Jump to content
Objectivism Online Forum

Jon Letendre

Regulars
  • Posts

    311
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    4

Reputation Activity

  1. Thanks
    Jon Letendre reacted to tadmjones in About the Russian aggression of Ukraine   
    What follows is Zelenskyy is currently president for life, or for as long as martial law is not rescinded. So elections do not matter at this time in the Ukraine, if they ever did, really.
    I inferred from Stephen's post that he was criticizing the 'undemocratic' nature of dictatorships. By citing official statistics from regimes that charade about elections. I suspect too , that he is throwing shade at what he thinks Trump supporters believe about our recent and present cycle(s). Surely he must realize that Biden is a titular President, his own AG finds him incompetent to stand trial.
  2. Haha
    Jon Letendre reacted to tadmjones in About the Russian aggression of Ukraine   
    How is Zelenskkyyii polling in this cycle ?
     
  3. Thanks
    Jon Letendre reacted to tadmjones in Israelo-Palestinian Conflict: 2023 Edition   
    https://www.asil.org/insights/volume/8/issue/25/world-court-finds-us-attacks-iranian-oil-platforms-1987-1988-were-not
    I had not heard of the military action prior to clicking on the link and not sure how much credence to put on ICJ proceedings but seems they determined the US strikes on the oil platforms were not consistent a with self defense, defense.
    I think the destruction of the Iranian Navy would have to precede from a declaration of war, no ?
  4. Sad
    Jon Letendre reacted to Boydstun in Israelo-Palestinian Conflict: 2023 Edition   
    Don't Tread on USA!
    The US has said they will not attack targets inside Iran for their use of terrorist organizations to attack Iranian opponents. I hope, however, that the US has not taken destruction, sooner or later, of the entire Iranian navy off the table as among US retaliatory response actions.*
  5. Like
    Jon Letendre reacted to necrovore in Closing of the topic "Remembering the CG Computer-Generated Pandemic Tyranny"   
    I do not advocate any of these things.
    I think there's a confusion here between what the forum as a whole does (e.g., through moderation) versus what its individual participants do.
    Part of this is the recognition that every individual participating here has the right to make their own judgment about which arguments are rational and why, as well as which arguments are worth responding to and which not. (And on the other hand, if they make invalid arguments, their arguments will be judged accordingly.)
    I don't think such individual judgment should be usurped by the forum itself such as by banning arguments, which amounts to deciding that the participants shouldn't be allowed to see them or, possibly, that they shouldn't be allowed to make them.
    I am aware that the resources of this (or any) forum are privately owned and that the owner can decide how they can be used. However, the amount of these resources for any single post is pretty small (and I'm sure the owners would like them kept small). Providing a public forum is not in fact a moral sanction upon everything people say there, just like giving away sheets of blank paper is not a moral sanction on whatever people happen to write or print on them. Nor can anyone who posts here claim (with any honesty) that their post, merely by virtue of not having been banned, is in agreement with the owners, or with Objectivism, or is any kind of award-winning great achievement.
    Further, when the forum owners and moderators decide to exercise judgment about which posts are correct, then they are implicitly asking the participants to cede their right to make their own judgments. That becomes a cost for the participants, just as much as if you were asked to give up other rights you might have. They then have to consider whether it's worth it.
    Maybe I helped precipitate this confusion by saying that the forum should conform to the Objectivist epistemology, but the role of the forum in the Objectivist epistemology is not to think for the participants but to make sure the participants are not blocked from thinking for themselves. Once one has decided to offer a forum, this becomes a negative obligation -- not a demand for more resources. (It is in fact banning stuff that requires more resources, because somebody has to make the decisions about what to ban, and those have to be checked for accuracy, etc.; this is why big companies like Facebook end up needing large censorship moderation departments where people look at posts all day, or else they need AIs to make those decisions automatically. It is why larger magazines need editorial departments to pore over manuscripts. It is why the East German Stasi needed so many people to monitor phone calls.)
    Being open is a large part of what offering a forum is. That is the value it offers. It should be allowed to offer it.
  6. Like
