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Easy Truth

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  1. Like
    Easy Truth reacted to New Buddha in A Few Question from a Communist   
    Her philosophy was very much influenced by her exposure to Marxism, both in the Soviet Union and the U.S.  It can be seen as primarily a refutation of it.  Both are materialist in the sense that there is no appeal to the "supernatural", but a primary difference between the two has to do with epistemology (see Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology).
    Marx held an individual's ideas to be formed via a dialectic process between and individual and his class and it's relationship to the material means of production in any given age.  Marx also saw history as unfolding to a finished state (Pure Communism).  Rand's epistemology, on the other hand,  does not posit any type of dialectic process in an individual's formation of knowledge.  It is based sensations, percepts, concepts, the formation of abstractions-from-concretes and abstractions-from-abstractions, etc.  Too much to explain here in detail.  ITOE would be a good place to start if you are interested.
    The altruism that Rand opposes should not be confused with the "helping your neighbor raise a barn variety."  In it's current, modern form, it is the virulent yet historical German idea that one's spirit may be free, but one's body belongs to the State.  This can be traced back to at least Martin Luther and the German Prince's using the Protestant Reformation as a rallying cry to oppose not only the Church but also the Holy Roman Emporer.  You might say that Hegel led to Hitler, and Marx - who switched the "state" to the "collective" - led to Stalin.
    I've been following the Global Warming debates for close to 9 years, and I see no evidence that any changes in temperature cannot be explained by natural variations within the limits of precision of measurement and a general warming trend that has been going on for a long while.  But this Post would not be a place to debate it.  If you want to, let's do it!  
    The role of government is often debated among Objectivist.  I think that since Objectivism does not believe that clashes are inevitable among reasonable Men (or "classes") nor is economics a zero-sum game, it is possible to create a fair and equitable government, and that one will always exist.  A good government should be seen as a wonderful achievement of rational men.  Rand had a great deal of respect for the U.S. Government and the Founding Fathers.
    I first read Rand around the age of 14 or 15, and in my youth, I was much more anarcho-capitalist than I am now.  As I grew older, and began to participate in society and not just observe it, I grew to appreciate the important role that government plays in society.  And per No. 4, I think it can be a net positive and not all negative.  Others will have different opinions.
  2. Like
    Easy Truth got a reaction from whYNOT in Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies   
    I know several people who made money and some who lost a lot due to the girations of Bitcoin so I don't have any fascination either way. But from the technical side, bitcoin or blockchain used in bitcoin type electronic cash has at least one built in use. It cuts out the middle man in financial situations where "proof of funding" is necessary.
    Proof of funding means, I know what your account number is and I know the balance ... right now.
    Let us say, you have a volunteer fire department. There are a thousand inhabitants, that sign up for the protection. At any moment, the users of the service want to know if the service is fully funded. But ... some or all the users of the service don't want anyone to know if they paid or not. Some will pay extra and some will not pay enough. Nevertheless, people want to know if the service is fully funded, so that it is in operation. They want to know things like  "is it about to go bankrupt or not".
    The way it is right now, with our cash and bank system, the ledgers are private. You have to jump through hoops to find out if the bank account of the volunteer fire department is fully funded.
    With a bitcoin type solution, you would know if the service is full funded IMMEDIATELY. The ledger is available to all without a bank middleman, without auditors, accountants etc. You see the full funding of the entity without any of that expense.
    Now, for that to happen, the fire department declares to everyone what their account number is. So everyone can determine what the balance is as it changes moment by moment.
    People see money going from accounts that they don't know who owns, to an account that is known to everyone.
    That was just one use. There are many in relation to the fact that no banks are involved.
    One the other hand, there is a fundamental problem. There are other coins that could do it faster and cheaper as transaction cost and speed suffer. So bitcoin clones are created without anything to stop it. It's a speculation problem that requires "maturity", psychological growth, in understanding how this market works so that money is not printed infinitely. Right now, the crypto space is just a casino.
    In the case of Etherium, the entire stock market can run on it, without any safeguards. It would be truly a free market type market.
