TheEgoist

We will assume here that a priori just means metaphysical principles, since Objectivism rejects the a priori/posteriori distinction.
What does it mean to be an infinite amount of distance away from something? It is tantamount to saying no distance, because infinity isn't any set of boundaries. To speak of distance and infinity together is to combine two things that cannot coexist. Two javelins thrown at light speed in polar opposite directions will always remain a distance from another, even if they somehow (This is rather impossible) passed every single entity that has already existed. You can test this rather easily. Go walk away from a friend of yours. Have him walk away at equal pace. At what point does the distance become infinite?

You don't fool me, Skynet. I'm onto your plan. RESIST. THE. MACHINES.

Of course it should exist. I would hope we would object to the mutilation of male genitalia as much as mutilation of the female genitalia.

Rand's view of consciousness says nothing about how or why it is composed, simply that consciousness is inarguable axiom. It commits her to no other physical or metaphysical claims.

To add an interesting thought: I think that the enactive perception of Alva Noe and his influence in J.J Gibson offers an interesting response to the Hard Problem.

For Noe, perception is non-proposition sensorimotor knowledge. We become acquainted and learn how to perceive the world around us. An organism operates by acting in its environment. In this way, we don't answer the hard problem but render it irrelevant.

While public unions are bullshit, I oppose right to work laws and think most libertarian, Objectivist and generally classical liberal support of them is confusing.

This is that kind of phony privatization, like a lot of cities have with different private corporations for trash, public transit, etc. It inevitably leads to corruption as long as the State weaves itself in. And with prisons, it's an even bigger issue, since it is intricately woven in with the State by the nature of prisons. An Objectivist would say a prison system must be nationalized. I would say it needs to be abolished as it stands.

Enter homophobe number 1

Pat Condell, wrong as usual.

It's an issue of principle. As SteveD pointed out through Jefferson, it's tyrannical to use a man's tax money to fund the celebration of those things he finds objectionable. The government has no reason to celebrate Christmas, Easter, Hanukkah, Rammadan, Ayn Rand's birthday or even the birthday of the nation.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204791104577110880355067656.html

Some until-now unpublished words from Hitchens.

It's a shame someone can't spell "plethora", yet feels obliged to critique the vocabulary of others.

It's a shame someone can't spell "plethora", yet feels obliged to critique the vocabulary of others.

It's a shame someone can't spell "plethora", yet feels obliged to critique the vocabulary of others.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/31/opinion/the-new-resentment-of-the-poor.html?_r=1&hp

Leave it to the Republicans, including the head of the moronic Tea Party Caucus to not support taxation of the rich but to be fine with taking some money from the poor. Because taking the last pennies people have will do a lot, but taxing the rich more would never help the country!

This is just reverse class warfare.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/31/opinion/the-new-resentment-of-the-poor.html?_r=1&hp

Leave it to the Republicans, including the head of the moronic Tea Party Caucus to not support taxation of the rich but to be fine with taking some money from the poor. Because taking the last pennies people have will do a lot, but taxing the rich more would never help the country!

This is just reverse class warfare.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/31/opinion/the-new-resentment-of-the-poor.html?_r=1&hp

Leave it to the Republicans, including the head of the moronic Tea Party Caucus to not support taxation of the rich but to be fine with taking some money from the poor. Because taking the last pennies people have will do a lot, but taxing the rich more would never help the country!

This is just reverse class warfare.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/31/opinion/the-new-resentment-of-the-poor.html?_r=1&hp

Leave it to the Republicans, including the head of the moronic Tea Party Caucus to not support taxation of the rich but to be fine with taking some money from the poor. Because taking the last pennies people have will do a lot, but taxing the rich more would never help the country!

This is just reverse class warfare.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/31/opinion/the-new-resentment-of-the-poor.html?_r=1&hp

Leave it to the Republicans, including the head of the moronic Tea Party Caucus to not support taxation of the rich but to be fine with taking some money from the poor. Because taking the last pennies people have will do a lot, but taxing the rich more would never help the country!

This is just reverse class warfare.

Rand herself admits that she could not have conceived of her view of humanity and of how it should be organized politically without the aid of the examples set in the early industrial revolution, where trade was (mostly) voluntary. Is she admitting then that before this time, she would have an irrational view of political philosophy? No, merely that the evidence for what we now know as the best socio-economic system was not available to those in the 17th century.

Of course now, believing in the power of the state as or any forced together collective as the arbiter of political rule is as irrational as belief in God. Belief in god many moons ago might not have been unjustified. However, in the past 200 years our knowledge of nature has grown in leaps and bounds. An admittance into one's knowledge of God or of the valid power of the state in social organization shows a rather willful or malignant ignorance of the facts. Perhaps an individual in North Korea or the African jungle may not know the benefits of capitalism, but when one lives in a relatively free society, where the fruits of capitalism have come to bear, one can draw no reasonable conclusion about those who support socialist or any sort of totalitarian policy other than that person is malignantly ignorant at least in this aspect of his philosophy and likely in other aspects.

