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20 years ago, I came back from my internship at the Ayn Rand Institute's OCON conference excited to meet other Objectivists. This was a year before Facebook when IRC Chat was still the most popular venue for Objectivists to chat. So I decided to start my own Objectivism Forum - Objectivism (then ) Here is the post announcing the new site: After I graduated college in 2004, I handed off management to a series of admins and moderators, continuing to this day. I've continued to host the forum over that time, accumulating the following totals: 10,160 members 31,374 discussions 337,656 posts The site was most popular for the first few years, hosting events such as a live chat with Onkar Ghate, all sorts of features like The Objectivist Metablog, hosting for Ayn Rand clubs, event calendars, hosted email accounts, photo galleries, and much more. At live events, we would have hundreds of people participating and hundreds of posts per day. After Facebook became popular in 2009, traffic dropped off a lot, but as you can see, the site is still active today.

If you are stuck on the idea that it was not an insurrection, I can grant you that. But if you are arguing that in a country where there is still free speech (even if eroded), that violence is okay, then you're glamorizing chaos. There are protests and then there are violent protests. Once chaos starts, an orderly shift toward respect for rights does NOT happen. I have lived through a violent revolution, the very best people do not, in fact, rise to the top.

Stephen There were hundreds of thousands of people in DC that day and prior. There were numerous rallies and events , there was even a permitted rally at the Capitol , the one Trump mentions in his speech. Do you honestly believe all the attendees of these events we intent on committing an unarmed insurrection, but only a few in comparison ‘made it in’ , but before they could round up the legislators and fashion the gallows , the dear leader commanded them to stand down? Their murderous plot abandoned? I don’t doubt there were some in the group who may have planned and carried out creating mayhem , but identifying whatever happened that day as the carrying out of a planned insurrection is more than ‘ a little much’. No one ‘stood down’ , the riot ended. Two protesters/rioters died , the day’s official proceedings were delayed , it was a shit show , not an insurrection.

Given the specific formalization of QM as accepted I would suspect other kinds of numbers as operators or coefficients to the so-called “states” would be improper somehow. I played around with quaternions, more specifically a sort of Mandelbrot generalization to render fractals on a … believe it or not… Amiga computer back in the day. I believe there are multiple imaginary bases i j and k, each squared is -1 but the product of any two is the other (positive or negative depending on the order of multiplication)

Ah yes, this is the convention of using a complex refractive index in calculations to take into account absorption. Quite a convenient use of complex numbers, relating incident light to absorption of light in the material as a function of depth.

As a non mathematical layperson, it 'feels' like all the maths can describe how much and illustrate a lot of the 'how' precisely by delineating the 'much' , but can not answer any 'why' and especially when 'why' s are not appropriate in a query.

Institutes like ARI and TAS follow a specific 'marketing plan', so I think it's worth considering what can and cannot be achieved by those plans. For the rest of us, who didn't choose a career in promoting Objectivism, I wholly agree with you on simply doing our thing and enjoying life. History abounds with philosopher-writers: Schiller, Dostoevsky, Sartre, Camus are prime examples. I noticed that many of them have at least one organization attached to their name. I think the Ayn Rand Institute is exactly that: an organization dedicated to promoting Ayn Rand's work - of which Objectivism is but one strand among many. Such an organization can expect precisely what, for example, the Albert Camus Society can expect: bringing together veteran fans, attracting a few new ones, and encouraging new scholarly research. In this respect, I think the Atlas Society (the open-system advocate) is different from ARI. Imagine that a few intellectuals took it upon themselves to expand the philosophy of Camus. Well, you obviously can't do that, because Camus is Camus. So I think that TAS is, in fact, offering an alternative to Rand's system-as-she-left-it. (Of course, offering such an alternative is compatible with promoting Ayn Rand the philosopher-writer). If, let's say, 10% of the population read Camus, quoted Camus, attended lectures on Camus every summer, adopted his terminology verbatim, imitated his manner of acting, and excommunicated various individuals, what would we call that? A cult, or a fanatical fan base. Human knowledge is a decentralized business. People can accept Camus' ideas without liking his novels or haircut. No one is commiting a folly by choosing to never read Camus himself, and relying instead on accurate presentations by other authors. This is what it means for knowledge to successfully 'infect' the world. Science and philosophy cannot have Jesus-figures. Anyone who is committed to promoting Objectivism should imagine the following scenario: a world where everybody learns Objectivist ideas from K-pop and TV dramas, but barely anyone has heard of Atlas Shrugged and Ayn Rand. If said promoters find no problem with this picture, there's a high chance they're committed to spreading the philosophy, rather than to spreading Ayn Rand's writings.

Hi Stephen, You wrote, “I'd say that Rand's neglect of the "you," such as I think true to romantic love, as in my second paragraph above, was an error, specifically, a not fully evicting yet the egocentric from the kingdom of self-esteem." About “evicting…the egocentric”: One who doesn’t care about friends and beloved is not “egocentric” - just as one who disrespects or violates the rights of another isn’t “selfish”. In both cases, they disrespect and subvert the integrity of their own selves and fail to value and care for the friends and beloved they claim to cherish. When the “I” doesn’t care for the “you” in “I love you”, the “I” is primarily not caring about the “I”; only as consequence that the “I” doesn’t care about the “you” (or the "I" is being insincere about loving the "you"). Without first knowing and caring about the “I”, one couldn’t truly know which “you” complements the “I” and is deserving of love. About Ayn Rand’s “neglect of the ‘you’”: it doesn’t exist – as vividly shown in her art, e.g., in the love between Dagny and Galt, Roark and Dominique, Roark and Wynand, Francisco for Rearden, Rearden for Wet Nurse, and Roark for Mallory. Ayn Rand, as a person, is extraordinarily benevolent and loving, as reported by a myriad of friends who knew her. (See books, 100 Voices, Facets of Ayn Rand, Letters of Ayn Rand; and in refutation of Brandens’ memoirs, see The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics.) In Ayn Rand’s own words (from “The Ethics of Emergencies”, in Virtue of Selfishness😞 ---- “Love and friendship are profoundly personal, selfish values: love is an expression and assertion of self-esteem, a response to one's own values in the person of another. One gains a profoundly personal, selfish joy from the mere existence of the person one loves. It is one's own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns and derives from love.” “Any action that a man undertakes for the benefit of those he loves is not a sacrifice if, in the hierarchy of his values, in the total context of the choices open to him, it achieves that which is of greatest personal (and rational) importance to him.” “The proper method of judging when or whether one should help another person is by reference to one's own rational self-interest and one's own hierarchy of values: the time, money or effort one gives or the risk one takes should be proportionate to the value of the person in relation to one's own happiness.” “The virtue involved in helping those one loves is not ‘selflessness' or ‘sacrifice’, but integrity. Integrity is loyalty to one's convictions and values; it is the policy of acting in accordance with one's values, of expressing, upholding and translating them into practical reality. If a man professes to love a woman, yet his actions are indifferent, inimical or damaging to her, it is his lack of integrity that makes him immoral.” “The same principle applies to relationships among friends. If one's friend is in trouble, one should act to help him by whatever nonsacrificial means are appropriate. For instance, if one's friend is starving, it is not a sacrifice, but an act of integrity to give him money for food rather than buy some insignificant gadget for oneself, because his welfare is important in the scale of one's personal values. If the gadget means more than the friend's suffering, one had no business pretending to be his friend.” ----- As for her generalized love for humanity, Ayn Rand writes (in “The Goal of My Writing”, in Romantic Manifesto😞 ---- “It is a significant commentary on the present state of our culture that I have become the object of hatred, smears, denunciations, because I am famous as virtually the only novelist who has declared that her soul is not a sewer and neither are the souls of her characters, and neither is the soul of man. The motive and purpose of my writing can best be summed up by saying that if a dedication page were to precede the total of my work, it would read: To the glory of Man." ----