    Jon Letendre reacted to necrovore in Closing of the topic "Remembering the CG Computer-Generated Pandemic Tyranny"   
    There can be options in concept formation; the Japanese color 青い covers blue and also blue-green and maybe green in some contexts, and there are probably other examples where concepts in different languages overlap but don't coincide.
    If this sort of overlap can happen between languages, it can also be possible between people who share the same language but perhaps aren't using a dictionary or aren't using the same dictionary. This doesn't mean that either one is non-objective, just as the difference in colors between English and Japanese doesn't indicate that either language is non-objective. The result of the difference is a lack of precision but not necessarily accuracy. Obviously, with differences in the units, the accuracy is slightly less, just like a translator might have to determine whether to translate 青い as "blue" or "green" in a particular context.
    It's easier to be precise and to agree with things like the "meter" which can be measured easily than with things like the exact line of demarcation where a forum becomes something more like a magazine.
    One could ask, what is the essential characteristic of a forum?
    I was thinking of "openness" as an essential characteristic, and the reason I think it's essential is that a "forum" that isn't open is useless, not just to me but to everyone else; that's what makes openness essential.
    This is not to say that "magazines" are invalid. There may be certain people whose opinions I care enough about that I might want them accurately represented. I might subscribe to their magazines. But it is telling that Leonard Peikoff, for example, hosted a Q&A, where he would answer questions, and he could pick and choose which questions he wanted to answer, and the answers were unambiguously his as opposed to what someone else thought he might say. It was a Q&A, not a "forum." He didn't host a "forum," invite people to post, and then ban opinions he disagreed with.
    Also, Peikoff had already built his reputation, so people were interested in what he, in particular, had to say. What if you come up with a new idea? Where do you put it? Assuming you are not famous. Nobody approves of your idea yet because nobody knows what it is. Do you want to take a chance that you will get banned because people disapprove of it? Is it fair that you should have to take that chance? And what if you want to find new ideas that might have been come up with by other people, who aren't themselves famous enough to create their own forums? Where do you go to look for them? How can you find someone who runs a forum that allows new ideas, given that the forum owner has to take the risk that the new ideas might be wrong and that he has therefore sponsored wrong ideas?
    If people have to censor ideas that they disagree with, people must have been grossly immoral for publishing Ayn Rand's books and ideas, since after all those people could not have agreed with the ideas already, since they were new. (Or else they were taking a chance on being immoral, sort of like shooting off a gun in random directions and being lucky enough not to have hit anyone. Which is also immoral. But anyway...)
    A personal attack is an ad hominem, it's a fallacy. But the reason for banning personal attacks is not because they're ad hominem: the fact that they're ad hominem is what allows us to get away with banning personal attacks, because we know we're not accidentally banning any legitimate ideas.
    The reason for the ban is because personal attacks tend to turn away the contributors who are attacked, and thus renders the whole forum useless to them, and less useful to others who might have wanted to read those contributions, or other contributions which might have never gotten made.
    I don't know if I want to try to run an open forum, because people might join and then demand that I suppress other people's views based on arbitrary criteria. Or if I didn't have time to moderate it myself, I'd have to trust someone else, and then they might start banning people for disagreeing with their views, and they might do a lot of damage before I stop them.
    I wouldn't want to run a forum where I banned people for disagreeing with me, either. What if I ban someone on an incorrect basis? It would ruin the forum for everyone and destroy its value.
    Wikipedia used to be great, until a cabal of editors formed who decided to take it upon themselves to rid Wikipedia of views they thought didn't have sufficient "notoriety" (because it was embarrassing to them that some articles about popular TV shows were longer than articles about important historical events -- so all they did was go around deleting articles because they lacked "notoriety"). This mostly happened on the English-speaking Wikipedia. Later, another cabal took over, this one consisting of leftists (or maybe it was the same cabal), with the idea of suppressing anything critical of leftism. As a result, Wikipedia has become less valuable and less useful, unless you are a leftist. (You can still use it if you are looking for an idea a leftist wouldn't disagree with.)
