JASKN

I was going to vote for Trump to keep Hillary out but that was months ago.  I can't do that now.  I know now what Nicky has known all along.  He's a disaster in the making if he's elected.  Vote for Johnson if Hillary is unacceptable to you or don't vote.  

Not important at all for me. An interest in Objectivism is not a deepest value, and such an interest is neither necessary nor sufficient for such a sharing. This is not to deny that the character traits that caused the two to take an interest in Rand's writing could be deepest values. Such an interest might also be superficial or even bad-willed; most of us, I suspect, have met at least one thoroughly repellent character who claimed to be an Objectivist.
Somebody who is positively snide and hostile to Objectivism wouldn't attract me, not because of overt convictions but because of traits hat this hostility indicates. People hit it off - as lovers, friends, business partners, performing partners and so on - or they don't. Nobody deduces the outcome from the contents of a checklist.

You should've taken five minutes out of your busy schedule, and read this entry on duty (that's a synonym for obligation) in the Ayn Rand Lexicon:
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/duty.html
It would've saved you a lot of toil and aggravation.
Let's just put it this way: I'm an Objectivist, and, with rare exceptions, I limit my work week to 30 hours, as a matter of principle. And I doubt Ayn Rand or Leonard Peikoff averaged more than that, through their lives.
And that's not because I don't have a work ethic. Worth ethic has nothing to do with the number of hours you put in.

You've written about this elsewhere. My sense is that you have not articulated your position clearly to yourself. The first step to doing so is to forget what others (Liberalism, Libertarianism, etc.) get wrong, and just articulate the facts, as you understand them: the facts about reality. You should analyse this by asking how the facts work: you say that people are predisposed to tribalism, but you need to articulate -- to yourself -- what this means. Where does it come from? Is it genetic? Is it something one can or cannot work out of? In other words is it a metaphysical fact of mans's nature, and if so how do you account for those who do not fit the pattern? If it is less than metaphysical -- i.e. people can opt out -- you need to articulate to yourself if there are reasons to do so. In  other words, if it is in the realm of ethical choice -- rather than metaphysics -- you need to figure out what your ethics says about it. Unless you clearly understand and articulate your position to yourself, it will be difficult to convince anyone else.

New Buddha
Is the moral argument re: environmentalist to be fought and won by discussing it on their terms? The moral standard for environmentalism is nature, not man. The environmentalist implicitly count on the moral sanction of their victims to substitute nature for man's life as the standard.

I have this vision of people squirreling away some gold. Then, there's a great depression and a government like Roosevelt's says that everyone must turn in their gold to the Federal reserve. The squirreler does not do so, but does he have the guts to use his gold coins on the black market, trading with some thug, and risking jail-time? Maybe he does. Then, "doomsday" really comes and the thug he did a couple of transactions with comes to his home and simply takes his remaining gold.
I still think one can legitimately buy gold, but one needs to think through the concrete reality of the scenario of any doomsday. Also, I forget whether David mentioned, but his Gold might be something like GLD, which would work in certain types of financial crises, but not in true doomsdays.

Nicky and Software Nerd, I much appreciate your enlightening me on this topic.
As I now understand it, there are other factors that have inhibited immigration and may be responsible for the influx of "illegal" immigration.
it would be interesting to see how the two candidates address this topic.

National borders are defined by the mutually recognized jurisdictions of the respective governments sharing those borders, not through any claim that immigration must be restricted between them. Were immigration unrestricted, this would not lead to the "abolishment of national borders" any more than it would be "anarchy." Doing away with immoral laws does not mean eliminating all law, and citing that a specific law is immoral and ought to be eliminated is no call for anarchy.
Or the anarchy involved would be similar to the "anarchy" experienced when people within the US go to and from Los Angeles without restriction.

I have not addressed the problem of what to do about illegal immigrants already here.  You all assume too much.  Of those potential immigrants outside the country, that some would stay where they are or go somewhere else is both not a disaster and not my problem.
Nor have I "vilified" anybody.  To vilify means "to speak or write about in an abusively disparaging manner". I have argued that it is wrong legally and morally to circumvent a country's immigration laws, in a detached objective manner enough to support my argument without emotional language or speculations about motives or casting aspersions on other facets of anyone's character.  I would appreciate it if others on this thread would follow the same style.   

