Nicky

She did? Where?

It's not. And if you wanna join a cult, just join a cult. Leave the rest of us out of it.

Son of a Kenyan finance minister? I guess we found another composite character, huh?

Congratulations. You're well on your way to creating the most exclusive club in history.

No, it's not a crucial distinction. You're playing wordgames. Poorly.

Yes, true.

Once in a lifetime opportunities are very rare. That's why I clicked on this thread, I was intrigued about what it could be. Were you selected for the next space mission? Are you 35 and just failed your Olympics qualifier? What could it be? From the sound of it, your opportunity isn't "once in a lifetime". If you work hard and are a good enough salesman to have deserved that job, you're going to get another offer eventually. I find that often people treat opportunities the same way they treat love: as a mystical, unearned concept. They're not: opportunities aren't gifts, they are the result of your actions just as much as full out success. Getting an opportunity is the sign that you're at least half way to success. Blowing that opportunity is a sign that you are exactly half way to success. It's not a sign that you suck. If you sucked, you wouldn't have gotten the opportunity. So you should look at the glass as half full: you are good enough to have earned yourself this opportunity. You are not quite good enough to fully benefit from it, but this is not a setback. Just because you blew this, it doesn't mean that you're worse off than where you were before. You're just as good as you were before you got this opportunity, which means you should expect more of them to come along as you continue to work hard.

Well, I can't think of any way in which it helped me, but I enjoyed it, and it certainly fits the requirement for not being well known: It's Auto da Fé (original title Die Blendung), by Elias Canetti. The main (and only significant) character is an obsessive, socially isolated book collector living in Vienna, and the novel follows the dark, more horrifying than funny, comedy of his existence, especially his irrational decision to marry his simpleton housekeeper. It's one of the few (serious, I'm not counting adventure novels I read as a kid) novels I just couldn't put down as I was reading it. It's not well known, because it was written in '35 an promptly banned by the Nazis, and I think it's the only piece of fiction Canetti ever wrote. But he did win the Nobel, much later, for a non-fiction work.

Thanks, I watched the vids, and another one by Baye, detailing the workout. I will definitely make some changes. While I don't have to lower the volume or increase the resting period (my laziness has been doing an excellent job taking care of that ), or change the kinds of exercises I've been doing, I will have to focus more on the intensity, slow down my movement, reduce the two sets/exercise to one, and start keeping that journal Baye insists on, to track my progress.

The Objectivist position is that one's own life is the standard of one's values. The notion that life in general is the standard of values is antithetical to Objectivist Ethics.

No political arguments. Polygamy isn't initiation of force, is it?

That's because in modern Western culture, being a car mechanic is not what defines masculinity as gender. The fact that both men and women can be car mechanics and still be widely accepted as belonging to their gender doesn't prove that there is no relevance to the concept. If men (as sex) could go around speaking in a high pitched voices, wearing dresses, stockings, high heels, etc. and generally exhibiting female (as gender) behavior, and women (as sex) could walk around in men's suits, shoes, ties talking in a low voice, and generally exhibiting typically male (as gender) behavior, and the average person wouldn't even recognize that as something that's odd and out of place (in other words, he wouldn't know that there's such a thing as typically female clothing and behavior, and typically male clothing and behavior) then I would agree that the concept of gender is irrelevant. Until then, it is very relevant. In Western culture, it doesn't refer to one's occupation (for the most part), but there are plenty of very obvious things that it does refer to, most of it impossible to attribute to one's biological sex. The reason why, for instance, both biological females and males who wish to appear as females in gender will wear a dress on occasion, but no biological males who don't wish to be seen as females in gender wear them, cannot possibly be explained using the concept of biological sex. The reason for that is gender, not sex. [edit] mentioning voice pitch as gender rather than sex related was silly, but I'm not going to edit the whole post now...just ignore that part

They shouldn't.

