khaight

It's even more complicated than that. In the case of the Iraqi Campaign, the question of whether the invasion was in the interest of the United States depends in part on what you think the consequences will be. And for issues this complex, the consequences of any action will be mixed. So people can differ not only in their knowledge of current facts, but in the principles they use to project the results of actions in the future and in the relative weights they give to different projected consequences both good and bad. The total number of causal factors involved is high enough, and their interrelationships complex enough, that monolithic agreement on concrete policies would actually make me suspicious.

In fact, the games that have sold the largest numbers of units do so by selling to people who don't even think of themselves as computer gamers. Myst is a good example. The Deer Hunter series is another. Both sold many millions of copies, and both sold the bulk of them to people who have probably never played any other computer game.

I wouldn't either, and don't. If "Extremist" is an anti-concept (as Rand thought it was), how could a compound concept like "Extremist Islam" be valid or useful?

I lied; I am going to write a bit about the Iraqi Campaign specifically. First: I don't think there is an "Objectivist" position on this issue. Whether the Iraqi Campaign was a good idea or not is an application of Objectivist principles to a complicated real-world event. As such, there is room for disagreement. What we have here is less an "Objectivist" position than a number of positions held by different Objectivists for varying reasons. Second: I dispute your claim that politicians blatantly lied about WMD. The belief that Iraq had WMD was widespread and bipartisan prior to the war. You can claim they were mistaken, but I don't think you can claim they were dishonest. That's an important distinction. (In point of fact, some WMD have been found in Iraq. Not huge stockpiles, but we did find chemical weapons and some other stuff.) Third: Objectivism is very clear on the point that dictatorships have no right to exist. Rand stated bluntly that a free society has every right to invade a dictatorship and recreate it as a free society. The question of justification turns purely on the question of whether doing so is in the self-interest of the free society. So... was the Iraqi Campaign in the self-interest of the United States? Going in, I thought it was. There were a number of governments in the Middle East that supported terrorism and needed to be changed. These included Iran, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. All of these governments will need to be changed before we can declare victory in the overall war. (The true lynchpins, in my opinion, are Iran and Saudi Arabia.) The United States needed a beachhead. Iraq looked like a good candidate. There was much higher public support for invading Iraq than any other nation on the list. There seemed to be a solid causus belli. As the starting point of an extended campaign, Iraq was justified. (This, incidentally, is why I call it the Iraqi Campaign instead of the Iraq War. The invasion of Iraq cannot be understood outside of the broader strategic context of which it was a part. And that's why, even if true, the claim that Iraq posed no direct threat to the United States is irrelevant. The first nation that the United States invaded in World War II was Morocco. They never attacked us; they posed no direct threat to us. But invading them was strategically necessary as part of the larger war against Germany. Dropping that strategic context and critizing the "Morocco War" as an isolated incident would be absurd.) Those are my essential reasons for supporting the Iraqi Campaign ex ante. I think they were defensible. However, we are now faced with additional facts that were not available in 2002 -- specifically the fact that the Bush administration seems either unwilling or unable to prosecute the larger war of which the Iraqi Campaign should have been the first step. Instead, they are trying to build a freer society in Iraq in the hopes that it will serve as a reference model for internal reform or revolt in the other nations in the area. I think this is a mistake. Iraq cannot be stabilized while Syria and Iran are using it as a platform to wage war against us. This is just another indication that what we should be fighting (but aren't) is a regional war. In effect, what the Bush administration has done is undermine post facto the core justification for the Iraqi Campaign ex ante. Iraq is a beachhead, but a beachhead is only of value if you use it to stage further attacks on the remainder of the opposition. If I had known how this would play out in advance, would I have supported the Iraqi Campaign going in? I'm not sure. I'm not happy about the way it's playing out. But what would have been the alternative? Should we have invaded Iran directly? Perhaps, although I suspect that if we had done so many of the same people complaining about the Iraqi Campaign would be making the same complaints with "Iran" in the place of "Iraq". Should we have done nothing after Afghanistan? What course of action would have both pleased those critical of the Iraqi Campaign and advanced the strategic goals of the war against Islamofascism?

