Epistemological Engineer

As they say in Wikipedia: "CITATION NEEDED."

Apples and oranges, bro. Go watch Shine, and then tell me that Bach can affect a man's soul in the same way the Rach 3 affected David Helfgott.

It's hard to explain ("...every man for himself--and only for himself..."), but I can say that the pleasure of listening to, say, the fugues from the WTC is almost literally like a massage for my brain: the pleasure I derive from their clarity, order, and complexity is similar to the pleasure I get from doing mathematics--and the explanation of that pleasure would require a long discussion in itself. RicardoSmith23, also keep in mind that many major Romantic composers, including Beethoven, Chopin, Mendelssohn, and Rachmaninoff himself were influenced by Bach. The climax of the first-movement cadenza is, for me, the most powerful moment in all of music. However, the depth of its darkness is dangerous, and not something I allow myself to experience frequently. Black magic should not be toyed with unless one knows one is strong enough to handle it. I feel this way sometimes too, T-Man. Indeed, if I had to choose one and only one album to listen to for, say, the next five years, it would be the WTC. However, you've got to realize that your claim is based on emotion, as many other kinds of music are, as you put it, in a different class and hardly comparable (i.e. they influence different parts of the brain/patterns/emotions/etc.) Speaking of which: Sorry, I think Rach's got you beat there. See my above comment, or just watch Shine again. This is an interesting claim. I can't exactly refute it, as I followed the same path (loved only Romantics as a youth, became more sensitive to the exquisite pleasure of Bach late in college), but I wonder why and, more importantly, how one develops this appreciation without actually playing them for himself. (I only played one Prelude, the D-major from book I, and never learned to love the fugue as a sixteen-year-old.)

Grim: What has led you to conclude this? (Insert topic split here...) Xavier: Your family life sounds rough. Is it feasible for you to come to the United States for college? Not that that would solve everything; it might, however, be a step in the right direction. (Xavier is a good name, btw )

Ellsworth Toohey...that'd be pretty spooky.

Knowledge for its own sake is not a value, according to Objectivism. Initially, I had a strong (negative) reaction to this viewpoint, based on my values. The more I read OPAR and understand the hierarchy of Objectivist philosophy, thought, the more I understand this position and harmonize with it. Nevertheless, we observe many examples of people who love knowledge for its own sake. I believe that if I were immortal, I would continue to absorb and discover knowledge, and I would never stop loving the process. What can account for this? The best explanation I have come up with goes like this: the root of the love of knowledge lies in the desire to understand/make sense of the natural world. This desire, in turn, has its root in the desire to create material values, either in the immediate sense (i.e. survival) or in the long-term sense (i.e. exchanging values or passing them on to future generations.) Today, however, some branches of knowledge have become so abstract that they appear to have no connection whatsoever to man's survival or well-being. But this doesn't seem to bother the exponents of these fields (no pun intended), many of whom love discovering this abstract knowledge without "disdaining the practical world." How is this possible? In mathematics, there are many "existence" proofs that establish the existence of a mathematical object without actually constructing it. (That is: one proves the existence of the object by demonstrating that its nonexistence would lead to a contradiction.) I believe there is an analogy here: namely, that the love of abstract knowledge for its own sake is indeed connected to the desire for survival and well-being, but the actual hierarchical chain of values that connects them would be very difficult to explicitly uncover, so an existence proof is the best we can do.

*** Mod's note: Merged with an earlier thread - sn *** Why do different careers appeal to different people? Should one even bother with this question (assuming, of course, the careers in question are rational and based on the individual's true preferences rather than any "second-handedness")? The reason I'm raising this issue is that I'm having trouble deciding which path among several to take. Since I'm graduating this semester, I'm just going to have to try something and see if I like it. I'm relatively optimistic about this common-sense approach, although I still frequently wonder what are the roots of my and others' preferences. I would also like to sort out these issues with a good psychologist (if I can find one) when I can better afford to do so. (Note: I just realized that someone else started a similar post recently, very coincidentally. I feel justified in this separate post, however, because mine is simpler and more focused. After I post this, I'll look more in-depth at his and see if I can comment.)

Getting back to the music, though, I think it would be appropriate to consider the following insightful passage from the Romantic Manifesto (pp. 55-6): "At present, our understanding of music is confined to the gathering of material, i.e., to the level of descriptive observations. Until it is brought to the stage of conceptualization, we have to treat musical tastes or preferences as a subjective matter--not in the metaphysical, but in the epistemological sense; i.e., not in the sense that these preferences are, in fact, causeless and arbitrary, but in the sense that we do not know their cause. No one, therefore, can claim the objective superiority of his choices over the choices of others. Where no objective proof is available, it's every man for himself--and only for himself."