    That could happen here, too. The site might end up supporting, not Objectivism per se, but a particular flavor of it, and it could easily be the wrong flavor or a distortion, and no one would be able to say anything about it if it were. It would become an echo chamber.
    I suppose this is a problem of the culture at large, that people no longer tolerate views they disagree with, and that they wish to silence those views rather than engaging them in debate (and they can't accept the idea of just leaving their opponents alone, either; they have to silence them). The silencing of people is the main thing I am objecting to here; if there is some error in my definitions of "forum" and "magazine" then that error is not essential to my objection.
    Maybe this tendency to reject opposing views is a product of the current educational system (because I suspect that a lot of the people calling for this are younger than I am and it certainly aligns well with the leftists who are taking over the culture at large).
    Maybe it's also a problem that people don't want to see views they disagree with, so they hope some moderator will step in and ban those views before they have to see them. That sounds like the "safe spaces" that are being promoted in schools and universities, too, and it's the exact opposite of "Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion," which at least requires that you know what those facts and opinions are.
  7. Sad
    Jon Letendre reacted to EC in Oldest Forest   
    I suggest you read about genetics and evolution. It's not my job to do your thinking and learning for you. 
  8. Confused
    Jon Letendre reacted to EC in Oldest Forest   
    No, these are questions that can be answered via a Google search and study of the issue.  I meant exactly what you will find via study of the correct sources on the subject and nothing else. 
  9. Thanks
    Jon Letendre reacted to tadmjones in Oldest Forest   
    So you accept that rate of plant evolution is relatively linear? The proto types of the proto-types of tree/ferns mentioned were in the process of evolving for the prior 350 million years? I was under the impression that a rough estimate is like a billion years after the earth formed and ‘cooled’ , attained a state that we would recognize as earth like now, unicellular life got started and then maintained a rather static almost homeostasis rate of growth but not development , for as much as a few billions years of nothing but unicellular life forms until bam! eukaryotes!
    I think eukaryotes fossils are like 1.9 billion years old , looks like fits and spurts there , but maybe linear if the ages are misaligned, I suppose.
    And isn’t fossil fuels really a misnomer ? 
  10. Thanks
    Jon Letendre reacted to Boydstun in "Project Starship"   
    Sight of Superlative Achievement
    Stephen Boydstun (2007)
    My favorite character in Atlas Shrugged is John Galt. One of the crucial traits of this character is his extraordinary technical ability. I can adore a fictional character, and part of the reason I adore this one is his possession of that trait.
    Adoration is one thing, admiration is another. Galt’s technical genius is admirable only in the derivative sense that I would admire that trait in a real person. I cannot admire a fictional character. I can admire the character’s creator as creator, but not the character.
    Fortunately, there are in our time many individuals whose mathematical and scientific accomplishments are at the high level of the fictional character John Galt. They are not well known to the general public. I want to tell you about one such man.
    Eli Yablonovitch invented the concept of a photonic band gap. He arrived at this concept in 1987 while doing research on making telecommunication lasers more efficient. Another physicist Sajeev John arrived at the concept independently that same year. John came to the concept in the course of pure research attempting to create light localization.
    Four years later, Yablonovitch was the first to create a successful photonic band-gap crystal. He used a variant of the crystal structure of diamond, a variant now called yablonovite. The structure was formed by drilling three intersecting arrays of holes, 400 nanometers in diameter, into a block of ceramic material. This structure, at this scale, was able to eliminate the propagation of electromagnetic radiation in the microwave range. Photonic band-gap crystals are yielding a new generation of optical fibers capable of carrying much more information, and they are contributing to the realization of nanoscopic lasers and photonic integrated circuits.
    The name photonic crystal sounds like a crystal made of light. That is incorrect. A photonic crystal is an artificial crystal (or quasicrystal) made usually of solids such as dielectrics or semiconductors. The electrical properties of a semiconductor are intermediate between a dielectric (an insulator) and a conductor.
