Evangelical Capitalist

I think the distinction has already been blurred. The President uses these terms interchangably on a daily basis, and I know few people who have any inkling that that there is a difference between them, much less the ability to articulate it.

This is probably the most succinct expression of Rand's view on the relationship between freedom and democracy that I've read.

No particular order: Bridge on the River Kwai - I love the "battle of wills" between Nicholson and Saito. Lord of the Rings Amadeus Blade Runner The Great Escape - Even my wife, who usually falls asleep during long movies, loved this one. The Shawshank Redemption Master and Commander - a study in heroism and leadership Hamlet (Zeffirelli, 1990) The Godfather (Parts I and II) Anything by Hitchcock (Notorious, Rear Window, Vertigo, NbNW, etc.) The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Didn't Equality 7-2521 produce a light bulb, or something like one, in his experiments in the tunnel under the city? That's what he took to the Council of Scholars, wasn't it?

I finally got around to listening to your work this week, and now I can't seem to stop. It's awesome! I've been listening to it once or twice a day all week. Thanks.

Thanks to everybody for the positive comments. I was afraid that my topic (i.e. the nature of probability and the unknown vs. the unknowable) might have been a little too esoteric. (Which is why I had to wait until I found something relatively concrete to which to apply it: i.e. creationism.)

The essence of dogma, as I understand it, is that it is something held certain with no more grounds than the authority of the source which uttered (or wrote) it. Someone who uses an "appeal to authority" in an attempt to make their case is a dogmatist. Thus, the association with religion. It is not surprising that some Objectivists (particularly those new to it) can be taken as dogmatic, constantly appealing to Rand's works. I've certainly been guilty of this myself. But Miss Rand's eloquence does not make her the last authority on reality. We don't need an authority on reality. We all have access to it directly, through sense and reason. Thus the burden of comprehending it lies with each person individually. This is the essence of intellectual egoism. (There I go, being dogmatic again. ) Clearly, this is the opposite of dogmatism. Yes, it is certain, but certainty is not dogmatism, though it is often taken as such.

Please... let's not get ourselves depressed over wild speculation. But, wow... that would be bad.

The problem with the phrase, "The end justifies the means," is that "the end" is generally taken to be some narrow, specific, concrete goal. The full context of the total effect of "the means" is ignored. I'll take Friedman's question, "If the end does not justify the mean, what does?" and run with it. The fact is that the end, properly considered and in its full context is the only thing that can justify the means. All purposeful action, and certainly all justified action, is goal-directed. The agent has a purpose, an intended end. Take away the result of an action, the effect of the enacted cause, and you're left with pointless action. A reality-oriented philosophy cannot justify a pointless action. According to the Objectivist ethics, all ends except one, one's own life, are themselves the means to further ends. So when are the means not justified by a particular end? When they contradict the further ends that the immediate end is aimed at achieving. (It is important to note that the failure to achieve the intended end does not automatically invalidate the means, as this would require omniscience on the part of the agent. It is sufficient that the action should result in achieving the end within the context of the knowledge available to the agent.) The Objectivist ethics is based on the principle that the end justifies the means. Specifically, the standard of man's values (and thus the justification of his actions) is his own life. That is the end that justifies all his subordinate ends. The important caveat that Objectivism adds is that no end can be considered out of context. Just as knowledge is hierarchical, so are values, or ends, hierarchical. No end is justified, and thus no means to achieving it, without reference to a more fundamental end or to an ultimate end, mans' life.

First, I'm not a demolition expert, but I do have a degree in structural engineering. Intense heat does weaken structural steel. The members (columns, girders, etc.) are insulated to protect against this. In the WTC main towers, sprayed asbestos was used up to the 63rd floor, if I remember correctly. This was about the time during its construction that problems with asbestos became known and a different insulating sustance was used above this level. The collapse of WTC 1 and 2 both began at the point of impact. They collapsed from the top down, unlike a controlled demolition where the collapse begins at the bottom. They fell straight down because that's the direction gravity works. Once the top section of the buildings (above the point of impact/failure) begins moving and gathering momentum, the floors below and the structures supporting them would collapse like toothpicks. No commercial structural system in the world is designed to withstand that kind of impact loading. As for WTC 7, I have only spent some brief amount of time looking at a couple of conspiracy sites. They point to "smoke plumes" from the upper floors at the moment of collapse as evidence of demolition charges. But demolition charges are never placed in upper floors. They're at the bottom, where the structrual members are severed. When the building began to collapse, the air and smoke inside had to go somewhere. My guess would be that these plumes are just smoke escaping from a window, freshly shatted by the building's movement. Also, they claim that the fires in the building were minor, yet from the pictures, the fire appears to be anything but minor; practically the whole building is engulfed in smoke. So why did the whole building move at once? Wouldn't this have required the instantaneous failure of every column at the bottom of the structure? It is important to remember that failure by heating is not an instantaneous failure, but a gradual weakening of the structural members. As a particular column weakens, the load on it is partially taken up by those around it, so that the weakened member remains on the verge of failure without having actually collapsed. (I won't go in to the exact dynamics of how this occurs.) Of course, if the basement of the building is engulfed in a diesel fire, this gradual weakening is going on throughout the structual system, with loads dynamically shifting back and forth between members until every member is on the verge of total failure. At this point, as soon as one member fails, the load it bore will immediately be transfered to the members around it, which in turn triggers their failure and so forth. In this way the whole system collapses, virtually instantaneously. It's neither miracle, nor conspiracy; it's just physics.