I think the play is suggesting that Rand's philosophy would promote this as a good thing, not that "some people succeed that way". Which, clearly, is not an accurate portrayal of Rand's beliefs. She'd say it's really bad for one's happiness, and the play seems to agree. It's a musical comedy but seems to be aimed at poking fun at how there are more values than purely money or a purely material goal - and picks a terrible symbol of that. "Trump in Love", or "Paris Hilton in Love" would make more sense.

This thread was kindly pointed out to me, so I have a belated reply.
As a prelude, it is mistaken to try to understand an Objectivist theory of language by comparing it to Frege’s. If one wants to understand what an Objectivist theory of language is, one can investigate that, and maybe at some point later one might even try to compare that to what you believe Frege claimed, but that comparison should not be your starting point. Second, discussions of language that focus on proper names and long-corrected factual errors (the Babylonians understood the nature of Venus) are likely to lead one up and down a twisted blind alley which ends nowhere.
An Objectivist theory of language is centered around concepts. “The Evening Star” is not a concept, nor is “The Morning Star”. These are proper names (singular terms), and one can substitute “Superman” and “Clark Kent” just as well. One can believe that Superman can fly and not believe that Clark Kent can fly, even though Kent and Superman refer to the same thing. An Objectivist theory of language is about concepts, not factual errors pertaining to proper names. “Sense” and reference are not different things – “reference” basically described the relationship between consciousness and existence, and “sense” is interjected into the discussion to introduce a consequence of false inferences: or, to conflate two aspects of an existent yet recognizing those aspects, thereby sowing confusion. “Refers to” is a simple relation between something symbolic, and what is symbolizes, so nouns refer to things, verbs refer to places, adjectives refer to attributes. I don’t see that “sense” is at all a useful concept.
I don’t know what it means to say that one thing boils down to another thing, but language is not just a system of names. Language is part of a general faculty of cognition, and Objectivism has had a lot to say about the “naming” aspect, via the theory of concepts. The “names” are specifically the labels (words) by which we access the cognitive folders that are concepts. Besides concepts, there are also propositions, where Objectivism has had less to say – until Harry Binswanger’s book How We Know. There is a huge amount to say about propositions and language.
Words are not arbitrarily chosen. The relationship between a word and the units that it unifies is a social fact, one which is learned. It’s a fascinating but tangential matter how a particular phonetic sequence came to be the label for a given concept. One thing is for sure, it is not arbitrary. As far as I can tell, all things have multiple words attached to them. Oranges, for example, have the words “citrus; fruit; sweet; orange; carbohydrate; round; inexpensive; seasonal” attached to them. There is a peril to using expressions like “attached to” in a vague way. In a narrower sense, there are some things for which there are two or more referentially-interchangeable words, such as “penis” and “phallus”, and there are many other such words (a fact profitably exploited by Mike Myers) which have subtle social fact attached to them (you don’t use the word “wang” in the same contexts as you use the word “penis”). There is really nothing interesting to say about that fact.
Language is not capable of misfiring when we speak nonsense. Language cannot act, and misfiring describes a kind of action. A being might misfire, or something like that, and might do so in a way somehow related to language, for example one might be incorrect in attempting to interpret a person’s intent as expressed by some piece of language.
You can follow the rules of language, or not, just as you can follow the rules of logic, or not. Language is made up of structural units like sentences and clauses (and individual words), which can be used for many purposes (such as setting forth a proposition, but it also can be used to accomplish an end such as tricking an enemy into self-immolation). To say that a sentence “makes sense” is to say that it is possible to identify or express judgements that underly a linguistic expression. “That is a dog” classifies an entity as one of the units subsumed under the concept “dog” – in this case, the person is asserting a particular judgment. “The dog is running” presupposes such a classification of the subject entity, and classifies its action.
I would like to especially address this question:
Are any of you aware of any writings on Objectivist theories of language? If there aren't any, that confuses me because of the explosion in linguistics beginning before and lingering after the writings of Rand.
There are a number of reasons why there aren't. First, the study of language is a very complex scientific matter, one vastly beyond the realm of philosophy (just as physics and chemistry are beyond the realm of philosophy). There has been virtually no progress on general philosophy of language for my entire lifetime, but there has been an explosion in scientific linguistics in that same period.
As to why there aren’t a ton of linguists who are Objectivists, the ultimate explanation probably rests in the political problem that being a practicioner of an abjured non-communist philosophy is dangerous to one’s professional survival in an academic discipline. There is, additionally, a special reason, that the (formerly) reigning epistemology of professional linguistics is dimetrically opposed to the Objectivist epistemology. Linguistic theory has taken, for almost 50 years, a strong nativist position that man is born with a vast repertoire of factual knowledge about the world, whereas the Objectivist epistemology rejects this assumption. It has only been in the past 15 or so years that there has been some retreat on the nativist position in linguistics, whereby a theory of linguistics at least informed by Objectivism is possible.
While the results of a half-century of linguistic research are in principle available to scrutiny by linguists, this requires an in-depth empirical understanding of the subject matter. There are relatively few linguists, and relatively few Objectivists, so the intersection of the two sets is even smaller. The hook into philosophy of language would be a tiny subset of linguists, namely formal semanticists.