KyaryPamyu Among people I’ve known who have read Rand’s novels and were critical of them, it was because on about every page, she brings on some ideological or philosophical point. And either they find that a defect in literature as literature or they are grabbed by the ideas, and if they don’t like them, they start ridiculing the characters and story as replacement for arguing out the ideas. For many years, people I met who responded positively to Rand’s novels and ideas were one or two standard deviations above average intelligence. Since the handy internet has come about, I’ve gotten to see the lower levels who respond positively and who are a little sad in their limited ability to stick with reasoning and to make or adopt a consistent and well-understood philosophy of life for themselves. I do not “get” talk about how to market the philosophy. What is the purpose? Trying to make the world a better place? I don’t think that is actually a sensible goal in life. Just making your own life and the lives of others as individuals better seems the sensible thing to me. But then one’s focus is on individuals one gets to know and interact with as individual persons, not their falling into statistical groups for what looks like political hopes, which is sensibly a second-thought concern in a well-lived life. I like the local focus of Henry Rearden. Make products. Find traders for it. His focus is on that work, for satisfaction and for making a lot of money. He attends also to persons who are not commercial traders such as the young government man Tony, whom Rearden inspires, and to the philosophical guy Francisco, who gives Rearden much psychological liberation, and of course, he attends to the with-benefits of that trader whose suit he gets into thinking about putting his hand under.

This is an essay by Roderick Long, a distinguished Aristotle scholar, that compares Rand with Hume, Plato, and Aristotle. http://www.atlassociety.org/sites/default/files/Reason_Value.pdf I have read the first four sections, and I thought the discussions of Hume and Plato were insightful. However, Long goes off the rails after that. First of all, he advocates coherentism. Now, coherentism can be done well, i.e., in a relatively benign form like Brand Blanshard's coherentism, where the goal is to integrate our observations into an all encompassing coherent system based on necessary connections in reality. Long's coherentism is not like that. He thinks that we should start with literally whatever we currently believe and try to figure out what the world is like based on that. He also doesn't really care about justifying his beliefs based on observation. For example, he notes that he doesn't know how to reduce his belief that the earth is round to observation, and uses that as evidence that we don't need to be able to reduce a belief to observation to be justified in believing it. He attributes this whole epistemology to Aristotle, which I regard as a major error, and then accuses Rand of being a Platonist because she thinks that our beliefs are only justified when they are reduced to observation - because reducing your beliefs to observation and then seeing that they are true is exactly like performing a mystical dialectic process that ends in an insight into the Form of the Good. So, I definitely recommend this essay for the summaries of Hume and Plato and the interesting relationships he draws between them, but be careful about what you take from the essay after that.

3/19/23 – Live link

One reason I think Rand in The Fountainhead wanted to emphasize the need for "I" in "I love you" is that at least in popular culture, it was ignored and should not be. In the arena of brotherly love, people will tell you they love you, even when they know nothing about you and don't have any interest in finding out anything about you or what you regard as important about you. I used to run into young evangelicals like that. Moreover, all they cared about you was that you were a sinner and needed to be saved. They often have erased in their conception of you that you are a definite self or that that is of any significance. In other words, they neither knew you nor respected you or your mind on matters of concern to them. It's a sort of desecration of the word and concept love. On the theological idea of agape, it is as you note, that that sort of love is routinely associated with the further idea of the Christ, come to be known as the Son of God, having to suffer and die, to somehow pay for moral failings of people undeserving of the sacrifice. (And perhaps, similarly, with Prometheus bringing fire because he loved man.) But I don't think that's the only way the idea is used within that tradition. God as creator is, I think, without addition, a creator from boundless overflowing love. On the human scale, in the secular arena, such a concept, without association of perverse sacrifice comes up in relation with human creators, as here. I'd say that Rand's neglect of the "you," such as I think true to romantic love, as in my second paragraph above, was an error, specifically, a not fully evicting yet the egocentric from the kingdom of self-esteem. A psychiatrist friend of Ayn Rand's has what seems to me a balanced, realistic view of love in friendship and in romance, at about 33:00–44:00 here.

Hi Stephen, Thanks for your good comments. You wrote, “…one must first be a definite self, and know what that is, and one must first also be able see another and care about seeing that other…” It’s true that, like the saying goes, “It takes two to tango”, and “I love you” inextricably joins “I” with “you”. Ayn Rand, in the prefacing quotation, does not deny that, but gives moral-psychological priority to the “I”. You wrote, “I don’t recall any writer advocating selfless love when it comes to romantic love.” To do so, to equate or to bind selfless love with romantic love, would be mutually contradictory (which is why I opposed the two in my precis). You seem to hold a favorable view of agape: as being a generalized, abstract love for humanity. Yet agape (in contrast to eros) is extolled by altruist ethics, such as the prevalent Judeo-Christian morality, as an unconditional, unearned, and unselfish love, a including "brotherly love". But "brotherly love”, if not based on some true chosen value to oneself, is really an “other-ly love” behind the cover of “br-”. Yes, Kant is an advocate of abject selflessness, of pure duty-bound, "commanded" love, love without any inclination or desire, indeed, love in spite of and because of disgust and aversion: “…love as an inclination cannot be commanded But beneficence from duty, when no inclination impels it and even when it is opposed by a natural and unconquerable aversion, is practical love, not pathological love; it resides In the will and not in the propensities of feeling, in principles of action and not in tender sympathy; and it alone can be commanded.” (Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, middle of First Section, ~p16)

The ICC just issued an arrest warrant for President Putin.