I'm not going to debate the merits or demerits of the Iraq war here, but I do want to address this question. Reality is non-contradictory. That's true. We use reason to identify the facts of reality in conceptual terms, leading to truth. But (and this is the key point) the operation of reason is not automatic, and it is not guaranteed to be correct in any given case. When faced with a complicated issue that is influenced by multiple interrelated factors, the right answer is not obvious. If two people disagree about a factual issue, they can't both be right. (They could both be wrong.) How do you figure out who is right? You debate. You discuss. You analyze. You disagree. In short, you do all the things you seem to find baffling. The existence of disagreement isn't a sign of irrationality; it's a sign of rational people trying to ferret out errors in a complicated world.

"Jesus Saves, but Moses Invests". My wife was visiting relatives in rural Tennessee a few years ago, and saw a car with a bumper sticker that said "Jesus is coming. Lock your doors." It takes some courage to put that on your car in that part of the country, although it's probably subtle enough that a lot of people don't get it. Personally I'd like to get a bumper sticker that says "Reduce Complex Ideas To Simple Slogans". I get a kick out of sarcastic meta-humor.

Wow, you and I have pretty similar tastes in CRPGs. Some additional games I've enjoyed over the years: the Wizardry and Ultima series, the two Ultima Underworld spinoffs, Deus Ex, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, System Shock, System Shock II. the Bard's Tale series ("It's like Wizardry, only more so"), and the Might and Magic series. The only 3 games currently in development that I'm looking forward to are Gothic III, TES: Oblivion and Neverwinter Nights II. (Although I did not play the original NWN, I kind of have an obligation to try NWN2 because the lead designer on it is a good friend of mine. We lived next to each other in the dorms for three years in college and he was best man at my wedding. I played in an AD&D campaign he ran for about three and a half years. If the single player campaign in NWN2 is no good, it won't be because he's incapable of writing a good one.)

I suspect that it isn't so much that Objectivism appeals mostly to the young; it's that older Objectivists find they have better things to do than argue ideas on the Internet. That was certainly the case with me; I used to be pretty active on Usenet in the mid to late 1990s, but after a while all the arguments started to seem the same. So I decided that if this was a philosophy for living on Earth I should go off and try it, and I did. It worked well. I still read and occasionally post on internet fora, but correcting the same dozen basic misunderstandings from hostile interlocutors over and over has somehow lost its appeal. I figure if the critics are right, then Objectivism won't work as a guide to life. And since in my experience it does work, it follows that Objectivism is fundamentally correct.

It just occurred to me a few days ago that my pets don't have names; they have definitions. I started out with a cockatiel, which my wife and I called "Bird". This differentiated it from us and the other things we owned. When we acquired a goldfish, we called it "Fish". Then we got a second bird, a lovebird. We called him "Small Bird" and started calling the cockatiel "Large Bird". Since the context had changed, the cockatiel's old definition no longer served to distinguish him from our other possessions and we had to add a new qualification. It's probably a good thing we don't have kids; I'm not sure I could handle a son named "Boy".

OFFICE SPACE was freaking hilarious. There used to be another guy at work who was a big fan of it, and we would quote Lumburg's lines back and forth. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to go ahead and... disagree with you on that a little bit." MYSTERY MEN was obscure, but also funny. William H. Macey is one of my favorite character actors. He's always in the background, just pulling in that paycheck. The fact that I have a soft spot for silly superhero stories doesn't hurt either. (Anybody else a fan of "The Tick"? Spoooooooon!)

