LovesLife

Evasion is certainly possible. However, I'm not sure how to differentiate between someone choosing to evade a choice (which is of course actually making a choice), and someone who is driven to a particular action based on an animal-like response to a dominant stimulus. Based on personal experience, most people I know don't appear to actively choose evasion. They just act. OK, point taken. However, I'm thinking of a situation where the person has no doubt about the effect of his actions on his health; whether the issue is debated in some circles is immaterial. Let's narrow it further and say that someone has diabetes, and knows that foods containing sugar will make him feel bad and generally shorten his life, yet he does it anyway. The science of the relationship between diabetes and sugar intake is well-established. Equally important, the person is convinced about the truth of that science. What I'm trying to figure out is how someone like that can accomplish the full integration of mind and body that would be required to change his behavior. It's easy to say "focus," but how do you do that? Or how do you learn to do it? And is that really all there is to it? In my case, I think I have extremely good focus 99% of the time (in fact, I sometimes hyper-focus, which can actually be a problem). I read and write a lot, and games, puzzles, etc are very easy for me. But it does slip away at certain moments. I had an idea the other day to write down some of my analysis of "undesirable" actions on a 3x5 card, and carry it in my shirt pocket -- then pull it out for review under times of stress. I also feel, as I said in the OP, that it would be very helpful to have someone to talk to who understood the background. Writing about it just isn't enough (particularly in a public forum).

Yes, I agree. Great stuff. However, the format is not typical of most arguments, because the original questioners were given little if any chance to meaningfully respond.

They're all on the north island.

Yes, of course. Nothing is really "free" in the true sense. I meant "free" as a shorthand for "you don't pay anything at the time of use; the costs are paid through taxes instead, even if you don't use the services." The way I look at it is that I'm paying taxes instead of insurance premiums. Well, of course the French are notorious for suppressing newsworthy stories. However, nuclear spills have been reported in Japan. And of course there's Chernobyl. Me either. The bad definitely outweighs the good in the long run for most people, but that doesn't mean that there aren't good aspects to it (things like not having to deal with insurance companies). So in order for you to find work, someone who is influential elsewhere would already have to be here? It's not possible for you to make a name for yourself? I often find that the lack of competition is a very enabling thing. My personal experience with jobs in NZ is that they are readily available, provided that you're willing to adjust your pay expectations. The city where I live has a large college community; higher education is very much valued. Anyone can come to NZ and stay for up to 6 months without doing anything special. Beyond that, you need to apply for either residency or a long-term work permit. NZ has what they call the "skilled migrant" program -- basically, if you can get a job here, they'll let you in, provided you're under 55 and in reasonably good health. Cousins to the south? You mean Antarctica? I didn't know they had much Internet there. The Internet in NZ is wide-open, with no threats along those lines that I've heard about. One quirk is that NZ doesn't have "unlimited" Internet; all ISPs have caps on the amount of data transferred, over which they charge an additional fee. The primary nuclear fuels have very long half-lives. The half-life of Uranium 235 is 700 million years. Plutonium 239 has a half-life of "only" 24,000 years. Do you say that based on your belief, or on actual knowledge? How do you know how clean they are? By listening to the industry's news releases? What about the waste products? Leaks clearly aren't impossible: there have been plenty of them in the press, and who knows how many more that were never made public. You would find that living that way is much more expensive than in the US, both because of import costs and relatively expensive weekly trash service. There is also a much larger market for used stuff. If you were too blatant about your level of waste, you would probably draw comments from locals, though not intervention or anything like that. The north island, which includes the two largest urban areas (Auckland and Wellington) is in many ways almost a different country; it's a very different place than the south island. I don't care for that area nearly as much. Well, one microgram of Plutonium can cause cancer, so that's pretty dangerous in my book. Given the long half-lives of the waste products, I'm not convinced that long-term storage is even possible, much less proven. So that makes is pretty unmanageable too. Low pollution is about much more than a "dip in the lake." It impacts your lungs, in particular. There's good evidence to suggest that it can significantly shorten lifespan, especially for the susceptible (one of my kids has lung problems, for example). California might have a GDP 14 times that of NZ, but it also has a population 8 times as big -- and a big chunk of that GDP comes from government contracts, basically leeching off of the rest of the country. Also "large income" is relative. What do you spend that income on? What kind of lifestyle do you want to have? Those are also important factors. For one thing, with NZ being an island nation, imports are relatively expensive and result in an out-flow of currency reserves. Re-use is therefore often less expensive. Also, land fills are filling up already. If waste continues at high rates, new areas will need to be claimed for landfill. Also, not all trash encourages innovation. Packaging, for example. Yes, that's true. Kiwis seem to draw the line between caring for the sick, indigent or disabled and things like accidentally spilling hot coffee on yourself. There would never have been a million dollar award for a case like that in NZ, as there was in the US. More likely, the case would have been dismissed, with the judge saying: "be careful next time!" No, I don't think a political party is needed for our growth. Yes, I agree that cultural growth is (much) more important. I only pointed out Libertarianz because I thought it was an interesting side-note; the growth I was referring to was of the party, not Objectivism.

