Grames

They don't have the power to limit the scope of their contradictions. What they mean is not limited to what they say or write, but includes all of their premises and consequences.

No. But those people are not the target audience. Those who are in power got there because of the moral code of those not in power. Those not in power are who need to read and heed.

Whether the end justifies the means? Can a value be based on a falsehood? How do a man's passions define his identity? What are values? Can an indestructible immortal superbeing value anything or anyone? You and I may not agree with the author's vision of what might be and ought to be, but there is a vision there. This is romanticism as Dostoevsky is romanticism.

I thought the only reliable way to get rid of a troll was to burn the body?

I have not played the video game Bioshock but I do know from reading about it that Andrew Ryan is the so-called Randian founder of the underwater city in that game. Is this a fair representation of what Andrew Ryan in the game is about?

Watchmen is an instance of romanticism as Rand defines the term, it shows a conflict among people valuing and acting willfully. I also enjoyed the movie as fodder for analysis, even if I disliked the plot and theme.

Your method of thinking is entirely wrong here. Cost-benefit calculations have no role in creating the principles of morality. What does matter is the characteristic human mode of living by thinking and acting rationally. By identifying another entity as a human being everthing you know about being human applies to them as well. In principle the value of persons is their value as allies in thinking and acting rationally.

If it isn't a biological psychiatric problem then the answer is: Free will. They chose to be evil.

(1) If your answer is something besides "too expensive" or "just haven't gotten to it yet," why haven't you listened to it? $280.00 is not just too expensive, it is not plausibly priced correctly. And 22 CDs, 25 hours of listening time not counting going back over interesting passages or pausing for notetaking. That is completely ridiculously inefficient compared to how I could study a book. I am also boycotting Peikoff's hair in this course. I mean, good god man! Just imagining him flipping his hair around each time he paused for a drink of water would drive me to distraction. (2) Do you know anything about the course at all, or has it been recommended to you? Da.

If I know nothing about the keyword I just searched for, a summary site like this guy makes definitely has value greater than zero. He is not just a domain squatter.

(3) If you haven't listened to any of them, why not? I'm a cheap bastard, I am a visual person, reading is faster than listening, reading is better suited for close study. It frustrates me that Peikoff hasn't released transcript versions of some of his course that are now 20+ years old. (4) If you've listened to one or more, did you just listen, or did you study it? Meaning did you take detailed notes, do the homework, relisten to segments you found confusing, etc. Slowly working through Art of Thinking now. It is a royal pain in the ass to study an audio file. (5) How important do you think these courses are to fully understanding Objectivism? Critical to get to "fully". I think I got 90% of the way there without them, but my self-evaluation is subjective.

"There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary." Brendan Behan Irish author & dramatist (1923 - 1964) For Ayn Rand all publicity is good publicity.

By the Notes, do you mean the Journals of Ayn Rand ?

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Pragmatism, skepticism, religious faith, "words are social conventions" relativism, the "problem of universals", all fall apart only after Rand's reconstruction of epistemology. Anyone who fails to wrestle with this work will only ever grasp a series a doctrines but not the method of thinking. I would recommend everyone put ITOE early on their reading list because it makes the other works more meaningful.

I have no idea what this is about, but did find the SCI-FI page for Charlie Jade. "New Time! At 3/2 AM C" That schedule is a real vote of confidence.

Hrmmm... A black starfish eating his nose.

In economics, money supply, or money stock, is the total amount of money available in an economy at a particular point in time. "In an economy" is interpreted as "within a country." But because the U.S. dollar and government securities are also held abroad in vast amounts, and traded around without returning to the U.S., is not any purely domestic measure of money supply too low? -edit: took my first sentence from Wiki

Watchmen is about a "noble" end justifying any means, even gigantic lies and mass murder. This is wrong and author Moore knows it so the theme is itself a metacommentary on the immorality of superheroes. And here is a Rorshach soliloquy from the comic: Whatever the original idea was behind the character, Rorshach as presented is not even close to being Objectivist.

Hazmatac accidentily hijacking his own thread via ignorance is comedy gold. I laughed.

The Comedian was shown as the extra gunman, thats why it was there. Hippies went by too fast for me to figure out, I must have been fumbling with my popcorn. Overall this was a faithful adaptation of the source. Criticisms of this movie are so far criticisms of the original work.

I suppose the Metablog is not updating for the same reason. (Unless nothing happened this week.)

Are not scalars conceptually prior to vectors? Vectors are after all comprised of pair-wise (or higher dimensioned) scalars.

If a photon is a quantum particle, and it is, then a graded index optical fiber is a quantum waveguide. For that matter, a radio wave is a photon and all EM waveguides are quantum waveguides. But I suspect you want to point out something about manipulating ψ the 'quantum wavefunction' itself. The interpretation of the quantum wavefunction as a probability amplitude does not lend itself to direct physical manipulation.

I am replying to lodge my complaint against the thread title. UFO's have nothing to do with philosophy, so of course there is no Objectivist stance. Just be rational, with all that implies, in all that you do. Identifiying new or unfamiliar phenomena calls for more attention to the process of reasoning.