 

 

 

When people organize things like "Occupy Wall Street" or "Tea Party" rallies they can be successful in rallying people to a cause, and then making the political classes react. However, they do so by tapping in to some existing ideology among the people reacting. Many non-participants read about "Occupy" or "Tea Party" and are sympathetic to their cause. I doubt the effectiveness of action if it does not appeal to a pre-existing ideology.
BTW, Objectivists have done a few rallies, standing on sidewalks with signs. I remember Bush Sr. making some remark about them when he noticed the protest at some event he attended. Of course, given the number of Objectivists, these tend to be a small group of people doing the protesting. Perhaps this just advertises that politicians can ignore such people  
Again, without some degree of wider intellectual support, I think such things are basically a waste of time.
On the other hand, I think Edward Snowden's political action was illegal but good (even if not necessarily for him personally).  I can see the appeal if his goal was to make government snooping public.   Absolutely not something I myself would have chosen to do, but I can empathize with where he is coming from. One could probably come up with many similar possible scenarios.
I guess the classic Objectivist mantra boils down to "it's too early". This is why Objectivists worked on "personal improvement": i.e. convincing other people. The thrust has always been long-term: the essay contests and the free-books program. Still, the ARI did set up a Washington office, probably in attempt at being more like CATO etc. in being able to speak to legislators.
Recently, the movement I've seen among Objectivists is away from "personal improvement" of others and toward personal improvement of themselves. In other words, they're doubling down on "it's too early". It's basically an admission that things aren't going to change fundamentally in our lifetimes. Also, there's a context that life is generally good and has been getting better, because human beings keep doing good stuff that creates value above what is constrained by bad politics. In that context then, the key question is not: "how do I change society", but "how do I achieve personal happiness".
If you believe "it's too early" (or "it's way too early") it changes your focus. I see this trend among many Objectivists in their personal lives. Over the last year I've seen the Objectivist student-organization (Undercurrent) move in that direction too, and I think that's great.

That is NOT the Objectivist position.
Ayn Rand was a firm believer in the founding principles of the American Republic, and the institutions that defend those principles. She fully supported those institutions throughout her life, and was consistently opposed to attempts to compromise law and order in order to cater to radical leftist organizations. If anything, she supported harsher measures to crack down on leftist agitators.
You are an anarchist. Anarchists are habitual rebels. Objectivists aren't. So stop confusing the two.

Objectivists are supposed to support radical changes from many societal institutions and question the foundations of many institutions deemed "necessary" for life in a peaceful, prosperous society. But now we are supposed to assume unquestionably that our choice is between supporting modern policing and getting robbed by "ghetto motherfuckers"? (What about white collar motherfuckers? Or the state itself?)
A long way from "check your premises" indeed. Instead of the conservative response of emotivist-nationalist support for "our heroic first responders," one would excpect a bold, radical investigation into the institution and history of policing itself to be the favored response of the intellectual inheritors of such as Rand. One would expect that false dichotomies such as "accept this institution as axiomatic or get robbed by criminals!" would not be the first reaction. 
In fact and in logic, one who opposes modern policing does not also oppose crime prevention, that would be just silly. 
Modern policing was not the default way to go about preventing crime for the vast majority of human history, and in fact the classical liberals of the industrial revolution heroically opposed merchantilist and socialist attempts to create modern police departments. They knew it was not necessary for crime prevention and they knew that its main function was to protect the state and enforce its laws, not protecting you. 

