horvay

I agree, rush has some good stuff. But speed racer tried to make it something intrinsic about big business. The plot-theme one chooses in their fiction is very important and central to the events of the movie. The central conflict wasn't Speed verses the owner of Royalton, it was speed verses corporate corruption. And "corporate corruption" was represented as something innate in having lots of money. But apart from that, I didn't even find speed that great of a character. He was good at racing and didn't even know why. He was crappy at anything else except racing which hardly makes sense without LOTS of practice. But he was shown to be nature at it, like it "runs in the family". His brother was much more virtuous since his brother understood things to a deeper degree and wasn't a one trick pony.

I know with taste in food, one's choice should be objectively based on their taste buds. Different people like different foods but one's taste remains objective if they base it on the pleasure from their taste sensors. Perhaps noise in the ear would be the same?

I don't think so. He was out to get rid of corporate involvement. The business man in it was just a representation of big business. It didn't focus solely on the bad guy as much as big business in general. The fact is, the major theme was to make racing less "staged" and the plot-theme chosen to do this was the "innocent little guy" verse the "corruptness of big business". Hell, they tried to even put efficiency and technology in a bad light when giving a tour at Royalton Industries. "damn big businesses destroying small businesses and taking away the fun of the game" The same thing is actually happening in modern sports. "They are doing it for the money, not the game." Its a contradiction since the money is a representation of the value people invest in the sport. I don't even see why the whole "staged" thing was bad in and of itself since people obviously had invested money (their value) into the race still. Royalton industries did some bad things, but they made them look intrinsically bad; not just one guy, but big business and "corporate sponsorships" in general. I can see how someone could PICK OUT some virtue from the characters, but I don't see how someone who loves capitalism would not be completely bothered by the anti-business plot.

The movie was horrible. Iron man had an evil business man, but it was different. It was an evil business MAN. Speed racer tried to show that BUSINESS is evil. It said it all near the beginning when the father said something like, "When someone gets that much money, it corrupts a man." Complete bull. Feeling the car... are you serious??? I wish I could figure out whats wrong with my car by feeling. This is just one of the inconsistencies in characterizations in the movie. A good driver wouldn't depend on something like that. Just as a good mechanic wouldn't create a good engine from family values. Why Speed was a good driver and why the father was a good engineer didn't make sense at all based on their other views. They don't want to build cars and race them with skill and efficiency, they want to do it with family values, which seems to be the theme of the movie. That would be like Roark saying, "I'm sorry Keating, you don't think for yourself, but I think we can still be friends". That would completely against an individualist Roark. Sure, you could say Speed valued his family and he raced for that, but that would be rationalizing it as it was obviously trying to show the importance of families verses big business as INTRINSIC things. I joke about the movie to my friends by imitating the father: "This engine was built from good ol' family values." Well, I suppose the movie was better than watching a NAS car race.

Yes, it is a bit generous. But nonetheless, a child banging randomly on a piano aesthetically sucks. While I might not have a very defined criteria for the aesthetics of music, I do believe they exists, and that they can be judged somewhat implicitly. My point, in its simplest form, is: Aesthetics in music exists, and so music isn't completely subjective in that realm of judgment. Thanks for the quote but I don't think I have the entire context of this statement so I'm not going to comment much more on the subject at this time. I do have the book, I just haven't read it yet, so I might come back to this.

That would be wrapped up in a contract however, and if its a single person's property, then just having enough space is enough. I was talking about in a city or suburban area here.

