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ruveyn1

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Posts posted by ruveyn1

  1. Has anyone else thought of any comparison or saw some similitude between the concept of Mulligan Valley (Galt's Gulch) and Plato's Topos Uranos? or More's Utopia Island?

    Ayn Rand did say that something like described in the novel should only take place when and if the last and most fundamental of our liberties is taken away.

    And even at that moment Gulching seems to be temporary in between societal collapse and its rebuilding, not an end in itself except like a recurring vacation spot, like The Hamptons or that golf course in Bermuda.

    No, Ayn Rand used the concept of the Gulch as a literary device to achieve her literary goals. Whatever inspiration may come from there is not Ayn Rand's responsibility.

    One interesting inspiration (the cloak being the sea surface) is the concept of Seasteading which is independent from Objectivism (but not contradictory to it).

    Any mighty fortress in the Rockies can only have disastrous connotations of a bulwark never failing...

    The problem with colonies of any kind, be they on the land, under the sea or in the air is the problem of -critical mass-. One needs a sufficient number of people with a proper mix and temperments and skills to forge a functioning self-sufficient community. Even the Galt's Gulch of AS did not quite make it. They still needed to bring in material from the outside to continue to function.

    It is not clear that a group of dissident folk could find someplace on, in, or under earth/sea to make a clean break with the larger society with which they wish to part company. It is a nice, fine romantic notion but it exists in stories like More's Utopia or in AS.

    ruveyn1

  2. Then it's totally up to me to withold my sanction so as not to become it's victim by using public roads to make money.

    How can anyone make a living without using the roads one way or another. If you wish to obtain goods and services, they will come to you by way of the roads. If you wish to go and deal with folks, there is only so much that can be done with telecommunications. Eventually one has to get up close and personal.

    ruveyn1

  3. Not at all. "Acting independently of the government" does not equal "indirectly threatening the rights of all the citizens" or any citizen. Acting independently of the government in a just manner -- even in the capacity of a "private defense agency" -- is just, as you have already agreed in another post:

    If a private defense agency, be it ever so just, tries to detain anyone by force they will soon be in trouble with the Law.

    It is one thing to have private watchmen and guards. It is another to detain and punish or even recover stolen goods by force without a proper legal process.

    Vigilantes are not legally kosher.

    ruveyn

  4. l.

    She gave space for mothers who would want to reproduced, as described in Atlas Shrugged in chapter first visit to Mulligan Valley.

    If I recall the novel correctly one mother with two children age four and six.

    This is the child population of a community with several hundred people.

    With that kind of a reproduction rate, the Heroes of Production will be extinct in 70 years or so.

    The only way to assure a future for mankind is for enough people to make babies.

    ruveyn1

  5. You'll have to define "reciprocity" I believe it is probably an illegitimate, collectivist term. Probably an anti-concept designed to prevent morally and industrially superior nations from defending themselves.

    Are you saying that the executives of government A should not enter into agreements (treaties, protocols, etc.) with the executives of government B?

    ruveyn1

  6. You haven't watched TV? Then where did you hear about Paul Krugman? Do you read his column in the Washington Post?

    There is lots of stuff on Krugman on the Web. So one does not need either newspapers or t.v. to know something about him.

    And he won a Nobel Prize to boot. That would give him some publicity.

    I met Krugman at the studio where I record books for blind and dyslexic folk. We did not discuss economics at all.

    ruveyn1

  7. First let me say I have read and believe I understand this concept;

    One can study what exists and how consciousness functions; but one cannot analyze (or “prove”) existence as such, or consciousness as such. These are irreducible primaries. (An attempt to “prove” them is self-contradictory: it is an attempt to “prove” existence by means of nonexistence, and consciousness by means of unconsciousness.) - Ayn Rand

    I have read the pages on free will and I accept that free will exists - however in the study of HOW it functions has there ever been an explanation of how man moves the atoms that make up his mind? I cannot will the atoms of my keyboard to type this text and I cannot will the atoms of my glass of water to move so how do I will the atoms in my mind to move in order to make free will physically function?

    Perhaps it is the movement of atomic and sub atomic particle (under the probablistic laws of quantum physics that produce what you call "free will".

    Look at it this way. Our brains are as physical as physical gets and all of our thought are brain activities which makes them rather complicate electro-chemical reactions.

    ruveyn1

  8. We can limit today’s unlimited government. But to do so we will need to mount an unapologetic moral defense of freedom. The first step is to arm ourselves with Ayn Rand’s unsurpassed stockpile of intellectual ammunition, and then to speak out for freedom.

    This article was published at FoxNews.com on February 4, 2013.

    Link to original

    And the bastards with their guns, clubs, whips, chains, water boards, dungeons and their injection of "truth serum" will be frightened to death of the rhetoric. Sure they will.

    The way to deal with thugs is to either drive them out of the land or kill them deader than dust.

    ruveyn1

  9. There's already a place for those who want the social experience and other trappings of a church, but not necessarily the religion: Unitarianism. Many UU members self-identify as atheists. Which does not imply, of course, that they are guaranteed to be committed to rationality.

    You can always spot the UU churches. On their steeples you will see a thing that is shaped like this "?" and when they ring the bells the sound comes out like a question. However do not underestimate the UUs. If you get them ticked off they will come to your house and burn a question mark on your lawn.

    ruveyn1

  10. This is silly. Whether any particular number is irrational or integer entirely depends on the base of the number system in which it is represented. In the base pi number system the value of pi is 1.