It's always funny to me when someone who has never been in a fight, let alone one where your life is being threatened, presumes to know how cops should be acting in the heat of the moment.
And then there's this childish expectation that the two million cops in the US should all be given special forces training, to make sure they're calm and collected under pressure. Never mind the fact that the military has a 90%+ fail rate in its special forces programs, and spends millions on each successful attempt to train a SEAL. Where exactly would you get two million cops who can do that from?
There's nothing wrong with American cops' training. They're probably better trained than cops in most nations. Cops aren't supposed to be trained for a war zone. They're supposed to be investigating crimes, settling disputes among neighbors, and handing out fines for noise disturbances. Not patrolling hostile neighborhoods like it's downtown Fallujah.
The problem is the people creating those war zones in American cities. That's what's out of place in a civilized nation, not the cops who don't know how to handle it properly. It's not the cops who need to be trained to handle themselves in a war zone, it's the culture that creates these war zones that needs to end.

I'd bet it's mostly a "gut" estimate based on years of paying attention to the news and noise that pops up around the web -- who says what, who replies, who belongs to this or that organization.

Before the Internet, you might have counted the number of donors to the ARI, the number of college Objectivist clubs, subscriber info to journals and magazines, university professors and their groups, etc.
Now, you'd go around the web doing the same thing. A lot of stuff is quantified, such as the amount of registered users on our forum. ARI releases numbers, I believe, for things like the number of free Rand novels they've sent to teachers.

It would be easier if there was at least one major statistic to follow, but almost by their individualist nature it's hard to pin Objectivists down.

In a surprise ruling, the SCOTUS pushed back on Texas' attempt to restrict abortions. With just  8-members many expected the decision to break 4:4, but centrist Kennedy (bless his soul) voted against Texan restrictions.
For those who don't follow the topic: states like Texas continue to force abortion clinics to meet increasingly stringent and expensive regulations, in the name of health and safety. It's widely recognized that the health/safety argument is a fig-leaf from the Christian right (who are vehement that they hate government regulations). The SCOTUS usually does not like to delve into a second-level of detail: tending to accept the legislative characterization of whether something helps health/safety. So, Kennedy's vote is particularly commendable.

P.S. A really good source of information on the economic consequences of all this is The Economist. Biased but objective.

I will take up precisely the challenge you just threw down.  
There is a proper and improper use of cars as well as a proper and improper use of guns, and the distinction between what is proper and improper in both cases is exactly the same.  What makes an action (with any tool) improper is that it violates rights.  Improper use of an auto kills people and destroys property, the same as a gun does.  
The proper use of a gun and an auto do differ, in that it can be be moral to shoot to kill in defense of life or property while autos are not suited to defending rights in that way because of their size and the energy they have at speed makes them an indiscriminate weapon.  This difference in the proper use of guns and autos is nonessential to matters of law because an objective code of law that concerns itself with defending rights should be written in terms of negatives, i.e. it specifies what is forbidden not what is permitted.
A car driven down a sidewalk is perfectly analogous to a gun used in a mass shooting in that both violate rights.   Rights are always the key to untangling legal issues.  Only human beings have rights, and only human beings can violate rights.  Inanimate objects cannot violate rights because inanimate objects do not have rights, and are not moral agents in any sense.
When a muslim mass murders homosexuals, taking time to discuss gun control is a stupid distraction from the significance of what just happened.

I couldn't put any faith in any comprehensive plan for ending Islamic terror. Doctor Hurd suggests: "a military build-up like the world has never seen..." The United States already has the most impressive military the world has ever seen, and still they manage a strike within our borders. And when I say, "they", I am referring to Muslims that have submitted to their religious convictions with no regard to any human life, not even their own, and in some cases, the lives of their children. We are defending ourselves from religious convictions that have taken over the minds of individuals. Omar Marteen was not an immigrant. It is unclear at the time of this writing as to whether he had any genuine connection with foreign terrorists. One thing is for certain: Omar had a screwed-up mind, and no matter how much fire-power we put on display, what happened in the case of this one individual could happen again, and probably will.
As mentioned, it would be impractical to "keep Muslims out." We have important Muslim trading partners and military allies with whom we could not likely depend if the US policy were to be openly offensive toward their nations. This is not to say that immigration officials should grant assess to our borders to obviously suspicious persons from any nation. The overwhelming number of Muslims in the US are conducting themselves in a manner not much differently than immigrant groups of the past. The difference with Muslims is that the content of their holy text includes dozens of passages intended to provoke varying forms of violence against, not only unbelievers, but against any who do not agree with the specifics of one's theological interpretation. In addition, Islamic Sharia is a requirement under which the "faithful" will one day rule. I consider it hopeful to note that that majority of Muslims, global or domestic, disregard those Koranic verses inciting violence. Just as with the overwhelming multitudes of Christians in America, it would be accurate (if not complimentary) to view them as hypocrites. Harmless individuals who fail to uphold the ridiculous tenets of their faith don't worry me. But the chance that a perplexed individual may seek redemption through martyrdom very much worries me. Religion is the primary scourge sewing the seeds of irrational thought. 
While I have no comprehensive plan to "defeat Isamofascism," I would do all I can to promote a more secular social norm. Terms such as "Islamophobia" should be understood as nonsense created by Muslim apologists. There is nothing sick about someone harboring a mistrust of religion. I can be tolerant toward any law-abiding and productive citizen (or for that matter, non-citizen), but don't expect me to respect their religion where it pertains to government or to my own personal conduct. We do ourselves no favors when we sit silently while our leaders pander to the religious-right, or spout pious references assuring us of their devotion to (or conditional respect for) superstition. And certainly we should not shy away from identifying any coercive and/or violent extremism, whether it be religious or altruistic. If there are those among the Muslims in America who question their faith, we would be best served to show them all the support necessary to overcome the grip of terror imposed upon them by their elders' faith; they should know that they have a choice of freedom from religion, just as they have freedom to practice their religion. 