PART TWO I think this comes from having outlining a goal for any extensive thought about a subject. When one declares a goal that they wish to achieve--"I want to develop a list of things I admire most in people"--they then need to stick to the essentials of achieving that goal. If one were to start thinking about: "Well, I like people who like cats. Cats are fun as they seem to mimic individuality. I'm sad my cat died." then that is not keeping to the essentials of achieving the goal about finding things one admires. While something like: "Well, I like people who like cats. Cats mimic individuality and others who find this as a value will also value individuality." This shows a complete cycle of abstract to concrete to abstract but all the while staying on the topic of finding things one admires in others. This also gets to something else Ayn Rand gets into in The Art of Fiction: Early in the book she mentioned: This leads to the more important message: This was dead on with one of my problems. I used to always have to struggle to do this. Someone would ask for an example of what I was talking about and I'd have to jump to the example in whatever book I read about the abstraction. If I was talking about concept formation, I'd jump to using furniture and tables (or humans and animals) as they were the examples most used. Fortunately, Ayn Rand gives some good tips here: So I went for a jog and started to do this. Its amazing how much of a web of abstractions appear. One that I faced were "freedom", "individuality", "analytical", "building", and sense all these led to defining what I was speaking about, they led to more abstractions to analyze and concretize. Some more on abstractions:

Haha! I wasn't expect that to be the end of that sentence.

If you told her God wants her to reason, yeah. I also don't think this is a good thing. All it does is make her connection to God stronger since it better works in reality. I think it would of been better to of done something like, "beside the God issue, one has to use reason when it comes to figuring a problem out..." Do you think it will be easier to explain how reason is the opposite of faith, or harder now?

Let me ask you this: why not explain the real logical conclusion about God? That she should take the blame for their sins etc. That she should give all her efforts and happiness for someone else. Obviously you did not. In fact, you just used her false premise, in a way that more conformed to reality. YOU yourself DID use induction there. Why else would you work towards rationality rather than blind faith? So rationalizations on a false premise is never the way. What you did was not this, you faked that you accepted her premise (which you did not) and proceeded to modify it to fit what reality really is... So I don't think it was really a rationalization in the first place.

Oh, I see what you mean now. By "dislike", I don't mean anger. Talking to a rationalist is like eating something that taste nasty

I feel you are wrong... I feel it was a good idea.. I don't feel good... hahahaha There is a guy at my work who talks like this, I generally ignore any thing he says after "I feel". If you like something that isn't rational, then I'd say you have a mind body problem. When someone gives up reason, I generally stop liking them. And when someone says that they take reason as an absolute, they could still be a rationalist, and think induction is "just probability". Many people who follow Popper think this. Something really annoying about rationalizing is that people can rationalize anything if they pick their premises. These are the worse type of people, the ones who change their premises to make their argument work. I suppose they use conclusions to validate their premises!! Weird, but people do it.

There is two types of logic: deduction and induction. Those who believe in the super natural might still use deduction properly, but they have premises that were based on either a lack of or bad induction. A person can not help but to be rational as far as they choose to think. Its the only way the human mind works. Free will is the choice to think or not to think. A rationalization is using deduction on bad or no induction--which usually comes from a lack a lack of willing one's self to think about the facts. I, probably much like JMeganSnow, do not like to deal with people who do not use induction properly, and tend to only use deduction right. In fact, I can't stand these type of people, especially in my profession: software development. I have seem applications that are completely unintuitive to work with, and this is usually because the programmer only has a grasp on deduction, and not induction. So when someone claims that they only deal with the rationality in someone else, what they are really referring to are their correct/incorrect premises.

Yes, this is what I meant.

No, I said to prevent a future threat or something that helps one's own nation as a whole.

I think writing for me does do some error finding like you said. I also find writing to be a good indicator of the organization of one's mind. As I try to make better use of my consciousness, writing can become like a barometer that gauges the level of efficiency--as can speaking too.

Actually, the goal isn't to write. Well, no solely, definitely not my focus. The goal is to have clearer and more concise thoughts. To learn how to make my own understanding of things better, more accurate and explicit.

So I started reading, "The Art of Fiction" by Ayn Rand, and have come across some amazing advice in this field. So in light of this, I think I'll quote some things from the book as I go, and give my commentary of course ...and then a bit later... I have seen symptoms of this in myself and many others. One such type is the use of huge paragraphs and blobs of text, with little organization, and basically, comes down to one long rant. I have heard that concepts are conscious space savers; that is, they generalize many concrete examples in your mind, but allows your conscious to set focus on just the abstract general concept instead of all those concretes. Then, by willing it, one can break down the abstract concept or generalization back into its examples and concretes it was formed from. I believe that this is what one must do in their head when thinking about some idea. They must take all the aspects of it, generalize and define it enough until they can get the entire idea in their mind at one time. This also requires memorizing (to put it into one's own subconscious) each abstract generalization made, so one can conjure it back for a later date.