Monart, I take issue with some of the points in your stimulating reflection “Romantic Love vs Selfless Love.” In response to Rand’s “To say ‘I love you’, one must first know how to say ’I’” one should add “Also, one must first know how to say ‘you’”. That is, one must first be a definite self, and know what that is, and one must first also be able see another and care about seeing that other and want to boost the other and tune to the other and want to share seeing the world together and making a life together. I don’t recall any writer advocating selfless love when it comes to romantic love. If they say such love requires self-sacrifice to the other, I’ve not seen them ever mean anything but what I added in the preceding paragraph. And that is hardly self-sacrificial, neither in autonomy nor in selfish inclination (considering, for the latter, the selfish mutual enjoyment that is won). The place that selflessness and self-sacrifice and genuine altruism come up is in connection with brotherly love, including love for all human kind (leaving aside the great evil ones – NOKD). Those mistaken or misconceived virtues are not regularly a feature of the conception of agape as they are in conception of brotherly love. I love human kind, the individual mind, working alone or with others, and its creativity, in my lifetime and before I entered the scene. I love those things insofar as they may come after me. That seems a sort of agape love, and it does not require selflessness or self-sacrifice to have that, rather, it suggests, particularly in taking care for the "after me," a strong and overflowing self. On Kant I just want to mention (briefly, because I need to get back outside and work on a flagstone sidewalk I’m building) that love as an inclination could not be a source of any moral aspect of an activity (in his view). The inclinations-self gets trumped by the autonomy-of-will-self (one’s own will) as to any moral valence one might impute to an activity. To love your neighbor as yourself fails as a moral rule for Kant. He does seem to approve of a sort of intellectual love, which motivates behavior according with moral law which resides in one’s reason. He treats that reason and autonomy as ends in themselves, requiring no further ends to justify them. He never gets the realization that only life is an end in itself. And he looks for the wrong kind of necessity in moral norms, not realizing that life is the source of all value, meaning, or significance. Je suis Belle – Rodin

For me, a few examples: A B C D

I got unexpected data on a possible presidential candidate at a business advice blog, of all places yesterday. The following is from a high-ranking, nonreligious state employee who is feeling pressured to go along with public expressions of religious faith on the job:... aaaand here's something else I learned in the process of finding an image. (Image by Gage Skidmore, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)I'm pretty high up in my agency, which means I work directly with Governor Youngkin's staff a lot on public events: speeches, ribbon cuttings, announcements, meetings, etc. During his speeches, he and his wife repeatedly mention their Christian faith, and they speak as though the entire audience is Christian as well. Here's what bothers me. One of Governor Youngkin's habits is to open a public event or speech with a prayer (or a minister does it), heavily reference his relationship with Jesus Christ throughout his remarks, and request us to bow our heads and say "amen." In one instance, he said all of us at a public meeting were "created in God's image" and I was so uncomfortable and annoyed, but I hid my frustration. I refuse to bow my head or close my eyes or clasp my hands or say "amen" on command or applaud an anecdote about the power of believing in Jesus Christ... [bold added]The comment section is interesting in that the participants do explain that such behavior is regarded as normal or even expected of politicians from some parts of the country -- something I know from experience is, regrettably, true. That is no defense of such behavior, particularly of someone who may hope to become President. Indeed, I remember being annoyed enough with President Reagan for doing this sort of thing when I was a kid (and still religious) that I sarcastically called him Father Reagan. At best, as some of the Virginians noted, Youngkin is cynically playing to the religious base of the Republican party. That does not sweeten the deal, especially considering that Youngkin is also an anti-aboritionist. It is a shame to learn this: I have heard good things about Youngkin regarding education policy, an area in a parlous state today. -- CAV Link to Original

Thanks! Wonderful skill!

What a fine-spirit environment Objectivism Online has been for me (13 years) in communicating, in sharing life and the world!

Bravo to 20 years of Objectivism Online! So much history here. Twenty years - a blink of the eye, or an eternity.

Image by Max Chen, via Pexels, license.Back in 2020, California's voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 22 in response to the infamous AB-5 gig work ban that had been passed and signed into law by their legislature and governor not long before. Predictably, labor unions and other interests have challenged the measure in courts, with a state judge weighing in in August 2021. That ruling allowed the measure to remain in force. Most recently, a federal court has also ruled in favor of the proposition, holding that it is largely constitutional. Absent a successful appeal by the labor unions and their allies, companies like Uber and Lyft will thus not be forced to hire their contractors as employees -- an important legal distinction, given the burdensome obligations that would mean under current American and Californian labor laws. This is good news only in the short-term: The unions are considering an appeal, and the Biden Administration wants to federalize the very law that even Californians found intolerable. More concerning, there is no mention within the piece -- or in any other news story I can recall -- of the right to contract, of an individual to trade with others on whatever terms that individual and another party might deem mutually beneficial. The novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand once defined right succinctly as follows:The concept of a "right" pertains only to action -- specifically, to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men. [bold added]It is certainly no surprise that the pro-union side -- whose motivation is clearly to dictate the terms under which men can trade labor for compensation -- would appear to be confused at best about the concept of rights. But the comments by the winning side, while expressing relief that the "independence" of the workers has been preserved, could have been more forceful had they been made using the language of rights and backed by a clear understanding of the concept. Instead, we have the article speaking of Proposition 22 as having "allowed freelance workers to be classified as independent contractors," as if men don't have the right to choose their own employment status or set their own bargaining terms. And most of the rest of the piece is a squabbling about the alleged "benefits" offered by the terms of driver contracts vis-a-vis what we so often hear referred to as union "protections." The legal counsel for Uber speaks of the ruling "preserving independence" for drivers, but this is a "win" is a very narrow, strictly legal, and very delimited sense of the term. Appallingly, the only mention of the term "rights" in this piece refers to such alleged "rights" as sick leave. (Calling sick leave a "right" is appropriate only if both parties to a labor contract agreed that sick leave would be part of the worker's compensation and he had satisfied whatever terms would entitle him to take it.) We would do well to consider what Ayn Rand had to say about such inappropriate language:It was the concept of individual rights that had given birth to a free society. It was with the destruction of individual rights that the destruction of freedom had to begin. A collectivist tyranny dare not enslave a country by an outright confiscation of its values, material or moral. It has to be done by a process of internal corruption. Just as in the material realm the plundering of a country's wealth is accomplished by inflating the currency -- so today one may witness the process of inflation being applied to the realm of rights. The process entails such a growth of newly promulgated "rights" that people do not notice the fact that the meaning of the concept is being reversed. Just as bad money drives out good money, so these "printing-press rights" negate authentic rights. ... The "gimmick" was the switch of the concept of rights from the political to the economic realm. The Democratic Party platform of 1960 summarizes the switch boldly and explicitly. It declares that a Democratic Administration "will reaffirm the economic bill of rights which Franklin Roosevelt wrote into our national conscience sixteen years ago." Bear clearly in mind the meaning of the concept of "rights" when you read the list which that platform offers: "1. The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation. "2. The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation. "3. The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living. "4. The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home and abroad. "5. The right of every family to a decent home. "6. The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health. "7. The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accidents and unemployment. "8. The right to a good education." A single question added to each of the above eight clauses would make the issue clear: At whose expense? Jobs, food, clothing, recreation (!), homes, medical care, education, etc., do not grow in nature. These are man-made values -- goods and services produced by men. Who is to provide them? If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor. Any alleged "right" of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right. No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as "the right to enslave." [bold added, italics in original] ("Man's Rights," pp. 112-113, in The Virtue of Selfishness, by Ayn Rand)This is a holding action at best, and those of us who understand the basis of that "independence" for contract work -- that very much remains under threat -- must work to reestablish a proper understanding of rights within the broader culture. -- CAVLink to Original