I've definitely run into the talking past each other issue. I've found that people often don't agree with basic concepts. Altruism is a big one, for example. More than once I've been accused of making up my own definitions, even though Webster's supports my view. A recent example, someone said: "everyone knows that charity and altruism are synonyms; to claim otherwise is absurd."

OK, I'm inspired by the other sort-of negative-sounding thread in this forum about NZ to write about a few of the things that I love about the country. I love it enough that my family and I moved here about two years ago. -- The birds. I never missed the birds in the US until I came here. The sounds they make are wonderful. Plus, they keep the insect population down. -- Of course it's beautiful. Parts of the US are pretty too, but NZ has an extremely long, scraggy coastline and a wide variety of terrain, from the fjords in the south to glaciers to volcanoes in the north. -- The people. Friendly, honest, hard-working, fun-loving. People actually say hello when you pass them on the street. Employees at the local retail stores, banks, etc, remember me, say hello, and are actually pleasant. -- The legal system. A contract and all of the disclosure forms to buy a house is only about 4 pages long, vs. 100+ pages in California. Lawyers are reasonably priced. Lawsuit awards are not obscene (I heard about a guy who was riding his motorcycle and got hit by some woman; the guy was awarded something like $1000 to fix his bike plus two weeks lost wages; no million-dollar "damages") -- Very low property taxes (about 0.2% per year for me) -- Reasonably-priced utilities (electricity is about US$0.10 per KWH, from hydroelectric, vs. about twice that in California) -- No inheritance taxes -- Prostitution is legal -- Legal for women to go topless in public -- Gambling is legal -- Drinking age is 18 -- No big racial issues or distractions (other than a little Maori stuff, but that's mostly on the north island; I live in the south) -- No capital gains taxes (including on your house) -- Value personal property rights -- Inexpensive basic medical care (yes, it's socialized, which is bad, but it seems to work OK for basic stuff); most prescriptions are free, a general practitioner doctor visit is about US$15, emergency care is no-cost -- just hope you don't need anything substantial like surgery... Although they do have a parallel private system, which can be a big help. -- Anti-nuclear. Unlike the other post, I think that's a good thing. The problem with nuclear spills / mistakes / accidents is that it can take a million or more years before the area becomes safe again. Would you want the waste in your back yard? -- Clean-and-green. Clean air, clean water, unlike California, which is extremely pollution-filled these days. -- Kiwis value repair and re-use. It's very different from the throw-away consumerism in the US. -- Kiwis are strongly in favor of personal responsibility. They pretty regularly march on Parliament when government starts to go astray. -- They have a political party with an Objectivist foundation (Libertarianz). OK, almost no one has heard of them. But, still, it exists, and existence is a prerequisite for growth...