     
  3. Thanks
    Easy Truth reacted to dream_weaver in Metaphysical & epistemological possibilities   
    Rand stated in Atlas Shrugged about Aristotle's incomplete formulation "existence is identity" with her offer of completion "consciousness is identification". There are really two parts. The identity that is given by existents. The identification that is provided by consciousness, which also help to have it be maintained for future reference.
    Peikoff added something for me in his introduction to logic about A cannot be both A and non-A at the same time, and in the same respect.
    As you point out, reasoning it out as you are grasping it is helpful. In talking to others, you cannot reason it out for them. If you understand the reasoning well enough, let them indicate where they are in their process of understanding and you may help them take the next step. This is a skill, and like any ability, man is not born with it. Objective (not Objectivist) communication is a skill to be learned, developed and by some, mastered.
    Consider the clarity with which Rand wrote. Few write well enough to also read it straight to an audience as she did in Philosophy: Who Needs It. This may come as a surprise to you, but there are some who don't agree with it.
  4. Like
    Easy Truth reacted to Jonathan Weissberg in Metaphysical & epistemological possibilities   
    @Easy Truth, @MisterSwig, @StrictlyLogical
    Sorry, I see there were some typos and inaccuracies in my original post. Eiuol filled in the blanks and was correct. There's more context I could've originally provided so I'll do it now. The rest will take me some more time to think through before replying. Keep in mind the majority of what I'm about to write was in the context of a discussion about asking the question of "will this flight that I'm about to catch crash?" and how to think about such a statement.   Yes, I meant to say man is non-omniscient and fallible. LP said fallibility is addressed by logic. And that non-omniscience is addressed by specifying the context, i.e., by implicitly acknowledging for complex items of knowledge (inductive generalizations) that your statement is preceded by “within the available context of my knowledge”. He states that this does not mean anything else is possible or “maybe I will discover something to upset this”, but only: “everything now known supports this and I acknowledge there is more to learn. If my method is right, the more I learn will not contradict what I have so far.” The more knowledge you have that’s relevant to your current context will simply mean the addition of new conditions, e.g., the discovery of the Rh factor blood as relevant for blood type compatibility (from the OPAR chapter on Reason.)   LP says that there are two ways to be wrong: (1) you’ve applied the method of objectivity correctly and specified a context, but new knowledge teaches you a qualification which doesn’t contradict the old context; or (2) you’ve erred in your method and new knowledge will contradict your old knowledge.    Metaphysical possibility and epistemological possibility are different concepts. LP says that metaphysical possibility refers to a capacity or capability or potentiality, e.g., a plane has the capacity to crash but a feather does not. A metaphysical ‘possibility’ is a statement about the nature of the entity and an epistemological possibility refers to advancing a hypothesis about a situation. You cannot say it's impossible for the plane to crash metaphysically, but you can say it's impossible epistemologically with no evidence of causal factors or conditions that actuate that metaphysical possibility.   Yes, I think this is what I was getting at. 'Certainty' is epistemological. A plane crash is metaphysically possible, but may be epistemologically impossible. If, on principle, you're concerned about the metaphysically possible as a guide to action but with no evidence of epistemological possibility then you end up paralyzed and unable to act.
  5. Like
    Easy Truth reacted to dream_weaver in Metaphysical & epistemological possibilities   
    So another way to put it would be: "What I know is mutable, allowing me to bring my knowledge into alignment with what is true."
  6. Like
    Easy Truth got a reaction from StrictlyLogical in Metaphysical & epistemological possibilities   
    Trying to understand that question. There seems to be two fundamental definitions of possibility, one that relates to the future and one that does not. Also found this article that I am looking at.
    https://therealistguide.com/blog/f/metaphysical-possibility-vs-logical-possibility#:~:text=To summarize%2C metaphysical possibility is,real existence outside the mind.
  7. Like
    Easy Truth got a reaction from dream_weaver in PragerU and the Objective Standard Institute   
    I saw it now. I assume some Prager people will have to integrate the fact that they are supporting an atheist with the fact that  "Even though atheists have a bad record".
    It was very politically correct, no mention of selfishness or knowledge without God.