Gary: I wasn't implying that Wagner was guilty because the Nazis loved his work and used it for their own propaganda. Rather, I was underscoring the correlation between the Nazis' sick "romanticism" and some of the annoying excess near the end of said overture. AND--by the way--I just looked up Rienzi on Wikipedia. Previously I just knew the music, and no more, but now that I know its plot and premise, I am rather disgusted: "The opera concerns the life of Cola di Rienzi, a medieval Italian populist figure who succeeds in outwitting and then defeating the nobles and their followers and in raising the power of the people." Yech.

The overture to Rienzi is one of the most uplifting, heroic pieces of music I have ever heard. Of course, it does get a little "fluffy" in the end ("puffed-up"), but there's Nazi ideology for ya

THIS is disturbing. So Atlas Shrugged is going to be written and directed by someone whose favorite book is C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity. Someone please tell me this is incorrect.

In his discussion of the virtue of Productiveness, John Galt emphasizes the importance of not choosing work that is any more or less than his mind can handle ('...to settle down into a job that requires less than you mind's full capactiy is to cut your motor and sentence yourself to another kind of motion: decay,' etc.) When one runs into difficulties in one's chosen work and starts to feel it is too much for him, what is a method by which one can determine if the work really is 'bigger than his mind can handle' or if he is just giving up too early?

This may be the only way out. (That is, my only way out of going out of my mind over this :-) ) I'll think about the stuff you've said, and perhaps add more in the future. The not-countably-infinite future, that is.

No, it's more than just this: not only is (FC complement) dense in [0,1] with measure less than 1, it is also constructed from open intervals with positive measure. The set of rationals in [0,1] does not have this latter property. Not to be rude to everyone else, but I think that the discussion of the countability and ordinals here is not quite to the point. The paradox I'm trying to examine is the idea that you can take a ruler, remove from it pieces that have nonzero length all of which add up to 1/2, and have no intervals left over. Actually, Nate, the FC set itself bothers me as well: it is nowhere-dense, yet has positive measure. Maybe I could spare some excess verbiage by focusing on the "dust" itself ;-)

Antichrist Superstar...it's about personal power...but of a very dark kind. Whatever that means. (Actually, I have some ideas about the symbolism of darkness vs. light in Satanism, so my "whatever" is not entirely accurate.) My #1 is Johann Sebastian Bach, especially any recordings by The Master, Glenn Gould. Note the Apollonian/Dionysian split in my aesthetic tastes.

No no no, the part that bothers me is not the Fat Cantor set itself, but its complement. See, the rationals in [0,1] cannot be written as a union of disjoint open intervals with positive measure; the complement of the FC set can. "Contradictions cannot exist in nature"--this must mean that nature is discrete, no? Of course, a paradox is not necessarily a contradiction (?), but it at least appears to be contradictory, which disturbs me nonetheless.

Hidy-ho, everyone! I've participated in this forum on and off for almost three years now, possibly before these "introduction posts" were a regular occurrence! My name is Andrew Ritchie; I originally wanted to make my user name "Andrew R," just to keep it simple, but then thought "R Andrew" would be more original. After picking that name, I realized "Randrew" begins with "Rand", which actually annoyed me a little: after all, there is a pretty big difference between admiring someone's philosophy and naming yourself after them. So I've decided to change my name; I shall now explain the meaning of my new handle. I'm a graduate student in Mathematics, with some interest in Statistics. In a way, a statistician is an engineer of knowledge and certainty: indeed, the choice of a statistical test used on a data set can alter the level of confidence one attributes to a conclusion. (This is my attempt to romanticize a career that otherwise looks very dry to an outsider.) I'm more of a student of Objectivism or "Objectivist sympathizer" than an Objectivist, as I can be rather irrational and whimsical at times. For example, my second and third favorite musical artists of all time are Marilyn Manson and Tom Waits. Anyway, I've enjoyed my time on here so far, and I'm looking forward to expounding here several theories related to Objectivism that I've come up with lately!

How can 1/2 be equal to 1? For the uninitiated, here is a brief construction of a so-called "Fat Cantor Set": -Start with the closed interval [0,1]; intuitively speaking, begin with a foot-long ruler. -Remove the middle 1/4 from this interval. (More precisely, remove from here an open interval of length 1/4 centered at the middle of [0,1].) -From the two remaining intervals ( [0,3/8] and [5/8,1] ), take away 1/16 from the middle of each. That is, take from each an *absolute* 1/16, NOT 1/16 of what remains. (This distinction is important, as it will affect the result: for example, from [0, 3/8] what you DO want to do is take away an open interval of length 1/16 = .0625; what you do NOT want to do is take away an open interval of length (1/16)*(3/8) = .09375.) -Continuing this process inductively will yield, at step n, 2^n sub-intervals, and from each of these you will take away a piece of length (1/4)^(n+1). The result of this process is that the sum of the lengths of the pieces removed will be 1/2. However, the union of these removed intervals will be dense in [0,1]. In other words, if you look at the pieces removed, all together they "look like" the original foot-long ruler, but they only sum up to one-half this length.