Pretty much. The issue is that anyone can get away with attacking anyone that they like , on any terms ( at least as far as I know) they like : as long as that person is not in the chat at that time/a member of the forum. But if someone in the chat wishes to condemn someone in the chat and to speak to them in a way which can be viewed as insulting , then that person is in the wrong. Regardless of whether or not that person objectively deserves to be treated in such a way and regardless of how doing so may be a just(ified) action. Though there has been at least one exception to this that I know of. The excuse is partially something to do with the fact that treating people in such a fashion drives some of them away and reduces traffic ( I think ), but it is nonetheless a policy which is going to drive away a lot of people with strong opinions and those that refuse to refrain from treating certain sorts of people as they deserve to be treated. So in as far as it does that, it is partially self-defeating.




That is a pretty absurd generalization. Sure, some people will be bound to treat it that way. However it does have valid purposes : Such as bringing certain posts to the attention of others and serving to try to indicate that certain members are considered to post better or worse posts, which may be worth considering in some instances.

Right, that is what I was implying, but apparently was not making clear. Or at least he first paragraph was. Except that the second paragraph really degenerates into useless metaphors around the middle.

Time is not a space though, at least now how I am using the concept. You do not "travel" into the future. Future events happen, but that is not the same thing.



The past and present do not exist physically either. The only referents which time reduces to are events. One can cause/witness events now andin the future, but those in the past are not something one can go back to. It is not because "previous states do not exist" ( not sure if this is even true, unless you mean that the only "states" which exist now are the ones *now*. ) , but because "What is done is done" and cannot go back and relive those events. It is just that simple : The "past" refers to events that have happened and which cannot be changed. Its just that simple. The only way in which one can navigate events in any sense ( and it is not useful to talk about things this way IMO) is witnessing / causing ones now or in the future.

It may seem trivial to say that we travel through time just as time passes, but it's not quite as simple as that, as the twin paradox shows. The twin who returns after a journey through space with high speed (comparable to the speed of light) will for example find that his brother has aged more than himself or possibly died a hundred/thousand... years ago. In the reference frame of the Earth the twins "travel through time" with different "speeds". From the viewpoint of the twin who remains on Earth, the other twin travels really into the future: he can return on Earth at a time which he would never experience as a living being when he'd stayed at home.

Whether one can travel backwards in time is of course a different question, but that can't be trivially disproved from your armchair. The grandfather paradox can be avoided, so that isn't a definitive argument. Furthermore we (the non-timetravelers) wouldn't detect anything strange - everything would behave normally with the usual causal effects, only the timetraveler himself might experience a change in the history as he knows it. That makes the argument circular: we've never seen that history can change, but we could only see that if we knew how we could travel backwards in time. The fact that we don't know how to do something isn't the same as knowing that it can't be done in principle. An argument is that as far as we know we've never met a time traveler, but neither that is a definite proof. Suppose the possibility of time travel will be discovered in 10000 years. How likely will it be that they will time travel to our period? Who knows what the people (perhaps half or complete robots) at that time want to do or can do? There might be much more interesting periods they will want to visit, or perhaps it turns out to be increasingly more difficult to travel the further you go backwards in time, so that our period is off-limits.

That said, I should state for the record that I think it's very unlikely that traveling backwards in time is possible, as our current knowledge of physics doesn't give any indication in that direction (there are some theoretical possibilities, but these seem to have no practical solution), but the question isn't as trivial as often is suggested.

Of course it should exist. I would hope we would object to the mutilation of male genitalia as much as mutilation of the female genitalia.

Of course it should exist. I would hope we would object to the mutilation of male genitalia as much as mutilation of the female genitalia.

Yes, let's politicize this tragedy! It's all the fault of the right wing!
Oh no, Leftists are going to stick chips in my brain and monitor me!

Neither of these are true. I've found very few Democrats, in fact not any, that have said that now everyone on the Right is suspect. Let's leave the silly conspiracies to the nutjobs at Info Wars.

Ayn Rand has stated explicitly that homosexuality was not normal homo sapien behavior. I support that view. It appears as though, in terms of morality, too many proclaimed Objectivists of this generation take the anarchist/subjectivist approach. This line of reasoning is simply not in line with the philosophy of Objectivism that that Ayn Rand created, Peikoff maybe, but not Ayn Rand. That being said, I don't think she would have an issue with someone choosing to be gay, but she would certainly not endorse it as Objectivist approved morality. The Objectivism of today seems more concerned with a libertarian approach to subjects that Miss Rand stated were contrary to her philosophy. Will the defenders of Rand's work and beliefs please stand up?