    In a dielectric material, the valence electrons of the atoms are tightly bound to them. They are confined to energy levels within the band of levels called the valence band. Above that band of levels is a broad band of energies inaccessible to the electrons under the laws of quantum mechanics. That forbidden band is called the band gap. Above the band gap is a band in which electrons could move freely in the material if only enough energy were applied to them to raise them to that band of energy levels. This band is called the conduction band.
    In a semiconductor, the valence electrons are less tightly bound to atoms than they are in a dielectric. The band gap is smaller. A smaller boost of energy is needed to induce the flow of electrons, a current. The degree of electrical conductivity of a semiconductor can be precisely controlled by doping one semiconductor chemical element with small amounts of another.
    When an electron is promoted across the band gap, an effective positive charge called a hole is created in the valence levels below the gap. The holes, like the electrons, can be entrained into currents. By controlling the supply of electrons and holes above and below the band gap, carefully designed semiconductors are able to perform electronic switching, modulating, and logic functions. They can also be contrived to serve as media for photo detectors, solid-state lasers, light-emitting diodes, thermistors, and solar cells.
    The properties of an electronic band gap depend on the type of atoms and their crystal structure in the solid semiconductor. To comprehend and manipulate the electronic properties of matter, electrons and their alterations must be treated not only in their character as particles, but in their character as quantum-mechanical waves. The interatomic spacing of the atoms in matter is right for wave-interference effects among electrons. This circumstance yields the electronic band gaps in semiconductors as well as the conductive ability of conductors.
    A photonic band gap is a range of energies of electromagnetic waves for which their propagation through the crystal is forbidden in every direction. The interatomic spacing in semiconductors are on the order of a few tenths of a nanometer, and that is too small for effecting photonic band gaps in the visible, infrared, microwave, or radio ranges of the spectrum. Creation of photonic band gaps for these very useful wavelengths requires spatial organizations in matter at scales on the order of a few hundred nanometers and above.
    In the 70’s and 80’s, researchers had been forming, in semiconductors, structures called superlattices. These were periodic variations in semiconductor composition in which repetitions were at scales a few times larger than the repetitions in the atomic lattice. The variations could consist of alternating layers of two types of semiconductors or in cyclic variations in the amount of selected impurities in a single type of semiconductor. These artificial lattices allowed designers, guided by the quantum theory of solids, to create new types of electronic band gaps and new opticoelectronic properties in semiconductors.
    Photonic crystals are superlattices in which the repeating variation is a variation in the refractive index of the medium. It is by refractions and internal partial reflections that photonic band gaps are created. The array of holes that Yablonovitch and his associates drilled for the first photonic crystal formed a superlattice of air in the surrounding dielectric solid. Additional workable forms of photonic-crystal superlattice have been demonstrated since that first one. Costas Soukoulis and colleagues created a crystal of crisscrossed rods, and it has yielded photonic band gaps in the infrared part of the spectrum. Photonic crystals have been created mostly in dielectric or semiconductor media, but Shawn Yu Lin and associates have created them in tungsten. These may prove useful in telecommunications and in the conversion of infrared radiation into electricity.
    In 2001 Eli Yablonovitch co-founded the company Luxtera, which is now a leading commercial developer of silicon photonic products.
    Photonic crystals, manipulators of light, they are alive “because they are the physical shape of the action of a living power—of the mind that had been able to grasp the whole of this complexity, to set its purpose, to give it form.” –AR 1957 (re diesel-electric) 
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Scientific American
    1983 (Nov) “Solid-State Superlattices” –G.H. Dohler
    1984 (Aug) “Quasicrystals” –D.R. Nelson
    1986 (Oct) “Photonic Materials” –J.M. Rowell
    1991 (Nov) “Microlasers” –J.L. Jewell, J.P. Harbison, and A. Scherer
    1998 (Mar) “Nanolasers” –P.L. Gourley
    2001 (Dec) “Photonic Crystals: Semiconductors of Light” –E. Yablonovitch
    2007 (Feb) “Making Silicon Lase” –B. Jalali
     