I'm not sure this part is totally right, which it might just be in the way I read it, but: 1. While having volunteers go into the army isn't bad, I think an Objectivist government would have a paid army. IE, people would volunteer money to pay for such an army. 2. I see no problem in a conquest against another nation that does not respect _basic_ rights. Granted, there is no moral duty for this to happen, but I see nothing immoral about doing it. Obviously, a nation shouldn't do this unless it has some reason that would help the nation as a whole, or prevent a moderately known future threat.

Okay, I was following you up until this part... Not really. I think I got what you were saying. To analyze the reasons for certain aesthetic aspects of music, it takes training; but to simply enjoy them does not. But seriously, I think you were missing some new ¶ and possibly chapter headings. Oh, and a table of contents too

You could try to hook up a hose with some pressure, and watering them down. If anything, it might be alot of fun. Obviously, the most fun thing to do would be to cut the tree down and put an "exploit the earth day" sign on the stump. Or maybe if you owned a personal tank...

Oh, yes. Good idea. I'm going to add it to my main post.

Recently I have been working to have my writing be more structured and organized. I had found myself able to explain things, but it would be disorganized. It would be like puking out all the right ingredients but depending on the listener to sort through the mess. Recently I believe I realized the problem: my thoughts were not organized. Though my own introspection, I arrived at 2 major things that had to change: 1) Will oneself to think about some issue until one has the thoughts down and identified. 2) Pick apart everything, put things in categories; make lists, and memorize those list; and do as much separation as possible. 1. The point of this is to define one's thoughts. Just like a definition doesn't explain a complete concept; but rather, it points to some other bank of knowledge and examples of concretes. It is an identifier to some memory one has. This has to be done with thoughts. If it isn't, I find that the thoughts will be very hard to bring back to consciousness. I speculate this has much to do with the crow epistemology. 2. Just like in a speech and how one should create points that they plan to speak about, one must do this with the simplest thoughts in their mind, if they wish to be more clear and coherent in their thoughts, speaking, and actions. I think a common trait in failing to do this is "brain farts" where one completely forgets their train of thought. When I used to make points and explain things, I'd start at one end, and hope the rest comes to me as I go. This will not do as it leads to many bumps in thoughts and is bound to leave things out. Another purpose of this is to not go extremely concrete on some things, and not others--to be consistent in one's level of abstraction as necessary. 3. By DavidOdden Purpose is important; identifying a goal in thinking is mandatory. You don't just "think, randomly". I thus find it helpful to explicitly identify my goal, so that I have a standard of evaluation. --- The first two points here over lap some, as when one goes on a mental tangent, they have a nice identifiable list to fall back to when they go back to the main stream of thought. This makes me think that many people's mind could be like mine used to be: thoughts are a mess, and writing/speaking requires translating the mess. Any other ideas of ways to organize thoughts? Or comments on the couple I mentioned?

"Who's to say"? I am to say, since I was there. I think the better question to ask is why did I think that way. So I'll answer that first. Then I'll address the next part of your question. My standard of aesthetically good in the realm of music: Music that is good on the ears (doesn't hurt them, literally) and has some rhythm and/or unity. Must for the same reasons as a poem with no rhyme or beat sounds like poo, and can be put in the category of modern art, or just plain faction/nonfiction. I don't know what form of subjective you are using, but I am using this. In particular, I use this meaning: I don't believe I was doing this. As for your last part, one has to take in the full context as it was, not the one you are placing on it. It was a single chord, played with nothing else, and was slightly off the way he hit the keys. I understand how this could be mistaken for when most people speak, they speak of other people's opinions blindly. However, I was not doing that. When I was writing about my professor's example, it was my own mind judging, not the class's "collective" mind. Also, I think what you mean by subjective is "relative" which is different and can still be objective. Thanks for your response though.

I forgot to mention that having any property in another's AOB, without previous consent, would also constitute a threat.