My primary home computer is an Athlon64 3200+, Asus K8V motherboard, 1 gig of RAM, and a GeForce 6600GT-based video card. I've got a 60gig hard drive and another 160gig drive that's barely in use. (Only half is even partitioned, and I've hardly got anything on it.) I've also got an IBM ThinkPad T40 which my employer provides for me. As I recall it's a 1.5 gigahertz mobile Pentium CPU with 512mb of RAM. I don't remember the rest of the specs, but since it's technically only a loaner it doesn't matter that much.

I think the quote was more like "Lois, the lesson here is that abusing alcohol has absolutely no consequences." Then they cut to Peter's one surviving brain cell, alone in his head, who is now ecstatic that he has time to read without interference from all the other brain cells. Then his glasses fall off and break, in a parody of a classic episode of the Twilight Zone. In case you hadn't guessed, I'm also a big Family Guy fan. It had so many jaw-dropping "I can't believe I just saw something that bizarre on TV" moments, and if one joke doesn't work there will be another coming along in about two seconds. Futurama is also a favorite. It's like the Simpsons for science-fiction fans, but with a more consistent level of quality. Black Adder is fun, as is the British SF series Red Dwarf. Monty Python is classic fall-down-funny. I was a fan of the American version of Whose Line Is It Anyway? up until I'd seen all of them several times. Does anybody else here like Wallace and Gromit?

I read his trilogy The Seer King, The Demon King and The Warrior King. I thought they were solid but not exceptional. They were well-crafted and accomplished what they set out to do. I felt like I got my money's worth but nobody is going to classify them as great or timeless literature.

I read a later interview in which the author indicated that he'd found some kind of religion. Apparently he had some kind of direct spiritual experience that led him to conclude that a divine being exists, although he refused to discuss the details. We'll see what kind of impact that has on his later works. Still, the stuff he's written to date stands as-is, and it's pretty good.

Well, that's the nice thing about freedom. I don't like San Francisco, but I don't have to go there, so I don't. You like it, and you want to live there, and you do. We both win.

I intend to vote "Yes" on 77. Gerrymandering (which is what Prop. 77 is trying to prevent) has a number of pernicious effects on government. In essence, gerrymandering allows incumbent politicians to select their constituents. One consequence of this is that the party that gains the most votes statewide may still wind up with a minority of the legislative seats, which is clearly anti-democratic. A second consequence is that gerrymandering creates "safe seats" -- districts where only one party is competitive. A politician elected to a safe seat has very little incentive to listen to the wishes of his constituents, because he has virtually no chance of being voted out of office. Ever wonder how politicians can say such flamingly idiotic things and still get reelected year after year after year? Gerrymandering helps a lot. I also think that anything the political class hates as thoroughly as anti-gerrymandering reforms ipso facto must be a good idea. It's sort of like voting against anything supported by the teacher's unions. I may also vote "Yes" on 73, on the grounds that abortion should be treated like any other medical procedure. As far as I know, if a minor wants to get just about any other medical procedure the parents must be notified. It's the lack of parental notification in abortion cases that's the result of government intervention. (I'm reminded of a scene in a first-season episode of House in which his minor patient needs to have an abortion, the child doesn't want her parents to know, and House is stuck telling the parents that he's going to perform a procedure and no, he can't tell the parents what it is, and no he can't tell them why. The illustration of government force shutting down the operation of the mind is palpable.)

Not this Haight. I grew up in the south bay, San Jose, then went to San Diego for college from 89-93, then came back. I wouldn't touch San Francisco with a ten-foot pole, though. On the basis of 30+ years of experience I have yet to come up with a single good reason to go there.

I've said many times that if General Electric came up with a way to produce electricity by magic, within a week they would get protested by some 'viro group on the grounds that nobody had proved that magic doesn't cause cancer.

I like books that have a strong thematic integration. Books like that tend to make their point without being didactic about it. Didacticism is the kiss of death. Putting the point another way, I don't read fiction to get a message. I read fiction because I like strong, coherent, integrated and interesting stories. It is a derivative fact that such stories usually wind up making a point. I've enjoyed a few of Terry Brooks' novels, particularly Magic Kingdom For Sale and Elfstones of Shannara. Has anybody here tried R. Scott Bakker ("The Prince of Nothing")?