Over at FiveThirtyEight is a piece discussing a post-Roe, pro-welfare-state refocusing among some Republicans. (I was going to say change of opinion, but that would imply that these Republicans ever actually understood or cared about freedom.) It isn't uniform by any means, but it is entirely predictable to anyone who understands that philosophical fundamentals shape political opinion:In Tennessee, the Governor has proposed adding a diaper benefit to the state's Medicaid program. (Image by Coop41, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.)These new proposals -- which usually involve strengthening social safety net protections for low-income women -- fly in the face of Republican orthodoxy about limited government. Of the 14 states with near-total bans or where abortion is unavailable, at least six have passed or are considering some type of law that would create additional support for pregnant women, new mothers or young children, and seven additional Republican-controlled states with less restrictive abortion laws are considering similar legislation. A bit later, an analyst hits the nail on the head by calling such measures "post-Dobbs guilt bills." This is doubly apropos because (1) religious morality is famous for trafficking in guilt, including the unearned guilt of original sin; and (2) deep down, these sanctimonious anti-abortionists know that they are causing poor women to suffer more than they would have otherwise: Giving them your money will make these politicians better able to pretend at cocktail parties that they are good people, so buckle up... There is no rational, this-worldly basis for banning abortions. The whole idea that part of a woman's body has the same rights as an individual human being is rooted in the arbitrary (i.e., not even wrong) notion that that particular clump of cells has been granted humanity (and individuality!) by a supernatural power. The very fact that a significant part of the Republican party has spent so much effort for so long in service to an anti-freedom goal that has no relationship to reality tells you everything you need to know: Anything else these crusaders happen to imagine they are morally obligated to do or bring about -- usually on someone else's back -- is whatever else they will end up trying to ram down our throats, even if it might take time for some of them to put two and two together to realize it. So, of course, while the religious right felt weak, it went along with the fiction that its anti-human goals were compatible with economic freedom and limited government. But now that they have succeeded in destroying protection for reproductive freedom at the federal level, they have the headspace to begin pursuing other parts of their political agenda. Naturally, (forcing you and me to pay for their goal of) "helping" the less-fortunate has come up, never mind that their own political goal is causing the very state of affairs they purport to remedy. And they won't mind, because they weren't using their minds to begin with. -- CAVLink to Original

I still think one of the best ways to make a cultural impact is to produce literature or other dramatic works. Then you can appeal to the American sense of life while also providing the intellectual basis for that feeling. This is what Ayn Rand herself was doing when she wrote Atlas Shrugged -- but there is plenty of room for other works, in a variety of genres and styles, and with a variety of subjects and themes.

