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Severinian

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Everything posted by Severinian

  1. Playing a sort of devil's advocate here - Would it be fair to say that Objectivism's morality is like the morality of Nietzsche, but with an emphasis on reason and long-term thinking? Nietzsche held that a person should do whatever he pleases, even if it hurts others, even if it means seeking power. Objectivism holds that we should use and seek power over other species, that it's moral to eat meat and wear make-up (for the sake of enjoyment) even though animals have to suffer and die for this. It holds that in a war, innocents can be killed as collateral damage. In other words, the one thing that differs Objectivism from Nietzscheism is that Objectivism also says "Pause before you act and think about what really benefits you. If you try to control other human beings in everyday life, you are depriving yourself of the incentive to be a producer and trader, you are also depriving yourself of the benefits and wealth you can get from leaving them alone and trading with them. Also, they might end up seeking revenge on you if you can't control them anymore, and so forth." Agree?
  2. Maybe it was unfortunate of me to mention that he was a hedonist, he's not the "stereotypical" hedonist that doesn't care about anything more than whims and physical pleasures, he actually values Ayn Rand's ideas that one must work hard to achieve happiness and so on, but he also views happiness as pleasure, a kind of long-lasting and intense pleasure, which I guess is a fair description, if by pleasure one means experiences that you, as an experiencer, enjoy. As opposed to pain, sorrow, fear, etc. What he is getting at is the question of whether or not a 100% rational person would care whether the people they loved were actually conscious, everything else being equal... And if he would, why, exactly? I'm not saying I agree with him, but I've asked myself the same question. Why do we value the fact that other people experience what we want them to experience, as an end in itself? I know it might sound cynical, and I myself genuinely value the what I just described, but I'm thinking, maybe it actually is such a case where there is some beauty in the irrational...
  3. I don't quite follow. Do you mean that in order to answer the question we need to know how convinced we would or would not be that the people around us were illusions?
  4. I recently spoke to a hedonist who challenged the traditional Objectivist view by this example: Imagine that you meet a person like Morpheus from the movie The Matrix. He explains to you that you are actually living in a virtual reality machine, and that all other people in this world, just like the world itself, are merely part of the software. Just like non-human characters in video games, we can't expect people in this world to be conscious at all, they just seem to be, and act like they are. Naturally, you think he's joking, but he performs all sorts of "miracles" to prove to you that he is indeed from the outside, and that this is a computer simulation. The rational judgment at this point is to believe him, since he can seemingly defy natural laws. Now, he offers you a choice. You can actually return to the real world if you like, or you can stay in the simulation. Your life in the real world is not too good, you live in a dictatorship, and if you exit the machine, your life expectancy and chances of achieving happiness in the real world are smaller than in this one. But of course, you would meet "real people". Is it rational to go to the real world? Most people would say yes, because there's a huge happiness in knowing that you experience life with someone else. But what premises have led to that emotional response? (You know this is the Objectivist view on emotions) Is it actually rational to care whether your connection with others is genuine, as long as they react in the same way? If so, why? On a meta-ethical/meta-psychological level. As you can probably guess, the hedonist said that the rational choice would be to stay. I know many Objectivists don't like surreal examples about morality, but I think it's important, because it lets you focus solely on the issue in question.
  5. I guess we've all been baffled by the concept of the universe as eternal (which it must have been, since something by definition can't come out of nothing). I think eternity itself is impossible to really grasp on a deep level, because there's always a part of us that asks "When did all this actually start?" Yet it's hard to come to any other conclusion logically. With that in mind, could it also be possible that the universe is infinite? That no matter how deep we study nature we will never reach an end, that it is infinite both in inwards (from cells to molecules to atoms to electrons and protons to quarks, etc) and outwards (infinite number of galaxies). At the face of it, this idea seems ridiculous because it's incomprehensible, but isn't it incomprehensible in the same way as eternity? Could it be logically possible?
