hunterrose
-
Posts
1217 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by hunterrose
-
-
Side note: politically, this is exactly the kind of issue that Obama loves - his opposition reacts on emotion and he strides in as the cool, thoughtful leader espousing freedom of speech. It's a pity to see him getting easy points.
-
My situation is somewhat similar to yours, CastleBravo. I was a university for 3 years before I was kicked out for bad grades. Last fall (8 years later
) I enrolled in a community college and I'll be graduating with an IT degree in the fall if I can get the classes I need in the summer. Then it's on to a four-year 
Personally, and this is just my 2 cents, I would focus on the unemployment first. I ended up with a crapload of debt my first time in college, and I'm never going back to that again. Even if you're not as debtphobic as I am, you still don't want to depend on the grant money not running out in order to graduate. That said, working full-time and schooling full-time is *not* easy!
While the military isn't for everybody, it is an option that would take care of both problems.
-
I don't think Ving was anti-technology so much as anti-surrogates. Maybe it's because I didn't get an anti-technology feeling from the movie, but I liked Surrogates. I think people can become overreliant on certain technologies, specifically when it comes to the irrational point that you can't even go outside or be seen by your spouse without it.
-
I'm late to the game, but I finally saw District 9 last night. Wow. I thought it was really good!
I'd heard a lot of people detracting from the movie because of its anti-whatever messages, but I didn't see any theme that I found detrimental to my appreciation of the movie.
I don't think it portrayed aliens as the moral ones, or humans/corporations as inevitably evil. If anything, District 9 simply says that there are good individuals and bad individuals in groups, and judging the whole by a subset usually leads to erroneous conclusions.
I'm hoping for a sequel.
-
The demo is supposed to be coming out on PSN tomorrow
How you come to different endings is going to be really interesting. Hopefully the decision-making process and the paths it leads to won’t feel like it’s on rails. I remember playing Indigo Prophecy on PS2, and Heavy Rain is going to be much better.
I’m anticipating that’s it’s going to sell better than expected, though certainly not in Modern Warfare 2 numbers. We can always use something new over a Madden 20xx!
-
No, but I'd rephrase the question.Basically... There's a woman who is diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and is near death. A man in town has recently discovered a radium based cure. He purchased the radium for $400 and is charging $4000 to sell it. The dying woman's husband tries all possible legal means, but can only obtain $2000, which he offers to the druggist. The man refuses and says it must be $4000 up front or no deal. Basically, should he steal the drug?The dying woman's husband tries all possible legal means, but can only obtain $2000, which he offers to the druggist. The druggist refuses and says it must be $4000 up front or no deal. Yes or no, should he allow his wife to die if he finds no legal way to save her?There ya go.
-
Hello izopyn, I'm hunterrose. Welcome
One problem is that informing oneself of an idea and integrating an idea are philosophically the same thing. If I think the sun revolved around the earth, there would be no epistemological difference between me informing myself of that half truth and integrating that half truth. The essence of objectivity, according to your argument, is rejecting objectivity.Objectivity means constantly examining… ideas or values which may inform one's perception… the essence of objectivity is being able to generally reject any integration of them into one's perception.
Implications don’t work with half-truths. In this case, your argument is incorrect because (qua half-truth) sometimes we can know what is right or true, even if it’s half true that our perceptions are flawed.We can't ever know what is right or what is true, because our perceptions are flawed and there are unknowable, uncountable circumstances to any situation -
I wouldn't say it like that. It can be worthwhile to challenge your friend's premises, assuming you have the patience and free timeits more or less pointless to argue with ignorance.
Ask your friend if a minimum donation law is just as needed as a minimum wage law – government intervention is needed to FORCE charitable people to not exploit charity cases and to FORCE charitable people to donate more money when the minimum donation is increased.
If forcing charitable people to be more charitable is ludicrous, but forcing employers to be more charitable is not… the question for your friend is “Why?”
-
I agree with that.It does not follow that Rand would have actually advised a real-life Roark to blow up a real life Cortland… As an author, Rand realized that she had to balance the harm caused, so that the reader would not think Roark went over the top (for instance, if he had killed some innocent passer-by). Records show that she was aware that the episode might not convince some readers.If a Roark had blown up a building for similar reasons in Atlas Shrugged or We the Living, I wouldn’t object nearly so much - I feel like she did establish societies that did not respect rights in those novels. The case for The Fountainhead is not so clear to me.
