SpookyKitty

But hypotheticals like that , even somewhat potentially hyperbolic, mess up a nice neat Dungeons and Dragons style of directing moralizations and assigning condemnation.

Presumably, Dogland would launch a nuclear missile at SK in self-defense, killing millions of innocent Catlandians as collateral damage. The blood is on SK'S hands! If Dogland should not send a nuke, why are you saying that Dogland shouldn't defend itself!?

There is the question of how should Dogland or Catland behave, but there is also the question of how your nation "observing" react.
It would be an interesting question regarding how an "Objectivist" leader of an "Objectivist" nation reacts. This could also be asked regarding a philosophy or religion (ideology). For instance, was 9/11 done by a group of terrorists that was not nation-sponsored? Did it justify attacks on Afghanistan where it did originate, and on Iraq where it did not? These are tiring questions that require stamina to discover their answer.
But with all the previous irrationality that has gone on between the Israelis and the Palestinians, ultimately it would rest with the issue of who initiated and who was negligent in preventing. One has to find who was responsible and how can it be prevented in the future. Was the nation with the lone terrorist negligent in preventing such an attack, or was there a pervasive philosophy that encouraged such an attack where a nation represents that philosophy? There is a battle between the zionist philosophy and the Islamic Philosophy in the case of Hamas (Palestinians are not all Islamic))
As a reaction, the nation attacked, like a human being will simply react violently. It seems that some on this thread are arguing that anything goes. If anything goes, the road to annihilation is wide open. So "anything" can't go. That does not mean choosing altruism/self-sacrifice, only that "limits" are to one's benefit.

This is incorrect though, you shouldn't cease to respect their rights. You responded as if respecting their rights would mean you would have to forgo self-defense. I can see why you would think that SK meant some kind of self sacrificial action. So I posted to clarify. And then SK liked my post, suggesting that my added clarification was the correct interpretation. If you want to talk about what Rand thought, she has never spoken about anyone losing rights, not even people who have violated rights. 
A person may try to harm me in some way, but the fact that they want to harm does not itself mean they lose all rights whatsoever. You still can't initiate force against them. In the context of this discussion, Palestinians are not categorically without rights, and if any Palestinians want harm in some vague way doesn't give Israel free reign. Against Hamas, sure, since they explicitly call for the initiation of force for the sake of Islamic fundamentalism. 
It's a pretty good question actually. Since the claim is stated that any act of retaliation is justified, it makes sense to go to the extreme. Nuclear strike on one person, with millions of casualties of people who did nothing at all. That's absurd, so you would have to modify the original claim to be that there is some rational limit to what kind of collateral damage is justified.
It's pretty common that the reaction to reductio ad absurdum is "that conclusion is ridiculous, you're taking me out of context, that's not what I meant, your question is invalid because of how ridiculous it is!"   

The Israeli government at one time allowed Hamas to form or allowed them to move into Gaza as a political tool that would be useful internally and internationally in ultimately ending a ‘two state solution’ solution. 

Do those actions qualify as state sponsored terrorism?
I am not making an argument that is necessarily the case , just trying to apply the rigidity of the moral standard to a particular.

Or more specifically, they still maintain their rights, but because they initiated force, it isn't a violation of their rights to respond with self-defense. For whatever reason, people supportive of individual rights like to argue that people "lose" their rights if they initiate force. But that's not true. And anyway, it's not as if Palestinians are equivalent to Hamas! 
 

Keep in mind the PLO wanted the destruction of Israel too, but the PLO was negotiated with. They were awful terrorists too. They changed. And of course, Israel was also created through terrorism against the British.
Assuming Hamas were a pathological organization that would attack civilians at random without any provocation, then it would be a simple choice. It has to be destroyed. But if the process to destroy them will create a permanent state of war, negotiation ought to happen. 
If the choice was as simple as "destroy Hamas or don't" it would be simple but the action by Israel right now will not destroy Hamas. Hamas has to be destroyed internally by the Palestinians themselves.
Hamas, as a resistance organization, is allowing for Palasteninans to be "heard" the only way possible, it is getting a reaction. If in the future, Palestinians are consistently ignored, this organization will live on as an option for Palestinians. In other words, the enemy has to be heard and a non-violent dialog created, otherwise, war is their only way of communicating.
Is the invasion of Gaza a temper tantrum of the Israeli community or a well-thought-out plan ahead? Is there a method to the madness? Will this invasion of Gaza destroy Hamas? Will this massive destruction and loss of life be remembered by Palestineans as a lesson to not be heinous again, or as a focal point of hate ingrained in their history?
If one can make the case that the current invasion will create harmonious communication, then the validity of the "eternal war" may have some legs. But Hamas is being Martyred, with many giving their lives for their people, so they will have more staying power. Israel in a sense has fallen into their trap. The choices are not simply to destroy Hamas or take no action.

