CriticalThinker2000
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Posts posted by CriticalThinker2000
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We can't positively prove infinity, ever, about anything, because that would be trying to prove a negative. What we can do (as we did in mathematics) is to prove that the possibility of any upper bound whatsoever, on whatever, is not possible.
I don't think that it's comparable to proving a negative. It's impossible to prove that something is infinite because an infinite object has no bounds which means it has no identity. Proof itself is premised on the law of identity and so 'proving the existence of infinity' means using the law of identity to show that the law of identity does not exist.
With respect to proving a negative, one is never required to disprove a claim to knowledge when there is no evidence for the claim because a lack of evidence means that the 'knowledge' has no known basis in reality.
The two things are both wrong to do but it doesn't seem like the reasons why are the same.
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Be careful what you mean by "logically possible." There are lots of things that are "logically possible" that are not physically possible.
Isn't this the analytic-synthetic dichotomy at work? A stake is being driven between concepts and their referents.
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I don't know what you're asking. Please be more precise in your language. Does "the Saudis" mean the Al Saud family, the Saudi government, or just people who live in Saudi Arabia in general?
And does Islamic totalitarian ideology mean the desire for Islamic rule in general, in Muslim majority countries (including the kind of rule that exists in Saudi Arabia, where society is governed by religious principles, but the government allows and promotes economic and military cooperation with the West), or the desire to establish an Islamic rule hostile to all non-Muslims, especially the West
By Saudi I meant the Saudi government and by Islamic totalitarianism I meant the ideology that justifies the imposition of a global caliphate. It was a sincere question that I believe is intelligible to the average person on this forum.
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The Bin Laden family are not terrorists, they're a prominent Arab family with business interests across the Middle East. Osama bin Laden has been disowned by his family, and officially stripped of his Saudi citizenship, as soon as he became hostile to the United States in the early 90s. I've seen no evidence that the Saudi government has provided him with financial assistance since that time.
So, "my God, no", the argument "the name Bin Laden is associated with the name Al Saud, therefor Saudi Arabia supports terrorists" doesn't hold any water with me (I'm not in any circles), because I don't get my news and political analysis from Jon Stewart. I need facts to actually understand situations, and I don't treat vague associations between people with the same last name as facts.
Do you have any facts proving that the Saudi government has been funding Osama Bin Laden's anti-American terrorist activities? Something other than "it's common knowledge because people on the Internet and the fake news have repeated it about 5 million times without ever bothering to offer proof"?
Aren't the Saudis providing financial support for the spread of the Islamic totalitarian ideology?
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I'll give this one last shot, try to sum up my previous post, since I see no one here got my point:
The phrase "identical situations" is a contradiction. The use of plural suggests a distinctions between two or more things. Distinction is the opposite of identity. The whole point of the law of identity is that one thing is identical to itself, but two or more things are not identical.
Nothing you say, that relies on the assumption that identical situations can exist, makes any sense. Interpreting the law of identity to contradict the existence of free will is ridiculous.
I got it, I just haven't responded because I've been thinking about it. I think it's the most important and original contribution to this thread.
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The special status I'd like to see education elevated to is something on par with securing a right to life. Not just ones own, but those one lives with and conducts business with.
Those "rights" are obviously in contradiction. The right to life is a freedom of action and the right to education is not- it's a right to be given a product of someone else's effort. A right to be given education means that the right to life is violated. How do you square this?
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Does it follow from the identity axiom that identical situations create identical outcomes? If so, how do we explain creativity?
To your first question, no. You can probably tell that Eiuol and I disagree on this subject
To answer yes to the above question is to imply determinism- or that your situation determines your choice. If the answer is yes, then in a given situation you must, by your metaphysical nature, act in one way. Just as a rock must fall to the ground when dropped. I think it's important to first really understand what the law of identity is and where it comes from before you can understand what it implies. Identity exists because to be is to be something. To exist is to have a specific nature. The law of identity does not proscribe what that nature is.
"A thing is—what it is; its characteristics constitute its identity. An existent apart from its characteristics, would be an existent apart from its identity, which means: a nothing, a non-existent." -Ayn Rand
"The concept “identity” does not indicate the particular natures of the existents it subsumes; it merely underscores the primary fact that they are what they are." -Ayn Rand
I think those quotes above do a thorough enough job of explaining it. With that understanding of the law, there is nothing to prohibit man from having the characteristic of free will- being able to choose amongst two different options (thinking or not thinking). In the end, his choice is part of his nature. That he must choose is necessitated by his identity, but how he chooses is not. With an ability to choose, man can choose to think independently and creatively.
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One other thing that I've been thinking about which relates to the spirit of the original question is the fact that a government represents its citizens in its dealings with other governments. If a government bombs another nation, it does so in the name of its citizens, whether individual citizens agree with the action or not. In this sense, a citizen of a country should expect to bear the responsibility of his government's actions, even if the citizen disagrees with them. He may not bear individual moral responsibility for the actions of his government but he must bear the practical results of responsibility as it is impossible to distinguish moral responsibility amongst every individual in a country. In this situation, the terrible situation the innocent citizen finds himself in (bearing responsibility for something he was not responsible for) lies at the feet of those who initiated/supported the initiation of force.