Wow. Lots of misunderstanding in this thread about what fractional reserve banking (FRB) really is. If it's not understood clearly, how can a moral judgment be made? Key points: 1. Banks don't actually loan money in the same sense as when one person makes a loan to another person. All loaned money is **newly created**. If I deposit $1000 cash with a bank, and they then loan you $900, there will be $1900 in circulation; my original cash will still be at the bank, and you will have $900 in credit money appear in your account. They don't take $900 of my cash and let you use it. 2. Bank-created money is fundamentally different from government-created money. The latter is called "reserves," while the former is "credit money." -- although one can be temporarily transformed into the other (by making a cash withdrawal from loan proceeds, for example). 3. Bank loans are not made from reserves (see point #1). The reasons that FRB is immoral include: 1. The details of how the system works are not clear to depositors or borrowers (or often even to bank employees) 2. New loans cause inflation, which reduces the value of all outstanding money, by an unpredictable and unknowable amount 3. Holders of currency have not agreed that its value can be arbitrarily reduced according to government or banker's whims 4. Banks pretend to customers that their deposits can be withdrawn in-full at any time, which is not the case 5. Banks do not fully disclose their financial condition to customers, for fear of causing a run 6. The FDIC "insurance" is not funded at a level high enough to pay off a large-scale bank defaults; it's an illusion put in place for the purpose of instilling public confidence 7. Inflation as facilitated by FRB is responsible for the business cycle, as shown by Mises and others; so FRB is responsible for people losing jobs and property and for huge mis-allocations of resources 8. Bank profits are privatized, while losses are socialized -- such as with the Savings and Loan crisis and again with the recent bailouts 9. FRB facilitates interest rate manipulation, which is in turn subject to almost irresistible abuse and fraud I would actually be OK with a truly private bank that used fractional reserve banking -- because it could never survive on its own! The presence of central banks is a direct requirement of FRB; having a "lender of last resort" is the only way they can survive for any length of time (though in the long run, I suspect they're all doomed). I made a video that describes how money is created and destroyed. None of the morality stuff, though:

I'm a recovering rationalist, and I love to argue (mostly online rather than in person), even though I'm sometimes not very good at it. I find it therapeutic; it helps me sort out concepts that I might not completely understand. There's nothing like having someone call you on your basic life premises to stimulate some thought and study -- well, at least for me. I realize that it's a big topic, but I would be interested in hearing any approaches that others might have found successful with Objectivist polemics. I've found a big gap between understanding the material and convincing others about it (or even just getting them to understand my perspective). Have you run into any good books, talks, etc, along those lines? Approaches that you've tried and that have failed would also be useful.

The difference is an ever-present realization that one has choice. In my experience, people often act in a particular way because they feel they have no choice. I also know many people who live their lives on auto-pilot, reacting as an animal does to the dominant sensation of the moment. Intentionally self-destructive behavior, irrational hopelessness, acceptance based on belief, pack-like follow-the leader behavior, etc. An extreme, but more concrete example: primitives living in the bush, who base their lives and actions on superstitions. Only in my experience, people with similar thought processes are not isolated in The Lost World; they are also all around us. OK, that makes sense to me. However, the type of focus you're describing is a learned thing; it's not automatic. And since it's learned, it's easy to make potentially serious mistakes. But having them and not knowing you do, or not knowing how to integrate them fully into your life, or how to use them to improve your life, is a different thing entirely; that's what I'm talking about. OK, let's take a more realistic concrete. Why do some people eat poorly, when they know it's bad for them? It seems like there's a disconnect between known facts and actions / behaviors. In some people, it might partly be the rationalist trap of floating abstractions. But even tying the abstractions back to reality by providing concrete examples of how eating poorly damages you usually won't fix the problem. There is also clearly a biochemical component: blood sugar, hormones, stress and fatigue can all interfere with one's ability to think clearly when the time comes to make a food choice.