  6. Oh yeah, maybe it was his sister, not daughter. I'll check out those documentaries too.
  7. How come noone has made a movie about Ayn Rand's life yet? I think it could be perfect. I got the idea after seeing this video presentation about her life: 3 actresses: One small baby for that one scene with the electric cars, one 7-year old who can play Rand from age 5 to 12, another one who can play Rand as a teenager and adult. (Later years - digital editing or make-up so she looks older) Her actual life and its progression is just perfect for a story. It could start with the scene with her father explaining the electric cars when she was 2 and a half years old, then one could see many scenes from her childhood, how intelligent she was at home and at school, her vow to herself to become a writer at age 9, how her father's drug store was confiscated by the communists, etc. As a teen, one could see her debates and friendship with the daughter of Vladimir Nabokov, which is an interesting coincidence in and of itself, one could see the scene where she tells her university professor that she will one day become a great philosopher, etc. All these things happened, and they are just perfect for a romantic story. Then, her hunger as her family lost everything, her escape to the US, how she departed from her first love who was later killed by the communist state, how she cried with joy when she came to New York, met Frank, there's love at first sight when they spot each other on the bus, then she becomes the world's most influential writer, how is this not a movie already? The ending scene could be her euphoric moment when The Fountainhead became a best-seller, then there is some glorious music, and before the credits, there are various 10-second scenes from the rest of her life, with some text beneath. ("Atlas Shrugged became her magnum opus", "She continued writing and teaching for the rest of her life", "she died contently and satisfied with her life, in a hotel room, with her heir Leonard Peikoff by her side", etc) It would be a wonderful way to turn the narrative about Ayn Rand, she is always demonized, a movie like this could show how she was a hero who made the most out of her life, and the writers wouldn't even need to make artistic freedoms to make her life more interesting because it was actually pretty spectacular, and perfect for a movie. I'm just spitballing here, hopefully someone could make this a reality if it sounds like a good idea. Thoughts?
  8. Thanks for the answers. Perhaps qualia is a better term, experience of the world. The laser pointer argument is a good one, but that just goes for hunting, what about the social interaction, when cats and dogs are happy to see their owners? Do they simply think "giver of food and cuddles" or do they realize that we are experiencing the world just like they are?
  9. A better way of putting it: You can't choose your creative ideas, but you can choose to focus on them and bring them to life. That's my notion, but I won't say that it's for certain.
  10. I don't think so, if man has free will. Creativity is a very peculiar concept.. I think of it as a mix between free will and the "content" of your brain. You need to use a certain willpower to stay in a creative mood and finish a creative work, but the ideas will come to your conscious mind in "the only way they can". As Rand said, the only fundamental choice is to think or not to think. I don't know if my explanation made sense, and I might also be completely wrong.
  11. Can animals such as dogs, cats and horses understand that other creatures are conscious?
  12. I still don't understand why a very sophisticated robot couldn't do that. Is this elaborated upon in Introduction To Objectivist Epistemology? (I haven't read it yet)
  13. And why is it relevant that a disease has not consciously initiated force against you? What's the magic bullet? I'm not arguing that one should never retaliate in a war if it can hurt innocent people, but why doesn't that fall into the category of sacrificing others to yourself? And why wouldn't it be moral to kill innocents to cure a disease (which is often more of an emergency than a war is) by the same token?
  14. I've heard that argument often, but I don't completely understand it. I mean, you can imagine a sophisticated robot that integrates its impressions in a hard drive as knowledge and concepts, and acts according to them, and so on. Right? You could say that if we don't have free will, we can't know if our self-correctors are set incorrectly, as Branden puts it, but that would just be outside of the realm of knowledge, just like a hypothetical God or alternative reality. Right? We could still have knowledge that made sense to us within our means of understanding, even if, in the absolute true reality, the knowledge was wrong.
  15. I'm familiar with all the concepts and definitions in these two posts, but again, I would ask for another explanation of why the word "Prediction" should vanish from the vocabulary of any rational person, or what New Buddha's actual metaphysical views are. I thought he meant that it was an irrelevant question to ask whether the universe was determined or not, because we can't know, but no, that was supposedly not his point. If you understand his points Dream Weaver, could you rephrase them? I would also like people's interpretations of the double slit experiment. I'm familiar with Bohmian Mechanics and the "everyday interpretation", about apparent randomness or alternate universes, etc. Another interesting theory is that everything in the universe has a form of consciousness, sometimes made up of several proto conciousnesses, and if they all have a tiny element of free will, that would explain why the predictability dissappears on the subatomic level. Unless that's just a result of our model and it's completely backwards, but that's kind of what Bohmian Mechanics is saying too. But if Bohmian Mechanics are correct, there is no indication of free will. I'll also paste my earlier question: Now, as we know from quantum physics, there is unpredictability in the universe, which is what one should expect from a universe with free will, so it's likely that we do have it. But what if that wasn't the case? I mean, many Objectivists, including Nathaniel Branden and Stefan Molyneux, claim that it's *logically* impossible to prove determinism, because they say that you use your free will in order to judge whether something is true or false. That argument never made sense to me. Isn't free will simply the ability to choose your focus? So you can choose to focus on the rational FACULTY in your mind/brain or not, you can choose to focus on a work impulse or the more tempting video game impulse, etc. But surely it's not the consciousness itself that does the calculations, proving or disproving things? Do you see what I mean? A fish has consciousness too, but surely it can't reason? So in theory, determinism could be proven, if someone had super-advanced knowledge of a brain and could predict the person's choices during temptations, etc? Branden says that if determinism is right, one couldn't say that a theory is highly probable (including determinism), or that your reason is more valid than that of a raving lunatic. But just to play the devil's advocate here, couldn't you say that all knowledge is in some way connected in your mind, and you could see the results of reason applied to reality, therefore it is highly probable that you are guided by true reason, and a lunatic isn't? Maybe there's a fundamental flaw in my thinking of how the mind works, but I just can't completely get this.