Here‘s the lecture. Below is my outline. Please don’t hesitate to point out errors. Also, in brackets are my own contributions. Finally, Dr. Salmieri topically jumps around a few times so I placed them in the outline where they should be topically for cognitive organization and ease of understanding. Does anyone have the redacted Q&A? ———————————————————————————— How do we decide between competing claims? I. Testimonial knowledge A. Types 1. Witness: Perceived something we didn’t 2. Expert: Completed specialized intellectual work B. Challenges 1. Types a. Lying b. Mistaken i. Rudimentary mistakes involving the misapplication of knowledge are easy to catch by competing experts ii. But we don’t automatically know the right method and standards for each science and thereby, mistakes of method and standards are [relatively] difficult to catch c. Biased i. This is a major problem affecting both witnesses and experts—including whole fields of science (a) The more intellectual work is required, the more opportunities there are for bias (b) Teaching institutions are biased (especially a problem for experts) (i) The teachers could all be biased (ii) Admissions selection criteria could be biased (c) Cultural biases d. Politics (extent of freedom vs. force) i. Insofar that there is [the initiation of] force, the more difficult it is to identify expertise and act on the best options II. How can knowledge be communicated when knowledge is a [personal] process? A. Chronology of the work involved in the process of knowledge 1. Perception 2. Form concepts based on perceived significant similarities 3. Make judgments identifying existence by applying concepts to them 4. Keep track of epistemic statuses of judgments 5. Integrate concepts and judgments into consistent whole B. How to divide up process of knowledge 1. Mistaken approaches a. Slavish following of authority, i.e., authoritarianism i. Types (a) Insistent/militant (i) Example: “95% of scientists say X so how can you challenge it? Who are you to challenge it?” (b) Passive: Takes for granted that what was learned in school or people in general is true because everything thinks it ii. Proper approach instead of authoritarianism: Take what one learned [claims] as unprocessed content and assign it an epistemic status when relevant to do so (a) Familiarity [i.e., knowledge of claims] vs. expertise b. Faux independence i. Types (a) Universal Google/Wikipedia/newspaper/magazine/etc. Scholarship: Reads a few things on an issue and concludes that one is on intellectual par with experts (i) Proper approach instead of such “scholarship”: Present these things to an expert [or experts] to integrate (b) Illegitimate appeal to personal experience (i.e., perception or low level conceptualizations, e.g., “It’s hot in here”) and ordinary knowledge (i.e., knowledge that is available without specialized knowledge) (i) Examples: “Of course there’s global warming: It was hot yesterday and Hurricane Sandy was awful”; “There’s no global warming: It was freezing yesterday”; and many medical self-experimentation [by laymen] (ii) Proper approach instead of such illegitimate appeals: Ask an expert [or experts] on how to integrate one’s personal experience and ordinary knowledge because such integration requires expert knowledge 2. What we need from experts a. Evidence of expertise i. Evidence of the field’s legitimacy ii. Evidence of the expert’s proficiency in the field b. Specificity of claims and level of certainty c. Relevant context that one needs to assess the expert’s judgment (this includes the status of his claim in his field) d. Outlined [epistemological] reduction of claims e. Respect for one’s intelligence, context, and intellectual independence 3. After getting what we need from an expert [or experts] a. How does one know that the claim is true? What’s the epistemic status? i. “I judge the <proposition> with having <epistemic status>. Here’s why: <Proposition> is a matter that would have to be determined by a certain science. How do I know that? <Proposition> requires specialized knowledge and this science is the relevant specialty. <Expert> is a reliable expert in this science. How do I know that? He has the relevant qualifications. How do I know that? I have every reason to think that he’s honest and none that he’s dishonest. I have every reason to think that he’s an objective thinker as shown by his respect for my cognitive needs. <Expert> asserts <proposition> with <epistemic status> on the following grounds: <Outlined [epistemological] reduction>.” (a) Essentially: I have reason to think that he’s an expert and he says it for these reasons. 4. How does one assess that the person is an expert, that the field is valid [i.e., legitimate], and that the argument that requires expertise to make is a good argument if one doesn’t have the expertise? How does one judge the outlined [epistemological] reduction? a. Ignorant -> educated -> expert b. What enables one to make the assessment and judgment is being educated in the field i. Most generally, one is an objective thinker (e.g. knows the principles of logic) -> more specifically, one is knowledgeable on how much one knows about the methods and standards of a field, as well as knowing when one needs to supplement that knowledge ii. Example: ScienceBasedMedicine.com [sic; it’s actually dot org] 5. Consensus a. It’s arbitrary to favor one expert when the evidence of expertise is equivalent among other experts b. One must integrate, not ignore, the presence of conflicting expert opinion c. Awareness of consensus is essential [to being an objective consumer of expertise] d. Authoritarianists use consensus to justify their claims i. But historically, most consensus was wrong ii. One needs evidence that a field is not pseudoscience because nonobjectivity in cutting edge science is the norm per history, mistakes, and biases. One needs evidence of the exception. iii. There are degrees between pseudoscience and legitimate science (a) Example: Evolution (race theory and eugenics were based on evolution and advocated by good scientists) III. Alternative science: School of thought that is rejected/marginalized by the consensus of experts (i.e., consensus of people in the culture that deem who are experts) in the relevant field A. Examples: Skeptical climate science, creation science, revisionist history, alternative medicine/nutrition, Austrian economics, Montessori education, the Theory of Elementary Wave, Bohmian mechanics [and Objectivism] B. Tends to directly appeal to the public rather than go through the usual channels C. Valuable to have in the culture as a check. A healthy culture will have alternative sciences. There is something wrong if a culture doesn’t have alternative sciences. D. Challenges 1. For experts in the alternative science, it’s more difficult to maintain objectivity 2. It’s easy to develop a persecution complex, making one defensive to criticism 3. Social isolation from reviews from critics with different views because alternative science experts cluster together due to no one else wanting to talk about the alternative science [and this applies to Objectivism too] 4. It’s more difficult for non-experts to acquire positive knowledge from alternative science 5. Objectivism is at high risk of crackpottery [and I can attest to this, especially on Facebook]

Bill, I’ve gathered that in the history of mathematized physics right up to the present, people invoke some sort of intellectual sense of when some implication of the mathematics characterizing some physical relations would be something not plausibly physical and should not be the mathematical characterization without mitigation (I'm thinking of infinities [and renormalization] and spacetimes rejected as not plausibly real.) This intellectual sense is fallible, as I imagine the history of resistance to characterizations of physical reality using complex numbers would show. (I keep in mind too that for physical outcomes in QM that wave function gets conjugated to yield real-number values for physical detectability of outcomes.) To be sure, the applicability of higher mathematics in physics, indeed by now the indispensability of it for further advance in physics, has seemed amazing. Additional applicability of complex numbers and thought about their mathematical character is put forth here by an applied mathematician who is an Objectivist. It seems to me too strong, however, to say that history has shown that there is no area of mathematics that does not eventually show physical application. I wonder if topological spaces that are not Hausdorff have found a job in characterizing something physical. Or if any mathematics that has its only proof by using Zorn’s lemma has found physical work. If not, we might say that it is a reasonable conjecture (not guaranteed), based on history, to suppose that there is some physical applicability of those things that we simply have not discovered so far. An additional tie between physics and mathematics is the history of how much mathematics has been invented/discovered on account of some specific need(s) for it in mathematical characterization of some physical realm. It seems to me that all the amazing ties of mathematics to physics, and to engineering, support the idea that mathematics is grounded, or at least partly grounded, in physical reality. However, I think there are other aspects of a grounding account that need to get specified in order make a dispositive case that mathematics is grounded ultimately in physical reality. We need a plausible specification of what sorts of things perceived in the physical world are mathematical sorts of things, we need a specification of our means of such perceptions and how it differs from the sort of perception that gets us started towards physics,* and we need a specification of how those different sorts of perceptual starts are joined to the different sorts of method we use in discovering higher mathematics and in making scientific discovery of more and more of physical reality. *My perceptual discernment that in the case of a music staff and in the case of the fingers of my right hand the number of spaces between the staff lines and between my fingers is one less than the number of lines or number of fingers is a different sort of discernment than the perceptual discernment that keeping a tight grip with both hands is a good idea for safety when using an axe or baseball bat. And perceptually discerning that the number of spaces between longitude lines on the globe in the office equals the number of those lines seems quite a different sort of perceptual discernment than discerning that, having removed the globe from its stand, it is not a good ball for dribbling.