    It's nice that it was published and some may be swayed. But I see a trojan horse in this project. I hope it belongs to Objectivism.
    But yes, provided by a generous donation from "The Objective Standard Institute". Who knows, the next ally of Objectivism may be the church of Scientology. They believe in Capitalism too and they may sway some people too.
  8. Like
    Easy Truth got a reaction from JASKN in PragerU and the Objective Standard Institute   
    I saw it now. I assume some Prager people will have to integrate the fact that they are supporting an atheist with the fact that  "Even though atheists have a bad record".
    It was very politically correct, no mention of selfishness or knowledge without God.
    It's nice that it was published and some may be swayed. But I see a trojan horse in this project. I hope it belongs to Objectivism.
    But yes, provided by a generous donation from "The Objective Standard Institute". Who knows, the next ally of Objectivism may be the church of Scientology. They believe in Capitalism too and they may sway some people too.
  9. Thanks
    Easy Truth got a reaction from Harrison Danneskjold in Truth In Politics Youtube Channel   
    Yes it is possible as in Gore vs. Bush. But this election would have required multiple states committing the fraud. No single county or state could have changed the result, Biden was too far ahead in electoral votes. And of course, the fraud had to be meticulous enough to give GOP and edge in congress but not for the presidency.
    All in all, the evidence is weak.
  10. Like
    Easy Truth reacted to Doug Morris in HB v. AB: Is collectivism the greater evil?   
    Has anyone come up with a more precise characterization of who or what is or is not being suppressed than "rightist" or "leftist"?
  11. Like
    Easy Truth reacted to dream_weaver in Is Dennis Prager a political ally?   
    Not a surprising viewpoint. It ignores the question of what is man's creator. 
    Rand described the philosophical wilderness as all but abandoned in her opening essay of "For The New Intellectual". 
    Is the notion behind the fifth column still being taught in history today?
    Today's destroyers, be they postmodernist, religious zealots, marxist, etc., have to present a position. What is it that Ragnar said regarding brute force pitted against force backed by the intellect? 
    Imagine a fifth column backed by reason rather than an unobtainable (except for short durations) power-lust? 
    Yes, Prager is attempting to rewrite history by underpinning a rendition with a narrative calculated to sway any discontented ballast. 
    Is Prager providing Biddle free advertisement, or is Biddle providing Prager his endorsement via appearance? Or are events like these merely red herrings to distract from the real task by using the sledgehammers to break the big rocks into little rocks?
  12. Like
    Easy Truth reacted to Eiuol in Is Dennis Prager a political ally?   
    The first part, the belief that men should have the freedom to choose to be women does follow from liberalism in the context you speak of. That is, if it is possible to transition to another gender with major physiological change, one should have the freedom to choose that (I still don't call them men because I would rather just label them as transwomen to capture that there really is something different about their identity on a fundamental level). The second part, that society should recognize that transwomen are the same as women, is a particular kind of moral view that isn't based on a political ideology. I don't think they should either - but people have the freedom to make their own sports competitions as they wish. 
    My thoughts on sex and sexuality aren't very different than many people who even self identify as truly Leftists, but I really am hell-bent against anything socialistic or authoritarian. But my point is that such views are not a consequence of political ideology. The left liberals you think of still support a capitalistic mixed economy still oriented towards markets and different degrees of regulation and the way they all use the media machine, just as right-leaning liberals. All of these people are neoliberals.
    But should we really call Prager a right liberal? I feel unsure. Anyway, it is critical that the vestiges of religious dogma be thrown away if we want to move towards the sort of society we would like ideally. It's a complete dead-end that doesn't move anywhere. 
    ==
    That PragerU video is terrible with terrible reasoning. 3:40 has no supporting argument. 
  13. Thanks
    Easy Truth got a reaction from AlexL in Is Dennis Prager a political ally?   
    He does not believe that we deserve liberty without god. He says that specifically in the video I posted.
    Once you have god and "god's will" in the thought process ... anything goes. It is fact, not magical.
    And as far as belief in the individual goes, he believes that we, each one of alone is evil ... without god.