If all Palestinians are criminals, then they should lose their rights based on being human. This assumes that the "initiator of force" is clear ... and that all Palestinians are criminals. We know that Hamas operatives did their heinous deeds. What Hamas did was horrible. Meanwhile, what Israel is doing is horrible too with a much higher body count. The heinousness of an act does not necessarily determine your "rights". If it was a retaliation then the horror would have some justification. If it was not, it was a meaningless savage attack.
First and foremost, the individual has to protect their rights. After that, it's the agency that they create, relinquishing that responsibility and giving it to the monopoly on force. This means that the way HAMAS was created is relevant.
Israel was complicit in creating this so-called government (HAMAS) to weaken the political power that the PLO provided. It also contributed to the living conditions, with 2.5 million people blockaded on 3 sides. It was a chess move Israel made that contributed to this catastrophe. Did the Palestinian people have a "right" to an un interfered with Political process? Did they have the right to the PLO representing them? Mind you, the PLO is corrupt, but it does accept Israel's right to exist.
Successive Israeli governments and settlers have harmed Palestinians too. This is assuming that Palestinians have rights. If Palestinians are human, then they have rights. After the Oslo Agreement (with the PLO), Palestinian claims have been ignored or sidelined.
Assuming that one side does not have rights simply based on their civilization would allow conclusions that all individuals in communist systems, feudal countries, countries with kings or Queens, or Socialist or Fascist systems don't deserve natural rights. After all, their "system" is not civilized i.e. they are not civilized.
Individuals are not programmed by their DNA to want to kill members of certain groups. We have free will. Each wants to flourish like any human. Palestinians will need to be considered human with associated rights to enable a mutually agreeable solution. One side being subhuman is succumbing to emotion.
 

There is a bit of a border with Egypt, but it is largely Israeli control But what you're saying here is even worse, because this is after the destruction of Hamas. I'm saying those kind of responses in the aftermath are bad, they produce more problems, and they are methods that stand against liberty. You should understand that my point is that Israel does not take consistent principled stands in favor of liberty, all it seems have ever done is respond to direct attacks but then completely fail to do anything to stop that from happening again. 
I guess he feels bad that he didn't rise up against the South African government back during apartheid. 

Dude, you think you're Aryan/Übermensch psychologically. You've been simping for Russia for the past year. I'm pretty sure I know who the fascist is.
Aww. Did I rile up a rightie?

You can keep cosplaying as Übermensch, will yourself out of genocides, own the left and do other White shenanigans. The rest of us will be out here doing our non-Aryan things in the real world.

Does that not include those who can read and write??? The demonization of more than 5 million people (Palestinians) is akin to how the Jews were seen as sewer rats.
That is nonsense. It's a contradiction. Following a philosophy without knowing the reason for it is valuing faith-based ethics.  If that's what you're selling then you're definitely posting in the wrong forum.

I wonder if the forum will embed tweets?  Anyway, I deny being an Iranian propagandist of a useful tool of Iranian propagandists.  All Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism) need to be put down forever.
https://x.com/samparkersenate/status/1724434234264183240?

This would be equivalent to saying all people living in Gaza are terrorists. I even mentioned terrorists in Gaza, as opposed to non-terrorists in Gaza. Curtailing the liberties of people who have not violated rights in order to stop the people who have violated rights is not a proper response. 
Restricting movements because of terrorism implies I'm talking about the people who are not terrorists. This might be more like restricting movement on the Mexico US border because of cartels in Mexico. It wouldn't be proper to limit the movement of all Mexicans across the US border as if presuming that they are all guilty until proven innocent. But the extent of Israeli control over their border with Gaza is far more expansive than that even. 
Take it as a given that I already agree that terrorists deserve to be annihilated - I'm disagreeing about specific methods. 

@whYNOT is a symptom of disgusting White people who have lived a privileged life, think oppression has no consequences, live in their own Aryan/Übermensch fantasies and think that Jews should have "pulled themselves by their bootstraps" in the middle of the Holocaust and should have simply "chosen not to be victims".

And anyone who thinks that repression and victimization have zero negative effects and that every single person can "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" no matter what happens to them (even in the middle of a genocide or bombing) is worse than a determinist. You believe in a mystical concept of human will and have no concept of morality.
Keep riling up leftists and doing absolutely nothing to solve real world problems. That's easy when you pretend that the world doesn't have rules and you can solve everything by sheer human will.