    That some ratios are nonterminating is a quirk of whatever method is being used to manipulate numbers, method referring to and including number systems used and method of dividing (and possibly other more fundamental factors, caveat added because I am not a mathematician). Infinities that arise from the methods used are epistemological, not ontological. These methodological, epistemological infinities are entirely acceptable because they are NOT existential infinities.

    How does one represent rational numbers in a base pi system?

    ruveyn1

  11. According to what I have read here: http://forum.objecti...showtopic=12514

    ... the extension of space and | or time cannot be infinite (and are also discrete) since infinity cannot be applied to physically existing things. If that is so can it be possible that the physical constants we use and are regarded to be irrational numbers can be interpreted in ways in which they would not need an infinitely long number to represent them? If we get the right point of reference shouldn't these constants be integers, or at least finitely long?

    http://en.wikipedia....ysical_constant

    http://en.wikipedia....rational_number

    an infinitely long non-repeating decimal expansion is the name of an irrational real number.

    Now consider this: 0.333.... (forever) what is wrong with that? nothing. It is just 1/3 in another guise.

    ruveyn1

  12. In general, my impression of the field of mental health is negative. What do you think of it? Has anyone ever found counseling helpful?

    Really? There are now some effective -medical- treatment for depression and some forms of schizophrenia. We still do not know how to cure psychotics but we can render a significant percentage of them functional in society so they can earn their keep and not be kept in an asylum.

    As to neurotics, neurosis is mostly a result of either bad thinking habits or a reaction to abusive and sometimes brutal treatment.

    I doubt whether there is a medical cure for bad parenting or bad mentoring.

    ruveyn1

  13. Krugman doesn't advocate lowering taxes on the "real producers", he seems to advocate it for the lowest-rungs only. The idea is that the poorer you are, the more likely you are to immediately spend your money versus save it. A tax cut for the rich will mostly end up in a savings account. A tax cut for the poor (which, to be clear, must be paid for by deficit spending) has an immediate positive effect on GDP. He talks positively for a reduction in payroll taxes in particular, which generally only help the poor.

    The most help the poor get or will get comes when the real producers are free to do their thing. It took industrialists and inventors to make the life of the "poor" more than just survivable. The poor live 30 to 40 percent longer than that did at the end of the 19th century.

    Krugman does not appear to appreciate this point. I suspect that he denies this. I will bet he believes any prosperity we do have (enjoy it while you can!) comes from the government.

    ruveyn1

  14. Just a small reference to a previous posting. We know pretty well what energy is and how it manifests itself in the spacetime manifold. Our most common experience with energy is heat and the motion of matter. In the most general abstract sense energy is a Laplacian which is invariant under the know symmetries and when extremized (maximized or minimize) gives correct equations of motion (change) with respect to time. Energy in its most general sense is abstract, like number.

    Sorry for the interruption, but I just had to reply to this point.

    ruveyn1

  15. There are only two possible explanations: either there <i>is </i>something exceptional about Judaism [or the rational, non-religious aspects of Israeli culture --ed] and these successes are the results of that or there <i>isn't </i>anything special about Judaism and the success of the Jews is not only unjust, but given their unparalleled success throughout history, they must be an unparalleled injustice.

    The irony is so many of the Lefties were brought up Jewish.

    I can testify to the efficacy of the -ethical content of Judaism-, as I not only was brought up Jewish, but still am Jewish right down to my toenails. I just do not need the theological baggage any more. The ethics and the resistance to dogmatic thinking is what is important to me. Jews generally do not have to park their brains at the curb to be Jewish. Even some of those of Orthodox persuasion still know how to ask pointed questions.

    What other religion teaches one to ask "Mah nishtanoh...." (Why is this different from that?) ? Not too many.

    And we learn not to worship idols, not only stone, wood, metal, and plaster idols, but idols of the intellect. The disease of the ultra liberal types is their imaginations are paralyzed by the political and moral idols they have not only construct, but -worship-. If there is a G-D, then that G-D is the rock bottom reality of the cosmos, not our wishful longings and daydreams. When Moses asked G-D what His name was, the reply was: Existence. I am That which is. Sound familiar?

    ruveyn1

  16. Why all this concern with homosexuality? The real problem of Christianity is that it promote sacrifice and altruism. It denigrates self interest as sinful or promoting of sinfulness. In addition extreme forms of Christianity promote Creationism and Intelligent design which if pursued will degrade the instruction of science in the schools. The long term effects of that could be a disaster to our economic future state.

    ruveyn1

  17. I think that Mallory's action was more rational than Roark's (or maybe I should say less irrational). Mallory initiated force against only the novel's villain, where Roark, rather than taking his gripe directly to the person who was messing with him, initiated force and destroyed property owned by people with whom he did not have a contract to build, and against whom he perpetrated the fraud of passing off his work as someone else's.

    J

    The explosion was a literary artifact to set up The Trial at which the protagonist presented his views and won the jury over.

    In the real world, such move would have gotten Roarke at least ten years in the pen.

    ruveyn1

  18. Krugman believes that GDP will increase if government spending increases (or taxes for the working class decreases).

    Krugman believes in fairy-dust and magic. However lowering taxes on the real producers is a step in the right direction. The wealth of the nation is produced by people doing useful things, producing useful products and useful services. It does not consist of rigging up phony baloney bank accounts or printing bogus money.

    ruveyn1

  19. I agree with Dennis and Johnathan. A great example of this "forget the details, look at the big picture approach" can be seen in the movie Gattaca where the protagnoist constantly commits fraud to demonstrate his tremendous abilitities and virtue.

    That is because he was up against a highly unjust system. When the opposition plays dirty, all get are off. When one is up against the Bad Guys, then one has to kick, bite and cheat.

    ruveyn1

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