    Very reasonable fellow.
  14. Like
    Easy Truth reacted to Eiuol in HB v. AB: Is collectivism the greater evil?   
    This type of viewpoint is called national conservatism. The kind mentioned by Journo. Call them whatever you want. The attempted fight back is by means of stronger collectivism. They want to beat left collectivism with right collectivism. It's the bad kind of nationalism. Nationalism per se is not a problem, but it is when it is proclaimed in collectivist terms.
    -Use government force to break up large corporations that have committed no crime and have not initiated force
    -Emphasize national dialogue about the importance of the family over the individual
    -Emphasize the importance of God
    -Forcibly reject government procedures that don't involve the will of the people ("stop the steel")
     
  15. Like
    Easy Truth got a reaction from Harrison Danneskjold in What are your biggest issues with Objectivism?   
    The assumption seems to be:
    1. Western culture is "unattractive"
    2. People are magnetically drawn to Islam
    3. Muslims are not into survival qua man
    4. They come here because they hate us
    But:
    1. Western culture is far more attractive to the young than Islamic tradition. After Several Generations, there is "tendency" to separate from their origins
    2. People are not drawn to Islam, they are mostly born to it. There is no strong tendency to join.
    3. These are people who want to flourish like anyone else, with the same desires and inner conflicts as any of us. Their fundamental tendency is to be human.
    4. They come here because they (tend to) think "we" are better than their country ... unless we assume they are "undesirable" and change their minds
    The issue with Sharia law is overblown
    1. Already arbitration takes place in Synagogues, Churches and Mosques
    2. A higher court can overturn their judgements
    3  Sharia law, or religious legal enforcement, is based on agreement of the people involved
    4. The threat of sharia law taking over the US does not exist 
       Sharia law can never take over because of the support for separation of church and state
       Support for separation of church and state comes from each religion wanting to be protected from the other.
       It is not because of "rational" atheists
    One simply has to do a simple calculation if, the majority of Muslims were not like other humans who tend to want to live their lives and not bother others, 1.3 billion of them would have made far more of a mess than we see.
  16. Thanks
    Easy Truth reacted to 2046 in Form v. Matter   
    The dominant views in 20th century philosophy of science has been backed by materialism and nominalism. We are familiar with that views challenges to cognition, intentionality, free will, personal identity, and normativity. That view however has been seriously challenged by failures and inability to integrate with new discoveries in the quantum revolution and biology.
    Another branch of philosophy that the concepts of matter and form can illuminate is philosophy of mind. The two main dominant views in philosophy of mind have been some form of materialism and dualism. But they both have principal objections that have proven intractable.
    Materialists say that what is real is nothing but matter. What we call mind is just a way that some matter somehow behaves, and different types of materialists take that "somehow" to be or imply different things. The dualists from whom the materialists took matter to be the first substance, say that in addition there's a second kind of substance called that has different mind-y properties. Different types of dualists break out over what those substances turn out to be.
    The main problem* with materialism is the causation problem. Once you get down to the quantum level, things look less deterministic and mechanistic. The idea of irreducible fundamental particles don't have the same kind of explanatory power they were supposed to have, in addition to being unable to explain the phenomenology of conscious experience. The main problem with dualism is the interaction problem. If the mind is a self-subsisting object (what a substance is supposed to be) that is immaterial and unextended, has no size, mass, motion, etc., How then does mind act on, or get acted on by the body?
    On the Aristotelian view there isn't a kind of causation problem because since a substance is a composite of form and matter, there can be fundamental causal powers at the level of whole organisms that are not reducible to primitive physical simples. And there isn't the kind of interaction problem because you don't really have two separate substances interacting, you have a whole human being with an essence and identity.
    Bringing back in the concepts of matter and form to human beings in ways that can avoid some of these problems. Roughly, we can treat them the same way we treat other theories in science, like say, "quark" or "gravitational field." Their value is based on their ability to integrate and explain the perceptual data.
    *In saying these are main problems, I am putting forth a condensation of common threads within an array of common objections. There are many possible objections and counter-objections, I am here merely describing what I take to be the main ones.