From an evolutionary perspective, volitional action (free will) and man's ability to reason seem like they must be relatively recent occurrences. Chimpanzees, which are very close to us genetically, still lack these abilities. Being relatively recent, it seems to me that these abilities are probably not fully mature. Based on experience, it's also increasingly clear to me that the degree of their presence in humans is not consistent. Perhaps that's in the nature of an evolutionary change; the whole population doesn't move along at the same rate or even in the same exact way. What led me down this line of thinking is that I see these things in myself. I am generally a very Objectivist person. But I find that I have "automatic" (for lack of a better word) thoughts and feelings that occasionally pull me off-track. If I sit down and think about it, I can usually identify where I went wrong. But in the heat of the moment, it is sometimes an extremely difficult thing to do. I suspect the same is true for most people, to some degree. At least part of the problem is cultural. Modern schools certainly don't teach kids how to think. But I think it's also deeper than that. I suspect that it might be impossible for many people to grasp reason and reality in any deep sense, and even if they do, applying it fully in their daily lives represents another huge challenge. To help those of us who sometimes struggle with personal issues along these lines, I wonder if something like Objectivist-oriented psychotherapy would be useful. Not therapy in the Freudian sense -- rather, help with thought processes and applying tools like induction and principles to our daily lives, or helping us recognize when we are drifting off into rationalism or empiricism. Maybe "philosophical consulting" is a more descriptive term. Does such a service even exist? Or am I the only one who feels this way?

In mathematics, A = A is an axiom. It can't be deduced or proven; it is true by observation or by postulate.

When I went to college, I took a multi-year course where I completely re-learned math from the very beginning ("what is a number") up through real analysis. We derived every theorem from basic principles, and discussed much of the history of math along the way. In my view, that is the best way to learn a subject, and the only way to fully understand it. If I could go through school again, I would do something similar for all of my classes. In fact, a very cool way to do it might be all at once -- learning the subjects in their original historical and political context. I'm a big fan of history, in particular, but specifically not the boring, awful history that's taught in today's schools where they have you memorize dates, names and places. Rather, the history of ideas. Even in math, knowing the history helped establish a context without which things didn't make much sense -- and I think the same is true for other areas of study as well. I would also recommend going back to original source materials as often as you can (or at least something closer to the original than modern textbooks). It always amazes me to see how much the modern re-interpretations butcher the originals. It's a big job, but not impossible. My math course was 5 college units and lasted two years. With a "nominal" 15 unit load (or a self-study equivalent), you could do three of those at a time, times two is 6 subjects in the usual 4 years of college. Everyone's interests are different, but if it was me, I would pick: Philosophy, History, English, Math, Physics and either Biology or Chemistry.

One argument I've heard is that Objectivism is based on relativism because each person is pursuing their own happiness. Since happiness is relative, then Objectivism is relative.

For me, it was probably my father's consistent encouragement to learn and produce, combined with a lack of religious upbringing (not anti-religion, just no religion at all). I discovered that by being rational, it's possible to learn and produce quickly, and I fell into computer science partly as a result of my attraction to rationality. The light went on for me regarding Objectivism when I saw how it explained so much of what I feel is wrong with the world -- feelings I've had since grade school (I'm in my late 40's). However, I'm now learning that pure rationalism is a dangerous thing, and in fact is very different from Objectivism. I'm still in the process of sorting that all out....

As I said before, answers to questions like the original one that was asked are impossible to answer fully or accurately, because we don't have enough context. Sacrifice means to give up something of value. Just wanting something doesn't mean that it's a value. Maybe being an engineer wasn't in his long-term interests. Maybe he wanted to be an engineer out of a sense of duty, because his father said it was the thing to do (in fact, in that sense, person #1 in the example may well be an altruist). Maybe what one person calls "squandering" his college money was his way of building up enough life experience to write a novel, or to do something else of value with his life. And if you say that he did value becoming an engineer, on his own and without a sense of duty or obligation to anyone, and that was really what he wanted to do with his life, then why would he waste the opportunity? In the real world, if you dig deeper, there is usually something else that the person wants more, that is of more value to them than that particular option. In that case, giving up one option for another isn't a sacrifice, it's a voluntary and rational choice.

Not getting what you want because you never worked for it isn't a sacrifice. I think a person such as you describe sounds like a hedonist -- doing what they want to because it feels good.