    Science News
    1991 (Nov 2) “Drilling Holes to Keep Photons in the Dark” –I. Peterson
    1993 (Sep 25) “A Novel Architecture for Excluding Photons” –I. Peterson 
    1996 (Nov 16) “Light Gets the Bends in a Photonic Crystal” –C. Wu
    1998 (Oct 24) “Crystal Bends Light Hard, Saves Space” –P. Weiss
    2003 (Oct 4) “Hot Crystal” –P. Weiss
    2005 (Nov 5) “Light Pedaling” –P. Weiss
     
    Nature Photonics
    2007 (1:91–92) “Bandgap Engineering: Quasicrystals Enter Third Dimension” –C.T. Chan
     
    Fundamental Papers – Physical Review Letters
    1987 (May 18) “Inhibited Spontaneous Emission in Solid-State Physics and Electronics” –E. Yablonovitch
    1987 (Jun 8 ) “Strong Localization of Photons in Certain Disordered Dielectric Superlattices” –S. John
    1989 (Oct 30) “Photonic Band Structure: The Face-Centered-Cubic Case” –E. Yablonovitch and T.M. Gmitter
    1990 (Nov 19) “Full Vector Wave Calculation of Photonic Band Structures in Face-Centered-Cubic Dielectric Media” –K.M. Leung and Y.F. Liu
    1990 (Nov 19) “Electromagnetic Wave Propagation in Periodic Structures: Bloch Wave Solution of Maxwell’s Equations” –Z. Zhang and S. Satpathy
    1990 (Dec 17) “Existence of a Photonic Gap in Periodic Dielectric Structures” –K.M. Ho, C.T. Chan, and C.M. Soukoulis
    1991 (Oct 21) “Photonic Band Structure: The Face-Centered-Cubic Case Employing Non-Spherical Atoms” –E. Yablonovitch, T.J. Gmitter, and K.M. Leung
  11. Sad
    Jon Letendre reacted to AlexL in "Project Starship"   
    I hope it is.
  12. Thanks
    Jon Letendre reacted to AlexL in "Project Starship"   
    I hope it only sounds like BS, but I am not so sure, and this is very troubling for this OO forum...
  13. Thanks
    Jon Letendre reacted to Dupin in Amy Peikoff interviewed about the extradition of Julian Assange   
    Craig Murray in the UK has written extensively about the incarceration and trials of Julian Assange.
    About the publication of the unredacted documents see "Julian Assange’s Grand Inquisitor" by Chris Hedges.
    But what the WSJ (mainstream media beholden to the Deep State) says as well as the above is irrelevant.  The CIA is in large part a pack of murders – good riddance to bad rubbish.
     
     
     
  14. Thanks
    Jon Letendre reacted to Dupin in Amy Peikoff interviewed about the extradition of Julian Assange   
    Commenting on just this part:
    If you torture a man for 14 years and he dies a month later, you don’t say he died of natural causes.  Good grief.
    What’s under the ellipsis – “the Devil or” – mocks the truth.
     
  15. Thanks
    Jon Letendre reacted to Dupin in Amy Peikoff interviewed about the extradition of Julian Assange   
    Video on this page.  (Start viewing at 1:30 because the video begins with an excerpt which you will see later in its place.)  She did a great job, very impressive.
     
  16. Thanks
    Jon Letendre reacted to tadmjones in Remembering the CG Computer-Generated Pandemic Tyranny   
    If there didn't exist facts relative to deeming the therapy 'safe'( this term has specific meaning when applied to medical interventions and coming from medical experts) there was nothing to investigate. So what facts did you investigate relative to safety?
    It seems you just accepted an argument from authority and then reasoned your way to a rationalization, people do that all the time.
    Two times in this thread you have asserted that you will not be participating in the discussion and then continue. Is this a good look for a moderator of an O'ist forum? (It feels like lying)
     
