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Showing content with the highest reputation on 02/05/17 in all areas

  1. Dustin, I wasn't asking if any of your questions/objections in this thread alone you considered to be answered/resolved, I was asking about if you considered that to be the case of *any* of your questions/objections you have raised on this forum in general. Also, you have in your post there stated your position, but you have not addressed anything any of us have already said to you here about why we contend such a position is incorrect. You didn't answer my question either about what sources, aside from this forum, you have on Objectivism, or even point me to a place where you already answered that question (which also would have been perfectly acceptable). When I said, "You've made lots of threads here based on questions/objections to Objectivism " - I didn't mean that as an accusation, like it was an inherently bad thing that just should not be done. I was stating it because it was relevant to my later question, asking what, if any, sources you had aside from this forum on Objectivism. Asking this many questions isn't a bad thing necessarily, but it does makes me suspect that you may be attempting to approach learning about or "challenging" this philosophy very badly. You may be jumping into the middle of this philosophy and going about it all higgledy piggledy, not looking into the well made primary or even secondary sources on it that answer the whats and whys pretty thoroughly and systematically. You may instead be asking people to not just reinvent the wheel for you, but reinvent the rocket ship, knowing almost nothing about rockets already yourself, and that they do so random piece by piece with you showing little interest in actually seeing how the pieces fit together and why, or maybe even seeing all the pieces, just seeing how these individual parts aren't making sense to you at first glance and on their own and then saying "This makes no sense! It's all bullshit! No way this thing gets off the ground." This seems like a bad way for you to learn about Objectivism and an even worse way to try to convince anybody who knows Objectivism well that it is incorrect. It's also hugely inefficient on time involved doing it the messy way versus going to the primary or even secondary sources. As for "echo chambers" and "safe spaces" -- you realize, don't you, that with Objectivists being such a teeny, tiny percentage of the population, we all spend our lives immersed constantly in people and products of contrary beliefs, right? This forum is just one of the few places where we come together with people that DO share our support of this philosophy so that we can actually get some where furthering our discussions of the subject beyond constantly just going over the basics with people who think the philosophy is flat out incorrect, just endlessly rehashing the same basic issues over and over that are already old hat to us, never touching any further or new material. We don't need to have this forum bombarded with people who disagree with us in order to be exposed to other beliefs and the possibility that we are wrong because we already inevitably face those things all the time everywhere else we go pretty much. Our goal here on this forum isn't to *never* be exposed to contrary ideas(something the forum couldn't possibly achieve anyway), its to just have somewhere that actually is about our ideas in the midst of aaaaaaaaaaaaaall the rest that we are exposed to which isn't. And we already do believe in reexaming our own beliefs if ever we come across something which seems to flout them anyway. Having this forum to discuss Objectivism with mostly people who support it is like having a forum for fans of bag pipe music in a world where pretty much everybody hates bag pipe music.
    2 points
  2. Hi everyone. I haven't been an active poster on this forum since I was younger, but I thought that I could tell everyone about my Objectivist oriented immigration FB page. I started this page because I think that the uniquely Objectivist viewpoint of individualism is missing from immigration discussion. To use some typical examples, the Left talks about some mushy notion of "love" as though it's a winning immigration argument, while the Right talks about "American Jobs" and deterministic qualities like voting demographics and I.Q. tests. If you agree with me that the individual needs more consideration check out my page, thank you https://www.facebook.com/IndividualistsForImmigration/
    1 point
  3. Thank you. On the one hand I am happy that Trump's policies are making immigration big news. Even though I disagree with most of what he's done, immigration has been a dead issue for years. (Remember when Republicans lost some ground in the previous election and for about two weeks immigration reform was sort of being considered?) On the other hand I watch the protests - I see the gross cliche clenched fist symbols being employed, and the usual "love wins" type of crap, and I wish the opportunity weren't being squandered by misguided hippies. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad there is such an outpouring of support for immigrants and refugees, but I just wish it weren't the Occupy types leading the charge. They don't deserve to.
    1 point
  4. One may count using one's fingers, but one's fingers can't count. A computer program, aside from the programmer, is as deterministic as the computer which runs the program. It can only "learn" and "modify" its "behavior" to the extent the programmer understands and exploits his understanding of the finite deterministic aspects of the device.
    1 point
  5. Eiuol

    Universe as Object

    Why would it be an elaborate fallacy of composition? I explain in the paper that the composition isn't really important, and doesn't matter what something is composed of to be an object. I explain that causality matters. If I am wrong, then please argue against my claims or find the error if there is one. The bound of a universe is all that exists, i.e. it is its own boundary. It is still boundless as far as a "hard limit" does not exist, but the universe is exactly as big as all things in totality that exist. However this is NOT sufficient for objecthood. So, I go on to argue that emergent, systematic, and relational combination is sufficient. I think that the universe meets those conditions.
    1 point
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