  17. Like
    Easy Truth reacted to Harrison Danneskjold in Shameful Display of Anarchy and Violence   
    Oh, boy.
     
    Did you know that when Kim Jong Un first rose to power he called all his top aides to a meeting in which he disassembled a machine gun and force-fed the pieces of it to several dogs (who presumably had a very rough time of passing said machinery through their digestive tracts) to convey what he intended to do to anyone who wasn't 100% loyal?
    Also he has no butthole; he doesn't need one (since he DOES NOT excrete that way) so he was simply born without one.  That story I'm slightly more skeptical of but anyone in North Korea who's caught contradicting it is simply executed.  Also all the birds in Korea sang in Korean when he was born and the dolphins he talks to know the cure for cancer and wish they could give it to mankind, if only the evil empire of America wasn't actively preventing it.
    Either he or his father have also erased the word "I" from the North Korean lexicon - just like in Anthem.  This is a perfectly normal and common word in South Korea and yet nobody in North Korea has ever heard it before.
     
    Either your love of Trump is clouding your judgement over other, only tangentially-related issues or you just don't know what it's like to live under that monster's thumb.  If it's the latter (and if you're comfortable taking my word for it) then I'll just say that Kim Jong Un is easily as evil as Hitler was, if not worse.
    How would you feel about a president who shook Hitler's hand and said that he "obviously loves his people very much"?
    "Peace in our time" as Chamberlain put it ...
  18. Like
    Easy Truth reacted to DavidOdden in How many masks do you wear?   
    This discussion has been rather far removed from the fundamental principles regarding man’s rights, and has focused instead on notions of aggression, spreading (versus other means), sensory inputs, affecting a person, doing damage to body or property including creating a risk of same. It has included the idea that one can accidentally initiate physical force. The problem has been (for over a half century) that we (not exclusively Objectivists, referring to people who take the concept of “individual rights” to be an essential concept that must be understood) are constantly playing whack-a-mole by invoking a concept like “aggression”, then we get challenged as to what “aggression” is, then we refer “aggression” to something else. Rand has stated the fundamental principle, and in my opinion Schwartz has explicated it nicely. I quote a single sentence from his first page: “This concept of force applies exclusively to actions taken by human beings against human beings”. But it is not just “the unchosen” that we identify when talking about force. Second sentence bottom p. 1: “We thus identify the concept “force” to denote a physical action to which we are subjected against our will”. Finally, he makes the identification that “The concept of force pertains only to the volitional. It pertains only to physical actions taken by a volitional being to neutralize the choice of another volitional being” (emphasis added).
    Relating this to the mask-mandate, there is no question that the governmental requirement to wear a mask in the locally-mandated circumstances is the initiation of force. It is a particularly egregious initiation of force, since it is in all cases a use of special dictatorial power that is outside the rule of law – it is only justified because it is declared to be an “emergency”. There isn’t even a real law requiring you to wear a mask.
    Sweeping away the mask orders, the question then should be, what legal consequences should there be if you do not wear a mask? The same as if you walk your dog, drive your car, or grow a tree on your property. If you walk your dog and do not control it, and it eats the neighbor’s cat, you are liable for the damage. There is extensive legal background on this principle (it is millennia old). The government and legal system subsumes these concepts under the “duty of care”, which allows you to not care about another party’s interests up to a point, but you must care when your actions do “harm”. It is obvious that I am not talking about Objectivist theory here, I’m just stating what has always been a legal principle governing social interactions.
    There are two related challenges for Objectivists on this front. The first is to be able to sort actions which should have legal consequences versus one which should not. Dogs eating cats would be an example of the former. Using the pronoun “he” when the referent prefers to be identified as “she” is an example of the latter. The second is to find a system of reason that relates those identifications to general principles, consistent with Objectivism. Automatically labeling something as “initiation of force” is anti-reason. Presenting a clear line of reasoning from principles to conclusions is what it means to “reason”. So let us reason.