Some of what I think you might be getting at sounds like the mind / body dichotomy in philosophy. People act irrationally for any number of reasons: pragmatism, empiricism, altruism, etc. Even rationalists can act irrationally. It's impossible to label or even differentiate the people in your example without firmly connecting them to reality, including knowing the reasoning behind their decisions, not just the decisions alone.

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned honesty. Stealing is dishonest, whatever the reason behind it. It is therefore immoral. You are either an honest person or you aren't. You're either a moral person or you aren't. If you only steal once in a while, you're still a thief. A is A. As to whether the hypothetical situation is actually theft in the first place, just look at the definition of theft: taking something that doesn't belong to you (even if the other party is compensated in some way, it's still theft). That clearly fits in this case. Believing otherwise is just rationalization.

You should be absolutely, totally selfish. However, be careful of what it means to be selfish. It's not the same as being mean or stingy. It's acting in your rational self-interest. In other words, don't hurt yourself. If you look at it that way, the answer to your question should be obvious. Yes. If something is of absolutely no benefit to you, then you are hurting yourself by doing it -- possibly simply by using your time. However, note that things like charity can be in your rational self-interest. You can benefit in many ways by being generous. Again, being selfish is not the same as being mean. In other words, yes, be nice! It's in your rational self-interest, as long as you don't go overboard.

Your question as stated doesn't match up well with reality, which is probably why you're having a hard time answering it yourself. Why would person #2 and #4 just sit and pray to God and allow themselves to starve? Even dedicated religionists know that they have to eat. Are they saving money for some other purpose? Or are they offering their life in exchange for something? In a real-life scenario, they are most likely sacrificing themselves for others in some way, which would make them altruists like #3. Otherwise, they would be straightforward suicides.

I think it's based on life as the standard of value, which is the cornerstone of ethics.

This sounds like it's based on the belief that you can know things based on intuition or other mystical means. What does it mean to know something? Knowledge amounts to a collection of concepts and the relationship between them. The formation of concepts requires conscious thought and the application of reason to observations. In order for the concepts and the resulting knowledge to be valid (useful in other situations), the observations need to be based in reality. This process can be confirmed in reality by simple observation. Intuition is described as the process of knowing something without thinking about it. But if no thought was involved, then how could the underlying concepts be formed? Did some mystic force reach into your mind? Intuition is more properly described as a feeling that you know something. Feelings are not the same as knowledge; feelings are your reaction to thoughts and sensory input. They are generated by the mind, rather than being inputs into it as the senses are. Feelings do not require reason, and do not involve concepts; they therefore cannot be knowledge. Again, this can be confirmed through simple observation of reality. Also, logic (which usually means deductive reasoning) is not the only way of knowing things. Inductive reasoning can be applied to simple observation as well. Knowing that the sky is blue, for example, does not require logic. And empiricism involves clinging to facts and rejecting concepts; facts are not knowledge, so empiricism can't be used as a way to know things.

I just started listening to Peikoff's lectures on Understanding Objectivism, and I am already starting to see the roots of the issues I'm struggling with (Mind/Body dichotomy, rationalism, etc). Can't wait to get through the whole course.

It's similar to smoking. You might really enjoy it, but when you fully understand how bad it is for your health, a rational person has to walk away. Relationships are based on common values and interests. If or when those disappear (or if it becomes apparent that the commonalities that you thought were there were actually not really there), then a relationship becomes very difficult to maintain. Yes, definitely. I'm trying hard to avoid falling into exactly such a trap. I'm finding the process to be intensely challenging -- which is what prompted me to start this thread; wondering if others have run into similar problems.

Perhaps I fell into a semantic trap. Is "having an identity" different from "having identity"? The former implies something concrete and tangible to me, where the latter does not. In the dictionary, most of the definitions of identity refer to things not concepts. What's cold to me might be hot to you, so in fact they might be the same thing (although cold and hot aren't actually "things"). Even so, I guess you're right. In the more general sense of A is A, or "things are what they are," then yes, I suppose even concepts and forces "have identity".