"sufficient ground for readers to ignore" is the tell-tale sign of propagandists. Nothing to see here. Shoot the messenger - before he reads the message. Those figures don't have to be accurate in order to raise doubt for critical thinkers. It's not in doubt that Ukraine and other analysts have been falsifying casualties for the last year. Proper experts have been making similar estimates to the above, called the rate about 7-1 in combat losses. While TV pundits claim Russia losses at anything up to 200k. Fact is, the RF generals are extremely conservative in risking or losing their men, discount anything you hear about "human wave" assaults. Ukraine military plays to international head lines, and take massive losses. The necessity for Ukraine/the West to magnify/minimize casualties, should be clear. Ukraine needed a morale boost to carry on fighting (for the West). The same way, every Ukraine advance and Russian tactical retreat in the field was heralded as the certain, coming victory for Ukraine--when the reality was and is slowly dawning, the UAF cannot chase Russia out. Now reports are coming out that men, young and old are being pulled from the streets to be thrown into the line. Authentic, green "conscripts", unlike the Russian conscripts who all have had to take one year military training. Lacking propagandist lies, Ukraine would have learned the truth and committed to negotiations early on. It is the callousness of pro-Ukraine zealots I cannot fathom. "Beating/weakening Russia" is paramount to them, but at whose costs? Anyone who is against negotiations - who wants the war to prolong til that remote possibility - can't pretend to be compassionate of Ukrainians, simply they are hateful of Russians. One more self-contradiction.

Under normal circumstances, yes: One's goals ought to be attainable. But insofar that volition is compromised—as described in my reply above—perhaps moral responsibility is absolved.

One of the preconditions for moral responsibility (not to be confused with “metaphysical/causal responsibility”) is volition. Perhaps then, one is not morally responsible insofar that volition is compromised. Take for examples, people with mental conditions that cause hallucinations (e.g., schizophrenia) or nervous systems that produce incommensurate emotions (e.g., bipolar disorder). And don’t the U.S. courts “pardon” defendants for insanity? Applied to my original post: Qualitatively, the demarcation of moral responsibility is whether volition is involved. Quantitatively, what intensity of emotions compromise volition? It sounds like we are dealing with borderline cases.

A funny thing about how we tend to use language, and funnier when we are talking about physicists, “Quantum Mechanics” is sometimes interpreted as referring to what reality does, when it is far more accurate to say QM is something we do, which to the extent it corresponds with observables of what reality does do, is valid and useful. That paper is more about how we process what reality does, not what attributes and properties which are possessed by entities. The third person would point out that a complex number is nothing more than a complicated (not very) combination of real values. They are absolutely and always reducible to real values. We happen to call them phase and magnitude. But again this is mere characterization of the abstraction which is QM, merely interpretations of the abstractions as more or less complex … when in fact it is all the same and beside the point. The processing abstraction is not the referent to which its predictions are directed. Observe there is no absolute phase in the complex coefficients, and also observe that statistical in nature they are not strictly speaking possessed by any single entity, and of course are never observable properties possessed by any single entity. As such, any assumption about complex numbers, I put to you, is more of an assumption about our abstractions referring to physical reality than an assumption about physical reality itself.

Your insert "[linear]" suggested to me, maybe mistakenly, classical mechanics (vs relativistic); I didn't perceive it as "vs. angular". PS: Standard terminology: conservation of angular momentum is the consequence of the isotropy of the space, of the invariance under rotations, of the Lagrangian, for example.

Intriguing... Just a question of detail: Can you please elaborate - at any level you feel comfortable with? I am surprised because, in classical mechanics at least, the total 3-momentum of a system is conserved (in the absence of external forces/fields), whatever the internal interactions are, that is with or without the electromagnetic fields. And this holds also for the relativistic 4-momentum. In both cases, the conservation of momentum follows from the translation invariance, that is from the homogeneity of space (and time)... Did Wigner imply that without the existence of the e.m. interaction the translation invariance would break ??? That, IOW, the existence of the e.m. interaction can be deduced from the premise of translation invariance?

I think this is good. I am a big fan of the priority of understanding the problem over any specific solution. And I am a big opponent of what I take to be a hand-wavy and strawman-y way of doing philosophy. The connection between appearance and reality is a basic starting point and leads us to these themes of realism vs idealism, thus the accessibility of reality becomes a question. Once we start taking about perception, another basic theme that emerges is the question about the active or passive nature of the mind. If there is a mind-independent reality, one possible way of coming into contact with it is by being a passive recipient of information originating outside of it. If we look at our best physiology and optics and so forth, and we start seeing that the mind is more more active, then we get the pushback against the passive model. It is now easy to caricature the view. And if then, on the other hand, minds have a much more active role, it’s easy to say that reality is then in some sense dependent on them. Then we extend that to saying our perceptual apparatus is not the only way that mind conditions reality, but our conceptual schemes as well. It’s not far to full blown idealism from there. The question is partially whether any of that really follows from the initial premise. The question of primacy is a different, but related one that follows the accessibility issue. If there is no way to hook onto a mind-independent reality, in what way can it hold any prime significance in our schemes? And if we have to jettison our active picture of mind in the process, why hold onto an inaccessible something that can’t be checked? Defeating direct realism becomes a matter of simply pointing to the activity of the mind and perception. Pointing out that direct realism does not imply the passive “bucket theory” of perception becomes important. But, it is to be stressed, that isn’t the same thing as saying direct realism is a product of some proof or deduction. It becomes more a question of how and how not to defend direct realism.