Well yes, if you want a variety of vaginas married to you, you are being discriminated against. But you're not being discriminated against based on your sexual preference. The reason is much more practical (it would take too much effort to create an institution tailored to you, the way one exists for couples, because you're in such a small minority). Discrimination just means choice. Every action is an act of discrimination. The issue is, what does the government base its choices on: budget restraints and efficiency, or religious lunacy? The decision to not craft institutional support for polygamous relationships is based on the former, the decision to exclude gay couples from the existing institution of marriage is based on the latter.

Empathy (or anything else except physical characteristics) is not a male or female trait (irrespective of whether you mean female by sex or female by gender). The criteria is the culture. In most cultures, males by sex and females by sex have different roles in various social settings and interactions. Those gender roles are the criteria by which one decides what their gender identity is. If a male by sex identifies with the gender role usually associated with the opposite sex, that means that their gender identity is female. I grew up identifying as a male (meaning something whaaaaay more than just that I have a penis). I played with trucks and guns instead of dolls not because a have a penis or because my sex is male, but because my gender identity is male. Another kid, in a different culture, would have a very different understanding of what a male is, might grow up playing with dolls, while the girls play with trucks. His gender would still be "male", and his gender identity would also be male. Even though he's playing with dolls. But, if I prefer to play with dolls, and he prefers to play with trucks (obvious simplification - it's not really determined by what you play with, there's a lot more to it!!), then we both have a gender identity of female. We both feel out of place, pigeonholed into a role we are uncomfortable with, and wish to change it. P.S. I am not saying that gender roles are a good thing, only that they clearly exist beyond just one's sex. It's neither a coincidence nor a logical consequence of physical characteristics that males and females behave so differently from each other, and that that behavior and those differences vary from culture to culture. That difference can only be explained by the concept of gender. Trying to explain it using just sex doesn't work. As for trans-gendered people, my suggestion would be to, instead of trying to change your gender, try dismissing gender as a defining trait altogether. I also have a budding suspicion that the cause of trans-sexuality is rooted in feeling trans-gendered, and misunderstanding the cause (but this second part is just a suspicion, like I said before, I don't know that much about it). There are differences between males and females (as sex), but when we go beyond those differences to assign them roles in society, accepting those roles (and even trying to reject them and embrace the opposite role instead) is second-handedness.

Aristotle did terribly with pretty much everything past Logic. He's lucky that he didn't need any knowledge of human beings for Logic, otherwise he would've been in deep trouble. No, we don't need to rewrite it, because new discoveries tend to confirm old knowledge. We only need to rewrite the parts people got wrong. Luckily, with Ayn Rand, there are relatively few of them. Biological determinism is the notion that genes determine our choices (meaning that we don't have free will), not that genetic reality ought to be considered whenever we exercise our free will and make choices. It's not silly, actually. One's race can be a relevant factor in making choices. (for instance blacks should know that they are more likely to get sickle cell and should act accordingly). The answer is: everything. And a lot of that everything is, in the end, determined by our genes.

This is a very interesting subject, and a great setup by the OP. So thanks for that. Now on to the arguing part:) I think you misunderstood what she meant (or, even more likely, she was just repeating someone else's definition without understanding it, so she failed to convey what it means). Either way, the definition of a female (as a gender identity) is not "someone who identifies as a female", but rather someone who "senses/feels that they are a female based on observation of (their own, internal) reality". This definition is very similar to how you would define a sad or a happy person: it's not someone who identifies as "sad" or "happy", but someone who believes they are sad or happy based on their perception of the state of their consciousness. There is one difference: sadness or happiness is an entirely internal emotion, independent of others, while femininity/masculinity isn't; it's a relative term, it actually means that one sees themselves as fulfilling the "gender role" of a female or a male. And the definition of that role is relative to the culture of one's society. So the definition actually depends on two more fundamental factors: perception of oneself, and culture. But these are both valid concepts, and therefor so is gender.

I agree that the government shouldn't offer incentives for particular kinds of contracts/arrangements, but it should offer increased legal support for them when it is justified. (justified because the legal system is made more efficient by such a pre-made framework, be it marriage, a corporation, etc., whenever there is enough use for them).