I was at an Objectivist conference where Allison participated on a roundtable discussion on the future of the economy that was moderated by Leonard Peikoff. Peikoff introduced him as (paraphrasing from memory) "the first actual capitalist to attend one of these pro-capitalism conferences." The way I look at it is: one down, 499 to go. (BB&T has their corporate philosophy available on their web site. It's an interesting read, and many parts of it should look very familiar -- particularly the "corporate values" section, which reads like an outline of the "virtues" chapter of OPAR.)

I think you need to identify what your goal is. What is your motivation for checking out other philosophies? Do you intend to become a philosopher? Are you merely curious? Are you looking for a way to diversify your academic record outside of engineering courses? Looking for a chance to test your philosophical detection skills? Etc. If all you want to do is get a better understanding of other philosophies, you might be better off just picking up a good book on the history of philosophy. You can study that at your own pace and not have to deal with the likely intellectual corruption of humanities professors in modern universities. I think the Ayn Rand Bookstore sells a couple of such books, e.g. the Windelband. Objectivists have also had good things to say about the W. T. Jones. (Full disclosure: I haven't read either.)

Looking at my bookshelf, it seems I've read 5 books by Pratchett: The Light Fantastic, The Colour of Magic, Sourcery, Mort and Reaper Man. I may check out one of the stand-alones. It sounds like I've already read enough of the "Death" books to get a sense of what Pratchett is doing there. I've already read Good Omens and enjoyed it.

John Allison, the CEO of BB&T. It's a Fortune 500 company. Allison is an active supporter of ARI and has spoken at Objectivist conferences. BB&T's corporate training materials are built around principles from the Objectivist ethics, and the company has been making million-dollar grants to underwrite the academic study and defense of capitalism at various universities. As I recall, Allison was once approached by the leadership of his state Republican party about running for governor; he turned them down because politics is not his passion. But he's certainly highly successful by mainstream standards and he's achieved his success through the application of Objectivist principles in those areas that are still open to his control. Working within current regulations, even viciously unfair ones, does not necessarily make one a traitor. You act rationally when free to do so, and you speak out in support of rational principles. The United States is a far cry from the world of Atlas Shrugged. On a slightly different tangent, I think the threshold for major financial success these days should be set higher than "millionaire", though. Because of the ongoing inflation of the dollar, being a millionaire is not as impressive as it once was. My parents were a one-income family; that income was my father's salary working as a college professor at a state university. He retired as a millionaire. I'm just a working stiff and I'm already more than a third of the way there myself. Here in California my townhouse is worth more than a half-million dollars.

I still like Tolkein a lot as an adult. I was in the middle of rereading The Lord of the Rings on 9/11, and a great deal of what he wrote resonated. "It takes but one to make a war, and the women of this country learned long ago that those without swords may yet die upon them." There are a lot of people in the modern Democratic party who could benefit from pondering that sentence. Then again I've also read The Silmarillion cover to cover, twice, so I may not be the typical fantasy afficionado. I tried Terry Pratchett years ago and found his stuff mildly amusing but no more. It is worth noting that I read the first 3 or 4 Discworld novels and I've heard that the series changed substantially since its early days. Is there a later Pratchett you'd recommend as a better exemplar of what's good in his work? Prometheus: If you're going on a book hunt, you might also check out Wright's "The Golden Age" trilogy. It's far-future science fiction, also worth reading if you're into that kind of thing. As for me, I'm going to go chew on Erikson's Deadhouse Gates for a while.

No, domain names do not work that way. The British version of Amazon's website, for example, is www.amazon.co.uk from anywhere in the world. The entire point of the Domain Name Service is that it creates a mapping from fully-qualified domain name to IP address that applies univocally across all geographical locations.