhD in psychology and Peikoff does not. But more to the point of what you are saying, neither Peikoff nor Brook are good public speakers. They are not experts in politics. Brook is quite easy to ignore, both because he is no philosophy expert and also because he speaks poorly. Peikoff is great about making Objectivism easier to comprehend, and how to think better, but I think he's frequently incorrect about anything outside philosophy that he has talked about publicly (especially practical matters of your day-to-day life when he had his Q&A podcast).

Ignoring is not impossible, it's just not preferred. As in, it is not impossible to ignore them, I value their opinion. Problem is, as you say they are human and they make mistakes. Ogden's signal to noise ratio is my complaint. I want them to cut the noise, the muddying the water, the confusion they insert in the discussion. I wanted Yaron's speech on Wolf the socialist (and Wolf is frightening) but I meet people like Wolf all the time and I learn from Yaron how to counter things. I also learn how distracting some of Yaron's emotional comments are (and to make sure to not inclu

Why can't you ignore it? What would happen if you'd never heard of either men?

I would add that it's a giant waste of everyone's time. It's also embarrassing, ironic, and sad for a group of people supposedly dedicated to reason to instead engage in emotionalist nitpicking, worse still to justify their behavior in the name of others' supposed reason violations. I wonder how many Objectivists have actually "betrayed" reason, and what that even looked like. That's some serious Toohey-level shit I doubt most people are even capable of doing, and shouldn't the response then be a fierce focus on the faulty reasoning, not the person spouting the nonsense? More likely, peop

One way or the other isn't it via induction? (experiencing some form of repeating "essence") The other question that comes to mind, is there is the "valid" or "validated" concept, vs. just a concept. Or is there no difference? Even memorization is going to involve repetition, artificial repetition, not exactly inference but forced association vs. "figured out/concluded". As far as I can remember, the fundamental question about formation of concepts (from a normative perspective) was how many times do you have to see it for it to be valid. Is that correct?

The point that I have been focusing on is the subtle difference between concept formation (so-named in Objectivism) and concept-acquisition (what I’m saying is not part of ITOE or OPAR, and I’m not sure about secondary writings on the topic – there is no such thing as “concept-acquisition” in Objectivism). There are two big questions: “What is the proper means of forming concepts?”, and “What are the actual methods that men use to learn existing concepts?”. In our discussion, I pointed to the difference between the abstract nature of logic and knowledge, versus the practical methods of gaining

Rule #1 has been around for a while. Rule #2 is being introduced as of ASME Y14.5-2018. Perfect form at Maximum Material Condition fell under Rule #1. Exceptions to Rule #1 could be stipulated in a note (with a few exceptions as stated in the standard.) Rule #2 gets implemented 36 years after ANSI Y14.5m-1982 had been introduced. Establishing RFS (regardless of feature size) and RMB (regardless of feature boundary) as default states explicitly a principle that had been implicit at the inception. I graduated from high school in 1979. I entered into the field of drafting shortl

SUBSECTION HEADINGS: (click on photo)

I like one of the points Onkar Ghate made in his Study of Galt's Speech. The patience exercised on the behalf of the strikers. Consider the passages leading up to what Hugh Akston told Dagny: " "Consider the reasons which make us certain that we are right," said Hugh Akston, "but not the fact that we are certain. If you are not convinced, ignore our certainty. Don't be tempted to substitute our judgment for your own." If someone does not agree with me, and I am right, why does the other guy have to have abandoned reason, or even be irrational. In fact, my being right (or anyone else'

A headline posted on RealClearHoldings that brought back recollections of a former 'companion' in life. Talk Radio Is Turning Millions of Americans Into Conservatives Mark Scott was a three hour show. When the Rush Limbaugh Show got syndicated, Mark voiced his displeasure that the marketers selected "Talent on loan from God", and that the years he spent developing his niche would likely remain a niche in the marketplace. The relevant gist of this article was: The 15 top shows, classified as conservative, play for 3 hours per day is 45 hours. Multiply that time 5 days a week. Thi

I’ve thought about this off and on for a couple of decade, after I discovered that there exist rifts. Let’s take a bigger rift for contrast: the division between Objectivists and outpoken militant Kantian nihilists, awoke progressives, or the religious right, especially strangers. I view them as an evil that I should work against for the sake of my own survival qua man (being only slightly hyperbolic). The reason is that the consequences of these philosophical errors are not trivial. The destruction wrought by the disintegrationists over the past 50 years is palpable, and over the past 10 year

I suppose it may be a false expectation that things have been thought through, "rational", so the bickering has been ringed out of it. The chaos and bickering in nascent, non-thought out philosophies, is standard, expected and not finding solutions is par for the course. Objectivism, certainly in abstract areas, areas that Boydston mentioned is pretty solid and complete. There is no bickering there. The more concrete on gets, i.e. practical application, it starts looking almost like all previously validated principles are now suspect. As far as ignoring goes, I can't simply

Not to derail this topic, but what actual affect does any Objectivist rift have on your life? Or on the effectiveness of Objectivism as a philosophy? How would any negative outcome from the petty bickering between Objectivists compare to China's censoring of the internet, or Russia's disappearing of political independents, or the American welfare state? As far as I have seen, bickering between Objectivists is no different from regular old bickering - it only hurts those involved, it helps no one, and it's best to just ignore it completely. There's nothing special about "philosophic" bicke

Elections are a reminder that we have the power of choice. When the focus is on how bad the 'choices' are (Trump/Biden), instead of seeking to discover why election after election provides 'the lesser of two evils', the focus usually boils down to analyzing down to the minutia of what is right/wrong with this or that particular candidate. Lately, as I've listened and re-listened to Galt's Speech while cutting the grass or working out at the gym, I've noticed her emphasis, when directed toward such, is not so much on the irrational as it is honed in on identifying those who have abandoned

I just wonder if the purges are going to start again at the Ayn Rand institute. I guess time will tell. Although the Branden thing was a major hit. Objectivists had to take sides etc.. Hopefully you are right about this. It certainly is the philosophy that has effected me the most and I support, but times like these requires some adaptation that I wish was not required.

ET, No. What is significant about Objectivism was not affected in a detrimental way by the split between Rand and Branden, not by Rand morally condemning me and others devoting our after-hours to working for the Libertarian Party, not by N. Branden condemning gay Objectivist-types as being by their gayness of low self-esteem, and not by the split between Peikoff and Kelley. There will always be hucksters with money who try to get votes by saying “I like Ayn Rand” etc. The good news is that overwhelmingly Americans are not nitwits. And that is so all the more for people who read and a