The issue isn't so much with "legalizing" gay marriage, as it is preventing the state from discriminating against some couples based on their sexual orientation (the way they used to discriminate against interracial couples, in the past, for instance). Gender and race have no relevance to the institution of marriage. They're an arbitrary criteria to use, because the legal (secular) concept can be applied to two people of any race and gender, all the same. On the other hand, the number of people involved in such an arrangement is not an arbitrary criteria. A three way arrangement is fundamentally different than an arrangement between two people. Discrimination against such an arrangement can of course still be arbitrary (and a ban on polygamy most certainly is, the argument for it is not rational), but it can also be objective. Saying that the government won't create a special institution for polygamists, the way one is created for couples, because there isn't a significant enough demand for it, is rational. I agree with Jacob on how such arrangements should be handled, instead of being classified as "marriage".

If they did that, what would there be left for you to troll about?

I can't believe Obama came out for gay marriage right after this vote. NC is a state he probably needs, too. Am I missing something, or did he actually go with an honest belief instead of a flash poll?

Just to avoid misunderstandings: I am not trying to argue in favor of Thomas's position in this post. I don't have enough confidence in my knowledge of the subject to even begin to form an opinion on it, let alone argue for it with anyone. I'm just responding to the statements/questions I am quoting. It would be impossible to say anything whatsoever about any living organism or species of organisms, that is unrelated to their genes. And yes, it is objectively necessary to explore that logical relationship (which always exists) between a statement about a living organism or species, and their genes. Surely, you agree that some moral evaluations are valid in contexts that are wider than a single individual's life and reasons, right?

Ok, so what would be the problem if Greenspan took the job, but did the best job anyone could possibly do? (you said that you would have less of a problem with that-which I am reading to mean you still have a problem with it) Most of this is speculation about his motives and psychology. I don't find it compelling at all. The one thing I agree with is that Greenspan did indeed continually argue for the deregulation of the financial system, and that some (not all) of that deregulation lead to the horrible risk taking. But I would note that Alan Greenspan did not engineer this deregulation. He argued for it, but he had nothing to do with the specifics. The deregulation was done by the politicians, and it wasn't a result of any one person's deliberate planning, but rather of haggling and compromises between the various parties and interest groups. And, finally, I would argue that deregulation, if done smartly, can be beneficial. I disagree that Greenspan's general push for deregulation, even in the context of fiat money, is a bad idea. There is still plenty of room for deregulation. The "other factor which contributed" to this crisis were the post 1999 FED policies, which encouraged borrowing. But the fact is, those policies didn't cause this. The regulatory policies enacted by the politicians caused this. They contributed by inadvertently hastening the inevitable (the way driving at 70 mph in a 60 mph zone contributes to a full frontal crash with a drunk driving at 120 mph). Sure, the Fed took some extra risks after the Internet bubble, after 9/11, and during the Iraq war. But nothing that would warrant blaming them for this mess. Well, a lot of other central bankers failed to do that "easy stuff", in other places. So I don't think the praise was entirely undeserved. The US economy was going quite well for quite a while, while other economies were struggling.

There are no definitive, always yes or always no answers to your questions (except for the one about the government claiming islands just to auction them off - that's a no, because it has nothing to do with protecting rights - which is any government's only legitimate purpose). But other than that, the answer is context dependent. All governments have a limited capability. No government can guarantee the absolute protection of all rights at all times no matter the cost. There has to be a cost/benefit ratio beyond which the government should not take action to protect someone's rights. For instance, if Putin steals some American investments into a Russian company, the US government shouldn't go to war with Russia to get them back. In these cases, too, the government should weigh the cost of expanding its territory, intervening in any dispute, etc. against the objective benefits for the American individuals involved (as well as the nation as a whole, if there are any such benefits). If intervening is not too costly, then it should be done.

Is mere participation in the American government automatically a violation of Objectivism? What should he have done instead?