  17. Haha
    Jon Letendre reacted to EC in Remembering the CG Computer-Generated Pandemic Tyranny   
    Reason and investigation of the facts. Also, the context that my grandfather had just died of it a couple months before and to protect my mom who I was staying with at the time who has COPD. Just because there is a standard time for testing doesn't mean in context of a disease that nobody has natural immunity to that individuals such as myself can't take vaccines or medical drugs that have not went through the full process of testing outside of that context as it would be a potential sacrifice of one's life to do otherwise. It would be similar to someone with cancer taking an experimental treatment. Also,  why is any of this important as it's a personal choice. I don't even fully understand the full purpose of this entire thread about denying the existence of a disease where essentially every fact of evidence and perception proves the existence of while no evidence exists that shows that it doesn't.  It's just arbitrary although I have some ideas why someone would claim this against the overwhelming facts of reality. This is just a very strange discussion. 
  18. Haha
    Jon Letendre reacted to EC in Remembering the CG Computer-Generated Pandemic Tyranny   
    No, that would be secondhanded, I did it to prevent myself from getting Covid and studied mRNA vaccines before taking the vaccines. This is ridiculous and I'm not taking part in this strange discussion anymore and will read to moderate it against arbitrary conspiracy theories and from those seeking to ignore reason,  evidence, and proper epistemology. 
  19. Thanks
    Jon Letendre reacted to whYNOT in Remembering the CG Computer-Generated Pandemic Tyranny   
    Monart, here's a link to Brownstone Institute and their many articles
    https://brownstone.org/
    the gold standard for all things pandemic, good science, optimal health and freedom-orientated, fronted by the heroic Jeffrey Tucker ("Liberty or Lockdown?"). They have been my bright reference point
  20. Haha
    Jon Letendre reacted to Doug Morris in Remembering the CG Computer-Generated Pandemic Tyranny   
    Can you give some examples of the CDC saying that?
     
  21. Haha
    Jon Letendre reacted to EC in Remembering the CG Computer-Generated Pandemic Tyranny   
    @necrovore That would mean those people would have to had advanced knowledge years prior to the pandemic of the existence of the covid virus which is a big leap implying a planned conspiracy when it is much more likely that it was simply a coincidence involving passive attacks from the Left on the religious Right. While there likely are occasional side effects of childhood vaccines (like watching a commercial for any medicine or vaccine shows in detail) we've essentially all had them and they have been scientifically proven to be extremely rare with the benefits outweighing the slight risk. Obviously, that doesn't imply forced vaccinations are moral or should be legal outside of maybe an extremely lethal and highly contagious novel disease, covid doesn't qualify, although I personally got the vaccine the week it was allowed.  (J&J which to prove the above point of risk was soon taken off the market due to the blood clot risk). The main principle involves the fact that the government should not be involved in education as it should be private or funded via charity as like most things current governments are improperly involved in when their only valid jobs are the protection of individual rights. 
  22. Haha
    Jon Letendre reacted to EC in Remembering the CG Computer-Generated Pandemic Tyranny   
    How were mRNA vaccines against the covid virus created and developed if the DNA sequence of the virus was never "purified and isolated" (concepts that do not apply to DNA sequencing btw), or are they also non-existent conspiracies?
  23. Like
    Jon Letendre reacted to monart in Remembering the CG Computer-Generated Pandemic Tyranny   
    Why you keep going…

    …Because you seek to know truth, to show it, to let it be known and shown. You resist and defend against the truth being denied, distorted, or defiled. And more so with fundamental, radical axiomatic truths. Objectivism is such a fundamental truth.

    Objectivism is an integrated system of philosophy you come to know as truth by way of looking at reality by your own mind and reason. You did not give trust to experts, not to professors or priests, as to whether Objectivism was true or false. You know for yourself that Objectivism is true.

    In the same independently thinking way, you come to know and defend the truth of covid. Or not?

  24. Haha
    Jon Letendre reacted to Doug Morris in Reblogged:Will Independents Save the GOP From Itself?   
    We have a better chance of surviving four years of Biden than of surviving four years of Trump.
     
  25. Haha
×
×
  • Create New...