That IS interesting!The one alternative climax that I have seen documented would have freaked out more people: the murder of Toohey by Dominique, with Roark standing trial for it! -
Hmm, I did not realize that. Time for that yearly rereadThe book specifically mentions that the justice system was such that it would not have delivered justice, therefore this option was ruled out to Roark.
If the legal system would not have delivered justice before blowing up Cortlandt, did the justice system deliver justice after blowing up Cortlandt?
-
One initiator, granted. I should have said that better.
Assuming the Cortlandt builders illegally used Roark's property, under what conditions was he justified in dynamiting the builders' property?
Shouldn't he have gone through the legal system before blowing up Cortlandt??
-
(Something in) the Cortlandt project is not owned by Roark, so the fundamental, as I see it, is that Roark destroys something that does not belong to him. Assuming Roark's rights were violated by the Cortlandt builders, does their initiation of force against Roark justify Roark initiating force against them?You don't get rights back free and clear, becuase part of the consitutents of a project were constructed lawfully. Cortdlant is not just the bricks or the real estate. As the building sits it is both a combination of the materials that went into it and the specific physical form in which is resides. How does this in any way change the fundamentals of the issue. -
When the Cortlandt builders made the contract, they were led to believe that these were Keating’s designs, and that Keating (and only Keating) therefore had full rights to negotiate a contract as he saw fit.I'm preparing a broader post on this discussion on whether this is fraud or not.Regardless, would you agree that blowing up the property of another party before seeking legal remedies is wrong within (and assuming) a lawful society?
Really? From what I saw in the novel, it was no less lawful or rights-protecting than our own society.The whole context of whether or not justice can be served and rights are protected is in doubt, and Rand concretizes this doubt very specifically in the book… Protection of rights is in doubt, law is in doubt and the very meaning of what a lawsuit actually is is in doubt.
I don't have to tell you that “actually owns Cortlandt” and “actually has the right to use Keating’s Roark’s designs” are two different things. Perhaps I haven’t read enough of this 8 page thread, but I don’t recall anything in the novel saying that the ownership of the Cortlandt real estate and building materials was obtained through fraud or otherwise in question. You’re saying that it is?Assuming Roark/Keating didn't commit fraud, then the government obtained Cortdlant by breach of contract. The legal concept being tested then is whether the government actually owns Cortdlant of not if it was obtained by fraudulent means. One cannot defend this by suggesting that the government owns Cortdland and therefore has rights. -
I agree that it makes for good drama, and actually don't have an extreme problem here with jury members making the choice they did. But from an objective legal standpoint, I don't think he had the right to take the law into his own hands (whether or not he had a valid grievance against the Cortlandt builders.) Morally justified vs. legally justified is a distinction that I'm not sure I've made, I'll have to think about that.Roark was morally justified in what he did, but his legal position was difficult to justify. This is Rand's idea of good drama. Roark gets out of his predicament by making an impassioned moral defense of his action, not a legal defense. When the jury acquits him, it is practicing jury nullification.Is Rand therefore in favor of jury nullification?
edit: added link
I suspect Rand wouldn't have had a problem with jury nullification, depending on the particulars of a case.
-
I don’t get that. What is just about paying such transition costs? I would think that justice says that no one deserves the fruits of the labor of others.It would be just to phase people out of such schemes; it would be unjust to cut it off. Would it be unjust to continue to take money from other, to pay grandma? No, it would not. If we have to transition to a free-market, there are some transition costs that might be viewed as short term reparations.As far as Cortlandt goes, I still side with Jonathan13 and Chris LeRoux on this one. You don’t have the right to blow up another party’s property when you believe that said party has broken a contract with you, especially when doing so means ignoring the objectively correct solution of suing and instead taking the law into your own hands.
I do think Roark was legally wrong for what he did, but I don't think Rand made a mistake at all. Her point was more that Roark had won regardless of the trial's verdict, not that Roark was justified in his life's philosophy just because he got off in court.I find it quite hard to believe that such a glaring mistake would be made by Miss Rand, especially since, when mentioning 2 mistakes she wishes to clarify and correct in a revised, later print of Fountainhead she failed to mention this matter. -
In terms of literature, I have no problem with (and can even respect) what Roark did. But in terms of "real life", that would not have given Keating the right to blow up the building - the design was his, not the capital that was invested. Recourse should have been sought against Keating, not the builders who were oblivious to Howard's agreement.</arguing about actions of fictional beings</>Keating violated his contract with Roark.