  16. Well, the reason I'm asking the same question over and over is that you do not give any adequate answers. You don't really explain things well. Alternatively, if there's anything wrong with my understanding, maybe someone else can rephrase it in another way.
  17. Your analogy is not an epistemic standard, and if that's your point, fine. But you should really try to explain your point in a more broken-down and empathetic way, because every time I think I understand your point, you say that I don't, and judging by your writing style, you seem to imply that I'm dumb, but you might want to consider the possibility that you're not good at explaining things, or understanding other people's point of view. Not just judging from our interaction, but those of the whole thread.
  18. "That is not what I'm saying." Well, that seems to be what you're saying. To put it another way, existence IS either determined or random, etc, but it's impossible for us to predict and measure things perfectly, and thus it's irrelevant to have theories about it?
  19. When you say that the universe is not ontologically random nor ordered, are you talking about the context of human knowledge and understanding? That it's impossible for us, at least today, to come to a rational conclusion about it? And are you saying that the popular representation of quantum mechanics is completely backwards? That there is no apparent randomness, just limitations on our measurement methods?
  20. You really need to elaborate your point. How can you say that QM has nothing to do with prediction or free will? Before QM, the world seemed to be, at least in principle, predictable to scientists, the momentums and positions of atoms were like a domino, therefore, from that perspective, you could predict things. Now they've dug deeper into reality, and they've found that there is no predictability anymore, there is APPARENT randomness, which could either be genuine randomness, domino effects we haven't discovered, or free will. Of course there is PROBABILITY when you scale up, and that is just like my example with dices. You can't predict what one roll is going to be, but if you roll 1 million times, you will probably see a more or less even distribution among the numbers. Yes, I think it was Libet's experiment.
  21. Well, obviously I understand the difference between probability and prediction, but I don't see your point here. Obviously, a prediction that the dice will land on 3 is just a wild guess, but if you threw it 100 times, it would be a pretty safe bet to predict that not all the throws would end up on 3. Likewise, consider a theoretical more advanced version of the free will test which neuro-scientists today claim proves determinism (it doesn't) - They measure your brain waves and predict what you're going to do and focus on, etc, with 100% success. Then, wouldn't determinism be a fact? Branden's lunatic argument here just doesn't make sense. Our reason gives further evidence of its validity all the time.
  22. Now, as we know from quantum physics, there is unpredictability in the universe, which is what one should expect from a universe with free will, so it's likely that we do have it. But what if that wasn't the case? I mean, many Objectivists, including Nathaniel Branden and Stefan Molyneux, claim that it's *logically* impossible to prove determinism, because they say that you use your free will in order to judge whether something is true or false. That argument never made sense to me. Isn't free will simply the ability to choose your focus? So you can choose to focus on the rational FACULTY in your mind/brain or not, you can choose to focus on a work impulse or the more tempting video game impulse, etc. But surely it's not the consciousness itself that does the calculations, proving or disproving things? Do you see what I mean? A fish has consciousness too, but surely it can't reason? So in theory, determinism could be proven, if someone had super-advanced knowledge of a brain and could predict the person's choices during temptations, etc? Branden says that if determinism is right, one couldn't say that a theory is highly probable (including determinism), or that your reason is more valid than that of a raving lunatic. But just to play the devil's advocate here, couldn't you say that all knowledge is in some way connected in your mind, and you could see the results of reason applied to reality, therefore it is highly probable that you are guided by true reason, and a lunatic isn't? Maybe there's a fundamental flaw in my thinking of how the mind works, but I just can't completely get this.
  23. Yes, I know what it takes to win a war, but you're evading the issue. The issue is this - You kill innocents in order to survive. If that's moral, but killing someone to cure a disease is not moral, then what is the fundamental difference? And why isn't this sacrificing others to yourself?
  24. "One other point about the comparison between this disease and war. Yes, a disease like cancer is most likely through no fault of their own (obviously except for things like smoking and lung cancer) but war is not a natural phenomenon, it is started by conscious beings aware of what they are doing. The war is through someone's fault and certainly not the fault of the defenders. " But it's not the fault of the innocent people in that country either, which is why I made a parallell to a disease. If you look away from the initiators of force and just focus on the defenders and the innocents in the other country. Those innocents are being sacrificed in order for the others to live. "When people live under tyrants - and do not actively try and overthrow them - then they lose the right to protection in times of war. This is harsh, but true. A just nation might try and spare their lives, but those nations are not obligated to do." But it's very very hard to topple a regime, almost impossible in many situations, so I don't see how you can logically defend this.
  25. I think Peikoff and Brook have both said that you can target civilians in a war in order to win? According to this guy, Rand herself even said that she hoped innocents would die in a war with Russia:
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