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Interesting to note that the arguments Peikoff uses that enemy civilians can be targeted is the exact same argument that al qaeda uses to justify targeting American civilians.
Do you mean that in a superficial sense, as in they both believe it is a practical means of winning a war? Clearly the fundamental justifications differ.
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You'll probably be dead before anything catastrophic happens anyway!
What a relief! Lol.
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I think you've just got to decide how much of the value of posting comes from clarifying your thinking and how much comes from spreading the right ideas to people. If you get a lot of value from the latter, as I do, then you have to decide if the person to whom you're responding is being honest or not. That, to me, is the more difficult question to answer. I think a lot of what I would have previously chalked up to dishonesty is really just a result of rationalism.
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What is this private/public forum of which you speak? I know not.
Huh? I was talking about Objectivism Online. It's privately owned but open to anyone who signs up.You used this minor point to ignore what I was saying. While I do often post for only my own benefit (to clarify my thinking usually), it's way more enjoyable to engage with someone who is being honest. I fail to see how you can not understand the distinction between free speech and speech on private property that SNerd, DW, and I pointed out. In another thread you also refused to acknowledge the fundamental distinction between rights protection (force) and education (the mind). For someone with your experience, this smacks of either an honest bent towards a faulty method of thinking (rationalism) or dishonesty. Either way, I'm out.
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Interesting... Initially (in post @11) you stated:
So what premise are you now using to assert that good and powerful communication ought to be banned in a public forum?
This is a private forum open to the public. Also, just because a method is good and powerful at communicating a message does not mean that the message is acceptable in every context. A dirty Ayn Rand cartoon like the religious one posted earlier will convey its message clearly but such a message has no place on this private forum.
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One very common problem among objectivists is that they forget that the stories in Ayn Rand's books were fiction and that they were necessarily a stark, simplified view of a world (as all fiction must be). Ayn Rand did not convey they incredible complexity of the real world we live in. She wrote about the "good guys" and the "bad guys" to be used as signposts for helping us understand the real world.
But the real world is complicated--when your goal is to solve problems in it.
But that's not everybody's goal. Some people's goal is to reinforce what they read in Ayn Rand's fiction books, or in some cases their goal is just to win the argument they happen to be in, apropos of nothing else.
My goal is a relatively safe and lower-taxed world in which I can carry out my life. I observe the world we currently, really live in, and advocate for the actions which will further my goal.
In the real world we know there are a billion Muslims, for instance. Needlessly pissing them off will not further my goal. Neither will needlessly pissing off religious people of all stripes, for that matter, will not further my goal. Rather, it will detract from it.
I also know that a lot of people--no matter what their religious beliefs--share my goal. Also, I know from a rather complex life I've lead (for instance, I haven't been a book author cooped up in an apartment all my life) that people are not "Aquinus's Angel"--that they don't automatically apply the logical implications of their basic premises.
In other words, most religious people I know are more or less "rational" about most things, as most people are.
Hence when you attack their religion as such (and out of a clearly defined, detailed context), they honestly don't even know what you are talking about. They just think you are an asshole.
"There can be no compromise between a property owner and a burglar; offering the burglar a single teaspoon of one’s silverware would not be a compromise, but a total surrender—the recognition of his right to one’s property." -Ayn Rand
What would she say about compromise on the issue of speech? If Charlie Hedbo decides not to print something because they are threatened, who has won? The notion that the world is too complex for the simplistic principles illustrated in Ayn Rand's fiction is a thinly veiled excuse to compromise on basic moral principles.
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Presuming an objective code of law is obtainable and of benefit to point to as a single source of justice, wouldn't the same be true of an objective standard of knowledge?
We've already got an objective standard of knowledge: reality. Replacing reality with a gun creates a subjective standard of knowledge.
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Isn't this method of thought an example of rationalism? The reasoning is as follows: the government's job is to extract force from society, properly educated people are less likely to initiate force, therefore it's the government's job to educate citizens. You can see the logic of the argument, except all sorts of relevant context is missing, like what a government has to do to the private citizens in order to provide free education and what make a government different from other institutions in society.
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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.
Wouldn't those be unconscious consciousnesses?
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One cannot assume that Taggart's commentary is meant to be the author's view. In fact, it is better to assume the opposite. In these quotes, Rand shows that Taggart has no clue why someone like Eddie would love TT so much.
Exactly. How about this quote:
"[Jim] You're lucky- you've never had any feelings. You've never felt anything at all.
[Dagny] No Jim, she said quietly, 'I guess I've never felt anything at all."
Now obviously we're not to conclude that Dagny has never had feelings. SNerd hit the nail on the head.
As SNerd also said earlier in this thread, it seems like a lot of this confusion is arising from the idea that survival is the standard of moral evaluation instead of 'life'. If survival is the standard, then Eddie's actions are unintelligible. If Life is the standard, they make a lot of sense.