Yes, that could be a reasonable cover story, Stoltenberg would (pretend to) have it so. His actions say otherwise. "We were early on preparing Ukraine for its defense and to deter Russia..." - in effect All PR fluff for the underinformed and misinformed public and his memoirs. This innocent scenario conceals Nato's longstanding aims for Russia. Surround, isolate, weaken, break up. Ukraine, just a convenient pawn to enable that goal -- by giving Putin no choice but to deploy over the border in what he regarded - as any leader would - his country's pre-emptive defense. With the benefit of hindsight (Minsk exploited for delay- etc.) we know without doubt this Nato-enlarged army had as first priority, the defeat of the Donbass. Does this appear 'defensive'? Observers are sure and it is logical, Crimea would have been attacked next. Does this seem a 'deterrent'? The monstrous fact is that Nato ¬needed¬ Russia to attack: it had to be provoked into a confrontation with the UAF. And simultaneously for Kyiv to appear the innocent victim, backed by the ever-so concerned Nato. Look at all the diplomatic opportunities squandered and actively prevented, pre-invasion until the very dangerous present, by those who really call the shots, the West. Here is proof of Kyiv's and Nato's malign militarism. They are still telling themselves and fantasizing: a. Russia can/will lose b. Russia will yet collapse under the military, economic and political strain. Just keep supplying, escalating, and getting Ukrainans killed. Decent and reasonable people can't absorb how much they have been media-indoctrinated and taken in by the pretexts, duplicity and hypocrisy of those like Stoltenberg. In summary, such respectable-looking and 'caring' bureaucrats have sacrificed Ukraine for their geo-political, geo-economic ends. (And again, what was Nato even doing, involved inside Ukraine, by what right? Nato has rules about not admitting any nation that's in conflict. Kyiv had already shown its undemocratic propensities, the violently engineered divisions in its people, its corruption, some western-acknowledged and (not long ago) officially condemned neo-Fascist elements, and so on. By any rational standard Ukraine was a long way from proper Nato-membership status. But yet, Nato not only did not rebuff Kyiv, since 2014 at least it is has been supplying and supporting and anticipating larger conflict for its (contra-Russia) purposes. Putin was correct to fear Ukraine's accession--with what Nato's been visibly doing with Ukraine as a NON-member, imagine their provocative actions from within Ukraine, when/if it is admitted. Nato broke its own rules, as it is presently. One self-contradiction among many.

Kant was correct in noticing that I think or these thoughts are mine can be truly attached to any human cognition. Today we would investigate how far that is so for a young child or for higher animals besides us. However, one can acknowledge this insight of Kant's without taking self-relation of the mature human mind as subversive of or more primitive than the mind's self-to-things-not-self relation. Similarly, Thomas Aquinas expressed the truth that if one thinks, then one exists, but without making that into a most assured and primitive truth of human natural epistemology, as was done later by Descartes. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ As you likely know, it is a secondary matter, ultimately, what is one's own philosophy or one's own position on various specific issues in their relation to some other philosophy, such as Rand's. Relation of your philosophic views concerning the world and fellow human beings to facts of them is primary.

1. What do you mean by claim independence? If your point here is that some truths are independent of what somebody claims but are nonetheless dependent on something about their mind, that seems to be exactly what Rand thinks about emotions, and any kind of judgment that involves emotion. 2. Consistent with how Rand thinks knowledge ultimately comes from induction. 3. In what way would Rand disagree? I would not say she said anything explicit about this, but it looks fine. 4. Actually, even the claim about how consciousness is an axiomatic concept affirms how Rand sees introspection and extrospection as a form of sensing. 5. Sounds great, it's only a doubt to the extent that I don't think Rand said anything about this one way or the other. 6. I think that Oist review one perception is that percept and object is unified as far as the act of perception is concerned. That flows from the Aristotelian nature of what Rand says about perception. He was quite explicit about the unification of the perceiver and the object being perceived. 7. Not sure I see the objection. 8. Your doubts seem to be coming from a strawman by now. Yeah, you are trying to preempt an objection, but who would come up with that kind of objection? 9. Seems consistent with the way Rand argued against God. Just because reality coheres in a certain way doesn't mean that it had to come from a creator. I know that's not what you're addressing, but the form of the argument is the same. 10 & 11. These are the only doubts that I think even count as doubts. But it is such a minor doubt, it's more of a semantic disagreement. 12. This is the only substantial doubt you've listed. Most of it is stuff that is entirely consistent with Oism, and the people you're disagreeing with probably are not thoroughly versed in Oist epistemology. Then again, I find that there is some kind split about views on the nature of consciousness within the Oist community. The question "can AI ever become conscious?" shows it just about every time. It's not that the answer to the question itself is what makes a difference, but it's a quick way to get a sense of their underlying views.

1. It is not Maria, but Mario Bunge 2. Your link is: https://forum.objectivismonline.com/index.php? Nobody had heard of me.” Why this disparaging comment? ☹️

Welcome back ! If I understand correctly, your scientific background is mathematics and physics. Am I correct? Regarding philosophy of science, of physics especially, I usually warmly recommend Mario Bunge, a professional physicist and a professional philosopher, which is a rather rare combination. Is this name familiar to you?

Many things going on outside the world of the Objectivism Online Forum. Discovered, over the course of a year, that I was able to live within an anticipated budget, and that I would likely not have to return to the 'working 9-5' world. Such was not to be. I received a call asking me if I'd take on a part-time position. After 40+ years with my nose to the grindstone, a year vacation softened my resolve. The work offers the flexibility to take on more varied activities, with the added bonus of not eating into the seedcorn. I've watched the Ayn Rand Center U.K. ramp up activities with a rather different approach to the Ayn Rand Institute, one centered more on Objectivism, as a philosophy for living on earth. The focus has been noticeably on values and their pursuit. In a style reminiscent of Andrew Bernstein's suggestion that Objectivists should live as value-intoxicated people. Back in early 2012, I started a thread here: Biologists Replicate Key Evolutionary Step. It dealt with yeast in bread and evolution. The latest of the 29 current posts was added at the end of September 2021. Shortly after reaching a separation agreement at the end of 2022, I saw an article in my Android news feed with a picture of a loaf of Challah bread. The Golden One (Photo by Greg Lewis, February 12, 2023) I can do that. This picture is of the 19th loaf after receiving "The Perfect Loaf" for Christmas, done in Sourdough. Granted, it has not provided me with an evolutionary step, but after 7 days of nursing a glob of mixed flour and water, the active yeast in the environment manifests itself as a result of the processes. The sourdough process versus commercial active yeast provides a thought of division of the domesticated versus the wild. After following a recipe for making sourdough bagels, an appreciation for the bakeries that can turn them out more efficiently comes into sharper focus. Additionally the idea of proofing the yeast, and proofing the dough come into play, where both provide evidence of the yeast's vitality. After almost a day in the kitchen, you get to enjoy one of the fruits of your labor.