I disagree that this is the only way, and remember that what we have (government interference) is itself a disaster - cutting social security, medicare, welfare, etc. off cold turkey is unlikely and would certainly be a shock to some, but I personally think it'd be best way.The only way it would be possible to preserve both legitimate economic entities and the livelihoods and comfort of working, productive Americans would be through a gradual, planned and announced withdrawal of the US gov. from the economy. Anything else would be a disaster.P.S. to hell with the millions of civilian employees working for unnecessary government programs, they should fired ASAP and left to their own means.
-
Ok, I am completely misunderstanding you or you are making a mountain out of a molehill. Concepts like classical mechanics and the “I before e except after c” might not be 100% accurate, but they do not create problems – concepts are contextual. I still do not see how this is a task for philosophy to solve.In the process, you let go of all conceptual understanding.Merry Christmas to everyone!
-
You’re fostering the same problem you’re trying to correct. Explain to a kid why zero sets of one apple is not zero, or how many sets of sets 2^(3/2) equals. I don’t think traditional methods of teaching imaginary and negative numbers have any less relation to reality than yours do.Or even more simple, take exponents. 2^2 apples is 2 sets of 2 apples. Well, that's 4 apples. 1^3 apples is one set of (one set of one apple) which is just one apple. But now what about 2^0? Zero sets of two apples? Well, that is one apple. And 2^-1? A negative set of two apples? Well, that is half an apple.The important similarity between your method and traditional methods is that they are correct within certain situations – they are contextual, and that’s not exactly a problem that we as philosophers can (or would even want to) solve.
-
Not exactly. It's beyond the domains of science to say that anything is absolutely (i.e. without context) assured. But the (contextual) assurance that there is no god is philosophical, not scientific.It still seems unscientific to me to be absolutely assured that there is no God.Is that a correct way of thinking?
My favorite obfuscation"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don’t know." Donald Rumsfeld
-
Show them the simple fact that the pie has grown over time. If the pie is growing, then, by definition, it's not a zero-sum game.My question is: What is the best way to convince other people [that life, particularly under capitalism, is a zero-sum game]?
That has to be taken carefully. You can have your percentage of the pie decrease even while your amount of pie is increasing. Your pie has actually increased, though some would look at that and say that your pie has decreased.Lot of people are afraid of capitalism as they believe that life is zero-sum game - and if someone has unfair start over them, he will be able to get a part of their share of the pie too.E.g. if some factory worker's income goes up 5% and tycoon's income goes up 20%, is the question how do we convince the machinist that he's doing better??
-
Ugh, Objectivism and HIT, again. This shouldn't have to be said... HIT is good but it's certainly not the end-all be-all of bodybuilding techniques. I've gotten to 210-215 lbs from ~165, and I only sparingly incorporate HIT ideas. If it's working for an individual, fine. If it's not, change to something else.
-
What? Scratch winning a Nobel Prize off my Things I Want to Do List. <blows gasket>
Edit: Dumb and Dumberer. According to Wikipedia and Nobelprize.org, the nominations for Nobel Prize candidates had to be submitted on or before February 1. How many days had Obama been in office at that time? 11??
-
Does that mean that we agree that some things are not directly perceived to act in a certain way and only in a certain way?
-
Oh no, just that there are things that aren’t perceptually self-evident.Are you entertaining the idea that there might be things we can't perceive that do not act in a specific way and are not what they are?
I agree. But when you say "based on the perceptually self-evident," you don't mean that every entity is directly perceived to act in a certain way and only in a certain way?Concepts are open-ended in their referents… Entities which are not directly perceptual are entities in the extended sense, but are still entities.
Movie Critic R. Ebert Gives Atlas Shrugged 1 Star
in Movies, Shows, and Theatre
Posted
Disclaimer: I haven't seen the movie yet; I'm planning to this weekend
Wow, I thought you guys were exaggerating about Ebert's review, but after reading it, I'd have to agree. Either the movie does a really crappy job of laying out its theme, or Ebert just missed it. The review doesn't even tell what the movie is about, at least from the perspective of someone who's read the book. He makes it sound like the movie is about railroad entrepreneurs and the government that hates them. I know that flippancy sells, but in my opinion he did a horrible job as a reviewer.