Seems like a reasonable rate of depreciation should be expected by both parties under rental agreements, ideally spelled out in the lease. Some people suggest a detailed checklist signed by both parties. Carpet coming up at the seams? Staple gun. Sounds like he's trying to swindle you, all the more insulting considering your lower than average tenant cost since he didn't have to work to fill the space every year.
Sometimes renters are willing to do anything to get a few hundred dollars, so if you're not going to pay, be prepared for a lot of wasted court time and money. For low dollar amounts, best case is probably a compromise, even if he's being unreasonable.

Hamilton was played without muskets at the Tony Awards, to "honor the victims". That should teach the evil NRA to stop killing gays...

I think "pickup artists" are just guys who are naturally charming and have a lot of experience with women, trying to sell snake oil to guys who aren't. But, the fact is, 99% of people aren't supremely charming and experienced...and yet, most of them manage to find partners. Just look at your friends and acquaintances, who have partners: what percentage of them would you say are "pickup artists", who can pick up a girl pretty much at will? I doubt you know more than one guy like that. Everyone else does it without any special skills.
So I think what you should worry about isn't how the pickup artists do it, it's how these other people do it. There are only a couple of things that ACTUALLY WORK, in my experience:
1. Choose who you like: like women you know, and who have similar interests and values to yours...and are therefor more likely to like you back. Don't bother chasing after someone who isn't interested, or is out of your league (for whatever reason).
2. Experience interacting with women. I don't just mean romantic experience, although that is very important: and the only way to really become experienced is to actively seek experience (in other words, don't fixate on one girl you like, but rather "play the field"; I'm not suggesting that you should be with anyone, no matter who they are, but don't say no to women unless you have a good reason to: and "you're not my ideal woman" shouldn't count as a good reason).
However, romantic experience aside, just making female friends is very important. People (including women) hate uncomfortable social interactions, and they will pass up a lot of potentially good things, just to avoid them. When a woman sees someone who is either by themselves, or surrounded by other guys, the main fear they have about talking to that person is that "this is going to be uncomfortable". And, unless you're really, really charming and confident, you're not going to change their mind about it: it's going to end up a self fulfilling prophecy. They're going to avoid being alone with you, at all cost...not because they hate you, but because they don't trust you to be able to avoid uncomfortable moments.
On the other hand, if they see you surrounded by female friends, who are comfortable talking to you, they will not have that fear: they will be open to interacting with you. At that point, you don't need any special skills, you just need to talk to them, same way you would talk to anyone else.

But, though "reality is on our side" sounds flippant, it's true -- Objectivist ideas go a lot longer than the crappier ideas laying in the muddy cognitive depths of those magnitudes.

As hard as it is to fight against depression (since a fight needs motivation), people do it all the time: perhaps in little steps, and with help. I believe it has to be fought at multiple levels: philosophical, psychological and social. At a philosophical level, one needs some type of purpose to pursue. It does not have to be big and ambitious to begin with. At a psychological level, one needs to develop certain habits -- again, in baby steps. At a social level, one needs to develop some type of friendships, even if they're weak to start with.
I take the same route to work each day and there's this blind guy I've been seeing for years. I see him in the mornings and in the evenings, so I presume he walks to work. From the places I've spotted him, he walks about a mile, crossing at least two mid-sized suburban streets. Hats off to guys like that -- frankly, I don't know if I could do the same if I were to lose my eye-sight.