It's weird when people take "Israel should be able to defend itself" to mean that "Israel is justified in doing anything it wants in retaliation, and is justified in doing everything it has ever done". Palestine is not a nation. Palestine has no singular government. Palestine has no unified message. Indeed, Hamas is evil, and it should be obliterated by any means necessary, but it doesn't follow that therefore anyone near Hamas geographically needs to be under police control without even an apparent pathway to be allowed to be left alone. In other words, those means are not necessary. 
It's funny that he brought up "returning people to their ancestral homeland" to suggest that would be absurd, collectivistic, or stupid to argue in favor of, when the founding of Israel was about returning people to their ancestral homeland. Part of the whole issue surrounding the conflict is that this still needs to be resolved, it's not as if Israel was founded 1000 years ago.

I take as included in the thesis “Existence is Identity” the thesis “An existent is things, and its existence is only the existence of all the things it is”. The self-sameness, the just-one-thingness, of two hypothetical such existence-sets of all the things a thing is, if proven, would yield the Identity of Indiscernibles principle at least among existents. But I have not attempted such a proof. When I do, I’d like to run it both taking existents as exhaustively parsed among Rand’s categories (entity, action, attribute, relationship - ITOE) and as exhaustively parsed among my categories ([enlarged] Entity, passage, character, situation). I expect the answer will be Yes for both hers and mine or No for both hers and mine. (The significance of the categories is that supposing the category lists are exhaustive of the types of existence, the attempts at proof of Identity of Indiscernibes can be run by cases, like Euclid does in some proofs. Also, not getting both Yes or both No for our two sets of categories would indicate that one set or the other is not an exhaustive category-set of existents.)
To begin working on a proof, I’d first study a book waiting for me a long time on my shelf, whose title is Leibniz’s Principle of Identity of Indiscerenibles (Rodriguez-Pereyra 2014) to fully comprehend the reasoning of Leibniz to the truth of the principle. Where he relies upon the Principle of Sufficient Reason, I and Rand would require the correctness of it to range over a smaller domain than had Leibniz. So that sort of difference might play into a verdict on the Identity of Indiscernibles principle.
Then too, one needs to analyze in terms of all that, the identity facet of bosons. Get right with the bosons, we must.
One problem I’d have to dwell on also is my talk of “all the things something is” because that would have to include the potentials for all the ways intelligence could use the something, including in inventions. Makes me a little nervous.

SK, thank you for this contribution, the two posts preceding this one.
Why couldn't we say that any perceived item is an existent and that existents come in various basic sorts, such as Rand's sorts: entity or attribute (characteristic) or action. Whether that is the best scheme of what are the basic sorts and whether it succeeds in covering all the sorts of perceived items, all the sorts of existents, is debatable. But Rand has this system of categories in her 1957, and takes it there that in infancy one can perceive motions without perceiving them as of an object. So she could say that we know the infant is perceiving a swish of Mother's skirt, but does not yet know the item perceived---the swish---belongs to an object. The order of first experience of the various categories need not be the same as the ordering discerned in mature thought concerning ontological dependencies among the various categories.
In her 1957, Rand used "entity" at times in the usual way of meaning "any item" such as any item in perception, any existent. But she stopped that usage in later writing, reserving "entity" to mean only a member of her ontological category of that name. In her ITOE, she set forth one elaboration of her category entity that is really an error on her part. She tried to capture "entity" in her special categorical sense by linking it specially to nouns. That was a mistake because any item, of any category, can be the subject of a sentence and have things said of it in the sentence, as when I say "Swinging on the big swing out at the old cemetery is fun." "Swinging" is a noun, but is an action, not an entity in Rand's special sense.
After we have reached the resolution at the end of your reflection, should we go back upstream and use the resolved picture to criticize the formulation of 2 as ambiguous? Also, it seemed that the immediate argument you gave against 2 is circular. I'd have to think about both of these issues further, but first I need recharge my higher brain with a little more sleep.
I notice that the ecological psychologists have it that perception of the entity as a whole is only possible (i) with attendant perception of it as in an environment and (ii) with a self as in an environment and (iii) with characteristics of the entity as affording this or that action. There is an up-to-date book (unfortunately expensive) on this conception of perception. Its title is The Philosophy of Affordances. 

This is actually a very sexy calculation. I am impressed.

From the Ayn Rand Lexicon:
With certain significant exceptions, every concept can be defined and communicated in terms of other concepts. The exceptions are concepts referring to sensations, and metaphysical axioms.
Sensations are the primary material of consciousness and, therefore, cannot be communicated by means of the material which is derived from them. The existential causes of sensations can be described and defined in conceptual terms (e.g., the wavelengths of light and the structure of the human eye, which produce the sensations of color), but one cannot communicate what color is like, to a person who is born blind. To define the meaning of the concept “blue,” for instance, one must point to some blue objects to signify, in effect: “I mean this.” Such an identification of a concept is known as an “ostensive definition.”
Regardless of who is doing the concept formation, there might be an initial stage in which the working definition is at least partly ostensive.
 