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I'm saying the argument for a monopoly on force to provide security holds true for knowledge as well. If the latter is evil then the former also is for the same reason, i.e., that monopoly is evil. But in fact we sanction a monopoly on force while allowing for a right to bear arms, so in the same manner a monopoly on knowledge allows a similar right to self education.
We need government to act as policeman and librarian or we need neither service, for the greater social danger would be to regulate force but not literacy.
So the government needs to initiate force (the only way to hold a monopoly on knowledge) against innocent citizens in order to secure a system whereby the initation of force is extracted from society. This is silly on its face, if one bothers to think about it for a couple of minutes. An Objectivism sympathizer arguing for government control in the realm of ideas... I've seen it all. This 'argument' isn't worth pursuing any longer.
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Sorry, that was a bit of a stretch. I mean the objective control of force begins and ends with knowledge.
Yes, private security has to justify their use of force according to rules we sanction via government to enforce. My point is there's a similar need to settle disputes over knowledge, e.g., 1+1=2;not 3, cat is spelled c-a-t; not f-i-g. This kind of basic education is essential to knowledge and by extension to knowing what justice is and how it is appropriately enforced.
Just as we need force regulated to secure the marketplace, we need knowledge regulated to enable the participation of the greatest amount of traders. Or to put it another way, protecting traders against swindlers is less efficient than educating traders how to know when they've been swindled. We're not talking rocket science here, just ensuring that basic education is made available by the same means, and for the same reason basic security is made available.
Just to be clear, you're saying that we need to government to "regulate knowledge" because otherwise we will be unable to settle disputes regarding what is true? If so, that is a really evil idea.
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Yes, but I argue that the objective control you are referring to is of the mind, thus the need for a unique service to secure education as well as property.
I've tried my best but I can't understand that sentence at all. What do you mean objective control is of the mind? I'm saying that physical force, because of its nature and relation to man, needs to be placed under objective control. The same is not true of education because education does not deal in force. It's true that there are private security forces, but if a private security force uses force it has to justify it to the government.
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I dispute that position. Education is the most efficient means of exercising control over the use of force, and the most potent deterent against aggression.
What do you dispute? I agree with you that education is, in a sense, prior to the use of force. People's ideas shape how they believe force ought to be used. However, that doesn't erase the distinction between what is force and what is not force. A preacher of mystical non-sense ought not be prosecuted as a murderer (nor coerced into shutting up) even though his ideas would ultimately lead to death and destruction.
Education is a product of and for the mind. It's in an entirely different realm than physical force.
Going back to your first statement of your question on page one:
You've got me thinking now, and I'll probably run amok, but isn't public education as valuable as public security? And if so, or nearly so, then it seems to me that the argument for a government role in education follows naturally from the government role to maintain security, not only from aggression but from ignorance; the latter being a real danger to society that left unchecked will exacerbate the former."Public Security" (which I guess means a police force) isn't argued for on the basis that it's really really valuable but that it's not like other "services". Force needs to be placed under objective control, not competed for.
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That, my friends, is what a floating abstraction looks like...
No it's not.
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Guys, again, context.
The Founders imagined war powers to be given to the president when our entire existence was threatened, not when some criminals figure out how to kill exactly 1/10,000th of our population all at once, every 25 years.
Terrorism is in no way worthy of a war declaration, nor was Iraq.
A government exists to protect the rights of individual citizens, it's not a numbers game.
The Experience of Trying Marijuana
in Ethics
Posted
My experience with MJ in small amounts is that it sort of dulls the conscious mind and allows things to flow very freely from the subconscious. If I know/understand a topic well and have it integrated within my subconscious, I can write very easily and freely on the topic. In Rand's The Art of Fiction (or is it Non-fiction I'm thinking of?), she gets into the conscious/subconscious a bit. She describes the phenomenon that occurs when she's really writing well. I would describe it as being 'in the zone'. For example, if she has integrated the characters into her subconscious and is writing dialog between characters, she does not have to explicitly think about what each character would say in such a situation. It simply flows out without thinking about it. That's not to say she doesn't have to go back and meticulously edit the dialog, but the point is that when you're 'in the zone', the dialog simply flows from the subconscious. For people that have experience with computer programming, you have probably been in a similar state where you do not have to think about exactly what code to write, so long as the problem being solved is not too complex. It sort of just flows out. Small amounts of MJ seem to actually do a good job of facilitating this state.
Large amounts at a given time is a completely different story. I find that my conscious and subconscious go to crap. I will write weird and nonsensical things, and worse, it's difficult to even tell that if it's nonsense or not when fully focusing on the content in question. Also, I have found that if MJ is used regularly, the positive effects lessen over time. It's very easy to take a tolerance break and get those effects back though. If you keep smoking all week next week too, I think you'll find that it becomes a lot more difficult to be productive. You wake up groggy, and if you go to bed after smoking, the sleep is never good.
As far as retaining new information while high, I found it to be extremely difficult.