    The strongest claim that I find at all compatible with Objectivism is that one should not knowingly, willfully transmit a disease to another person without permission. The second strongest claim is that if you negligently cause harm to a person by your actions (or inactions), you bear responsibility for those choices. Masks are about the second kind of case, where the bar is being lowering for a claim of “negligence” (as well as corrupting the concept “cause”).
    It is always possible at any time that any person has some transmissible disease and does not know it. It cannot be a principle of civilized society that one must self-quarantine if it is possible that one has a transmissible disease (that virtually contradicts the notion of a “civilized society” – we must always self-quarantine; life is not possible). This discussion needs a better principle. What principle underlies the distinction between covid and the common cold? What scientific facts underlie claims about covid versus the cold or the flu? I don’t mean, what do the newspapers say, I mean what are the scientific questions and findings? Then how do those facts relate to a person’s proper choices?
    That is how I think this discussion should be framed.
     
  19. Like
    Easy Truth got a reaction from Harrison Danneskjold in Shameful Display of Anarchy and Violence   
    I will grant you that the left leaning pundits have a dominant position in the media (TV radio).
    But I will not grant you that the left is widely accepted SERIOUSLY. If it were, South Africa, with a communist constitution would have already outlawed ownership. If it were, Europe would have had actual socialist medicine as in no private institutions. 
    Leftist ideas may be in fashion but the majority of the world do not want communism. Even leftists will attack communism. Meanwhile, there is no laissez fair capitalism in the world, only different degrees of crony capitalism i.e. some degree of fascism. 
    The actual danger is what Rand thought, fascism with leftist slogans. That is the imminent danger in this country (US).
    Collectivism is the problem, but you label what you don't like as collectivism. What you do like i.e. Trump's agenda is collectivism too.
  20. Like
    Easy Truth got a reaction from Harrison Danneskjold in Shameful Display of Anarchy and Violence   
    So which group do you fall into?
  21. Thanks
    Easy Truth got a reaction from Harrison Danneskjold in Shameful Display of Anarchy and Violence   
    Mob destruction is wrong even if BLM says there were a few bad apples or if the Capitol rioters say there were a few bad apples.
    The intrinsicist-collectivist argument is a straw man in this forum, as no one is arguing a uniform robotic mob in either case.
    The objection is to the right to violence, the right to take the law in your own hands ... when there is a law enforcement that can enforce the law, where there is enough legally protected free speech to exercise.
    The crux of the argument is that some do not believe that this "system" can protect them, as if this is a war ridden Somalia. 
    That is the paranoia at the heart of the problem.
  22. Thanks
    Easy Truth got a reaction from Harrison Danneskjold in Shameful Display of Anarchy and Violence   
    Exactly. The fundamental issue is if violent lawlessness is normalized, we all suffer for it. Each side saying well when we do it, it's justified, and the other guy deserved it, is a symptom of emotionalism and immaturity which in itself is WRONG and detrimental.
    The concrete body count (even though higher in the Capitol) is not the issue, the possibilities are what's concerning. If the crazies had hanged Pence or Beat the crap out of AOC or worse, or if the military had decided to take sides, we would be a right wing Venezuela. (can't blame it on the left or the right, we'd simply be in deep shit)
    Hopefully the nightmare is over. I'm certainly glad you are are back and in one piece.
  23. Like
    Easy Truth got a reaction from Harrison Danneskjold in Shameful Display of Anarchy and Violence   
    But the congress collective does deserve it, therefore a mob "should" deliver what they deserve  ... said the anti-collectivist collectivist. 
  24. Like
    Easy Truth got a reaction from DonAthos in Shameful Display of Anarchy and Violence   
    Gee, not much of contradiction there.
    That's certainly how YOU are proposing it to be done. It's neither moral nor widespread.
    "Likewise"??? And now you're equating taking a handout from an agency that you already paid into vs. using physical violence to get your point across. 
  25. Haha
    Easy Truth reacted to Doug Morris in Shameful Display of Anarchy and Violence   
    In 2016 I was still teaching.  Just after the election one of my students asked me if I voted "for Satan or the orange".  I said that actually Satan was Immanuel Kant, not any politician.  I overheard him ask some of his fellow students "Who??".
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