 

I don't think it matters to Rand's theory what quantities are directly measurable or not. Side-length is a measurement, average of side-lengths is a measurement, angles are measurements, sines and tangents of angles are measurements. These are all characteristics of a triangle, even if we might need to perform some computations to find them out.
It's possible to restate your definition in terms of quantities that are "directly measurable": we just need the ratio of a triangle's side-length to its perimeter (which is "directly measurable") to be between 0.9/3 and 1.1/3. However, even here we need to "compute" the ratio (which isn't directly measurable). The measurement omission here is the fact that only the ratios matter, not the actual lengths.
 
This isn't actually necessary. It was just the easiest way. Since we know for a fact that only the ratios matter, we can discard all length measurements as a first step (and instead just look at angles). Thus, even without computing averages, we can omit all length measurements (since they're just indicators of scale).
Then, based on the law of sines, we can apply the following conditions:
0.9/3 < sin(A)/(sin(A)+sin(B)+sin(B)) < 1.1/3
0.9/3 < sin(B)/(sin(A)+sin(B)+sin(B)) < 1.1/3
0.9/3 < sin(C)/(sin(A)+sin(B)+sin(B)) < 1.1/3
Even after this, there are additional measurement omissions (only ratios of sines matter, not the actual values of the sines. The exact value of the ratio also doesn't matter and only a certain range matters).
The idea that we need to compute averages before any measurement omission is incorrect. It's possible to get rid of length measurements first and then do other computations. However, calculating averages first is easier (and it honestly doesn't matter. The average is as much a property of a triangle as a side-length).

I understand that's what you're going for, but my question here has been: how is that possible? How can a symbol meaningfully stand for an unlimited range of yet-to-be-observed particulars without relying on a real universal, some real property that makes them what they are, with which we can make universal claims about all such instances?
It seems like you run into the same problems whether you're talking about things you're "referring to" or things that the symbol "stands for", I'm not seeing what that distinction buys you here.
Based on what in reality? You're telling me there's this "something" in reality which makes all instances which have this "something" identical by nature. That's an exact description of a real universal!
I would agree that this is clearly what she is implicitly relying on in numerous places in the book (and in many derivative ways throughout Objectivist philosophy), and yet she specifically rejects the reality of these metaphysical universals, these "timeless essentials" which man "recognizes", the "treeness" in tree or "manness" in man, etc.
The issue here, both with you and with Rand, is the reliance on the real universals while denying them.

Well if some "other type of universal" existed, then it would be real, wouldn't it? If something exists that implies that it's real.
What I'm trying to distinguish is between one conception of what "universals" are, and another very different conception of them.
A realist says that universals are features of reality that exist and persist outside the mind, outside of any human mind. There is an intelligible structure to reality whether anyone understands it or not. Our concepts can be right or wrong according to whether they correspond to these universal types, these natural kinds.
A nominalist holds that there is no intrinsic intelligibility to reality, intelligibility is something we do in our own minds as a way of organizing our sense data of reality. Reality is like this tabula rasa, materialist blank canvas. "Universals" are categories that we make up, like mental "buckets" to group together particular sensory-perceptual experiences. Whichever buckets you make up might be judged as practical or impractical, according to unit economy or whatever, but there is no "right" answer, there aren't "true" or "false" buckets. There are no true universal types, there aren't natural kinds, out there in nature. The "kinds" are things we make up, these mental buckets. 
These are not basically both the same type of thing, just one I believe in and one I don't. It's not like we are dealing with real and imaginary breeds of animals, like wolves are real, but werewolves aren't real. Of course I do believe we form concepts in our minds, like creating mental buckets like the nominalist believes, or like Ayn Rand describes the process of concept formation. The point is that I think there are real universals out there, and the ones we come up with in our head can be true universals or they can be false; they can be right or wrong not just in terms of pragmatic standards like unit economy or utility, but in terms of corresponding, or failing to correspond, to the true universals in reality.

I wasn't asserting there that universals exist, I was just making a point about knowledge - "If universals exist then our awareness of them is accurate and knowledge of universals is possible, but if they do not, then our seeming "awareness" of them is really a phantom, and the universality that we imagine is not really "knowledge"."... that is, if there's nothing in reality that holds universally, then any universal proposition cannot actually be true, not in the normal sense of logical truth; such "universal knowledge" is not actually knowledge, it's just a hypothesis, or a useful convention, or something like that.