Theodor Lundberg "The Wave and the Beach" (1897)

The purpose of government is (supposed to be) to protect individual rights. The only way to violate individual rights is by initiation or threat of force. Therefore, the government maintains a monopoly on force to ensure that it is only used in retaliation and only against those who initiate or threaten its use. As such, the only "mandates" from a proper government are negative obligations, e.g., don't murder people, don't defraud people, don't steal from people, don't extort stuff from people, etc. The government can enforce these without ever initiating force. Individual rights are not (supposed to be) subject to vote. Unlimited democracies usually end up tyrannical, as mob rule. As for vaccine mandates, the issue here is whether one has a right to one's own body. I would say so, and therefore I oppose vaccine mandates on the same grounds that I oppose the forced pregnancy and childbirth that result from abortion bans. A vaccine mandate is not the same thing as a vaccine itself, and it's possible to recommend a vaccine without supporting a mandate. I mean, I think everybody should read Atlas Shrugged to "inoculate" themselves against socialism and communism, but I absolutely don't believe that the reading of Atlas Shrugged should be mandated by law.

Forever Young

There is quite some truth here. It appeared strongly to me, after considering many sightings and articles, that many Objectivists reacted to Trump in the same way as did all his other opponents at large. Viscerally. Ad hominems to the man, less his doings. Feelings as tools of cognition. And then justified their initial reactions with "his economic nationalism"; etc. etc. Objective standards, I must add, which were not as rigorously or hardly applied to previous incumbents.

My god. Even from where I sit I know something about the moderate nature of the DNC back then - and what they are now. This is a different kind of beast. "How can they be voted out?" Count the ways. As of now, Almost total control of the mainstream media Almost total control of ideology through education, colleges, universities Total control of social media platforms A vaster reservoir of wealth through Silicon Valley and Leftist billionaires Almost total control of the movie industry-- What there exists already, is a "totalitarian" grip upon propaganda and of people's speech and minds. Add in the latest developments: almost total power. A tight hold on: The US Congress; The Executive; and eventually "packing" the Supreme Court as they are looking towards. There can be little limit on moving as radical Left as they can. They crave control. These are not people who take, nor will take, democratic defeat graciously. To ask again. HOW are they, with everything stacked in their favor - and open immigration on the cards, bringing in further favorable voters - and making Washington DC another (Dem stronghold) state - ever going to be voted out?

I have a hunch that this will turn out to be a false-flag operation done by Antifa people, sort of like the attempted kidnapping of that governor a while back. The press went on and on about that, remember? Until when the perpetrators were discovered to be associated with Antifa, at which point the press suddenly fell silent... This move was probably designed to intimidate Republicans out of objecting to the electoral votes of states where fraud turned the election. The Democrats are already giving the "shame on you Republicans" speeches, as if the invasion of the Capitol was caused by Republican objections. "See what kind of behavior your objections are encouraging?" they seem to be saying. Trump never asked for anyone to do anything like this. There is nothing to protest yet -- the process hasn't even played out yet and, without interference, could conceivably have come out Trump's way. There is no reason for Trump to have interfered with it, or to have encouraged anyone else to -- and there is every reason for the Democrats to have done so. And yet, we hear again that "Trump's rhetoric" is to blame. But Trump isn't the one who has been saying "Burn it all down"... Funny how calling out fraud and trying to investigate it allegedly destroys democracy and undermines the system -- but committing the fraud in the first place is apparently OK. Obviously the honorable thing for the Republicans to do is to drop all their objections and allow the Democrats to get away with it (sarcasm).

A silver lining is that this is an obvious example of what not to do for anyone who's actually interested in freedom and the legitimate rule of law.

What is this? Something man-made and of wood. Not something whose form and strength are determined for some utilitarian purpose so far as I know. It is something pleasing to me, and I’d like to see it in real space and walk around it to get its different views. I’d like to touch it. Any principles of geometry it exhibits would be of a secondary interest. Any neurological findings of why it is pleasing (or not) to us would be of secondary interest. Any imagination-feats along the lines of “It’s like a (fill-in-the-blank)” or “I could use it as a (fill-in-the-blank)” would be of still lower interest. This solid form in 3-space is itself the center of interest. The sharing of it, with its bundle of pleasures, between creator and audience inheres in our experience of it. I think that much suffices for metaphysics in sculpture.

Thorncrown Chapel (1980) Located in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Designed by E. Fay Jones, who had apprenticed with Frank Lloyd Wright. This is a work that strikes me as needing no ornamentation, no external sculpture. Rather, the building is its own sculpture.

Here is the interesting part. Since the fundamentals of math grows out of concepts which ultimately come from percepts, absolute disconnection is difficult to achieve. As for entire branches of math... I do not know. The problem is not that math can get VERY abstract, VERY far from the concretes of reality which are connected to them, but that those who are DOING the math dispense with that connection entirely. Embracing either the idea that it is a game of the mind disconnected from reality or a revelation of a Platonic Ideal Reality risks the creation of mathematical concepts which do become disconnected in the same way floating abstractions can become disconnected. Imagine, like some freshman philosophy students, you embrace the idea that what you do need not conform to anything, nothing in reality, none of the axioms, and you can simply create systems out of nothing and with no rules except what you give it. WE know such creations do not fall within what is VALIDLY to respectively be called knowledge or the love and study of it (philosophy) nor mathematics. Attempting to "Invent" a "number system" (system of symbols) which represent contradiction as part of a formal system would constitute such an insanity... I'm not sure it was ever done... but a mentality that thinks of it as "fair game" is NOT hinged to reality. I believe there is a strong case to be made philosophically against various mathematical constructs and even well accepted "profound" conclusions. Symbolic logic and nonsensical implication (truth tables) and Gödel's theorem are the types of things that require better Objective explication and understanding.

Some things are obvious, period. That TEW is not a theory is obvious with a little thought.

It has an enormous amount of solid experimental evidence. Your computer, phone, dvd player and all other modern electronic gadgets can only exist thanks to tha application of quantum mechanics. Nope. The famous Schrödinger cat paradox was a thought experiment by Schrödinger in the early years of quantum theory to describe the difficulty of the transition from QM in the microscopic domain to classical physics in the macroscopic domain. It was at the time not clear why the superposition of quantum states in the atomic realm disappeared for large objects (like cats), it seemed that only the fact of observation by a conscious observer destroyed the superposition, which gave rise to weird speculations about the importance of observing by a consciousness. However, this problem has already been solved long ago. The observer is not necessary, it is the phenomenon of decoherence, due to the interaction of the quantum system with the environment, that explains that there can be no superposition of an alive and a dead cat. The cat is dead or alive long before anyone looks into the box, just as classical physics predicts. Experiments have shown that superposition of states can exist for relatively large molecules like fullerenes, but these are still far from macroscopic objects, for which any superposition decoheres in extremely short times. It seems however that many popular accounts of QM are still decades behind the facts.