That's the best thing I've seen all day.

Agreed! Looks like she's got a substantial lead.

I would suggest reading Nataniel Branden's article, "Isn't Everyone Selfish?" in VOS. He makes the case that a chosen action is not necessarily selfish merely because it is chosen; what matters is the motivation behind the choice. For instance, Peter Keating chose to become an architect. But he chose that career over becoming an artist merely to please his mother. That was selfless. As to whether we can be selfless 100% of the time, I would say no. But the nature of evil is such that it does not need to be consistent. Murderers and theives may respect the lives and property of 99.9% of the people they meet, but they are nevertheless murderers and theives. An hypocrite need not conscientiously betray each and every one of his professed beliefs. A liar need not utter a falsehood with every word. An altruist need not act selflessly 100% of the time. To do so would be suicide. The good, on the other hand, must be absolutely consistent. The good has nothing to gain from being mixed with the evil, and evil can only exist by the default of the good.

This was just too good not to share: Man tries to convert lions to Jesus, gets bitten Maybe they were Objectivist lions, or atheist lions at the very least.

I didn't know they sold indulgences.

This is probably a bad thing to admit, since I posted the link, but I couldn't force myself any further than the first few paragraphs.

Our 'Kindness Deficit' of Care I saw this article and immediately wanted to throw up. Not that I can say I'm surprised, but the blatant reversal of the meaning of the concept of rationing is just apalling. Apparently it's now considered "rationing" to provide services only to those who can pay for them. The free market now imposes "rations", not the government. How twisted do you have to be?

There are no patents on knowledge now. There are patents on the practical application of scientific knowledge and copyrights on the publication of knowledge. The theory of evolution would be no more patentable today than it was in Darwin's time.

They do, in fact, make errors in their assumptions about what it is they're trying to model. My point was that even if those assumptions were accurate, or at least consistent with evolutionary theory, their reasoning is still flawed. To say that X should have been improbable, therefore its cause must be unknowable, is to treat probability as an intrinsic property of the observed event in question. The most one can say would be, given our current understanding of relevant factors, X should have been improbable, therefore there must be factors we don't yet understand. This is, in part, the sort of post facto use of probability that I was talking about. As for the "possible universes" question, I'd refer them to Dr. Peikoff's work on the analytic-synthetic dichotomy. As for the relationship between life and the properties of the universe, I would say that it is life, not the universe, which has the properties it does for a causal reason.

Montesquieu, Thanks for your interest. If I tried to go into all the reality being denied in academia, I'd be writing a book, possibly several, instead of an essay. My purpose here was simply to draw the parallels between reified probability and the creationists' concept of God, insofar as both represent unknowable causation, as opposed to simply unknown causation. Honestly, the most explicit reification of probability is the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics, but for the same reasons as above, I decided to leave them out of it for now. And as far as I know, my explanation of the nature of probability is original, so I wanted to get that written down somewhere.

What follows is my first attempt at writing about philosophical theory. I've been thinking about the nature of probability and its relationship to the concept of God since I re-read God's Debris by Scott Adams a couple weeks ago. I was thinking about writing an essay, but couldn't decide on a specific approach until I saw the cover story of this month's Wired magazine. Comments?

Introduction to Objectivism

What Ayn Rand objected to was the use of life-boat situations as a model of reality from which to extrapolate ethical principles, a technique frequently used by the altruists. In a lifeboat, or emergency, situation, life is not sustainable. Resources are limited and none can be created or obtained. Either the situation is temporary, or those in it will perish. That the altruists see this as a model of life in general only points out that suffering and death are what they view as significant. This is the essence of the "malevolent universe" mentality. As for the example of the three men (A, B and C) ask yourself what value B would gain by killing C. His own life? That was never A's to offer in the first place. By agreeing to kill C in exchange for his life, B surrenders to A the principle of ownership of his own life. Once surrendered, it can never be regained. What is to prevent A from demanding further immoral actions from B? Any compromise with evil is a total surrender. Evil need only be evil some of the time; good must be consistently so.

In case anyone thinks this is just an academic exercise, read this from the latest issue of Wired magazine. The Crusade Against Evolution

Which was also reprinted in The Virtue of Selfishness.