Jake

I thought the movie was awesome. My wife didn't care for Bain's voice, but she's a speech pathologist, so it was probably professional knowledge conflicting with a fictional interpretation (much like anytime I see a goofy helicopter scene in a movie). Would this mean the positive themes or resolutions of the climaxes were courage, order, and joy?

Absolutely. For example, I know that (-1)(-1)=1, but you wouldn't know it from some of the incorrect solutions I've given to problems in my Calculus refresher course. In the midst of worrying about the calculus, sometimes the arithmetic gets botched. What I mean is that 1) we are all fallible and make mistakes, and 2) everything worth doing requires some amount of practice. I don't think any honest person would say they fully apply every principle at every relevant moment of their life. I was already an atheist and capitalist-leaning when I found Objectivism, so those parts were easy. I have had to work hard at some of the more practical applications of Objectivist living: diet and exercise, since I grew up without a discplined approach to these. Not Objectivism, per se, but an application of valuing one's own life and applying rationality, integrity, etc.

"Defining and sanctioning" does not mean "limiting." Rights don't limit freedoms. The right to liberty utterly sanctions freedom of action. What limits my moral and legal freedom of action is not my rights, but others' rights. Rights don't limit my action, they tell other people what I am free to do - they limit what others can do to me. You don't have the right to pee on others' property because of their right to property.

@FeatherFall & Nicky On second reading, my post was a little premature. It was not a direct response to either of your posts as much as it was an attempt to prevent the direction I thought the thread was taking (and has since taken with Kate's posts and responses to her). My point is that the principled (and only meaningful or relevant) argument against gun control is that it violates rights. Discussing what-ifs and alternatives is fine, but cannot stand as an argument for or against gun control. When gun rights advocates argue at the statistical, anecdotal, or practical level, they concede to gun control advocates that there is no principled reason to protect 2nd amendment rights, and thereby make it an unfortunately typical pragmatic contest of who has the best statistics or the most shocking real-life story. An analog would be arguing about taxation by showing that it negatively impacts the unemployment rate, economic growth, etc. It doesn't matter. Such an investigation is a great way to remind oneself that there is no theory-practice dichotomy, but the principle is that compulsory taxes violate the right to property - 'nough said.

Almost forgot... "Tabula rasa" as referred to by Rand and Peikoff means that humans are born without concepts. Objectivism doesn't deny that we are born with means of processing sensations into perceptions. A forum search and some reading should make it clear what is specifically meant by "tabula rasa" in Objectivist writings. It is applicable only at the conceptual level.

1) Why is the Big Bang at odds with Objectivism? 2) (A)GW "theory" is nothing but a collection of faulty models based on faulty premises, and has IMO, been solidly debunked. Objectivists may have a position on this debate (maybe even pro-AGW), but Objectivism does not. 3) Gödel's theorem applies to mathematical axiomatic systems. Objectivism has axioms, but its various truths are found not through succesive combinations of and derivations from axioms (the way math theories are). Objectivists principles may be better described as applications of axiomatic truths to inductively connected observations. 4) Again, Objectivism has nothing directly to say about the Uncertainty Principle. 5) (most likely all) a pseudoscience, mostly because correlation isn't causation and free will exists. 6+) I'll need to look these up, but you should get the idea. Objectivism does not have a position on anything outside of philosophy (metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics, aesthetics), unless the physical/mathematical theory contradicts an Objectivist philosophic principle, it is left to the physicists/mathematicians.

As I've had to remind a number of my classmates this week: A results-based or crime statistics approach to gun control is pragmatism at best, and is almost always a confusion of correlation with causation (if there is any significant correlation at all). While I am all for freedom to own and conceal-carry firearms, I have learned to hate the "This wouldn't have happened if victims were carrying" argument as much as the "It would have been worse if victims were carrying" assertion. Both statements are arbitrary Monday-morning quarterbacking from political motivations.

Girl: "I will sleep with you if your are STD-free." Guy who knows he has an STD: "I'm clean, let's do it." That's not illegal? Seems like a form of fraud to me.

Please learn to use the quote function. You contradict yourself here. How is it wrong for the government to take action against the car thief, but okay for a private firm to do so? He stole your car, not the government's car nor the private firm's car. The action is retaliatory for you, but not for the private firm. This seems too obvious to need explaining, but you asked: The suspected thief has a right to liberty, which you and the private firm would be infringing by locking him up. You don't have a right to imprison him, because you don't have a right to infringe another's rights.

1) If you consciously choose not to follow the philosophy you claim is true, then you are compartmentalizing and/or being pragmatic (valuing anticipated near-term results ahead of principles). If you grew up under pragmatist parents and learned to think in a pragmatist school system, it's unerstandable, if disappointing. But if you've have really decided Oism is true, then it's worse, IMO. 2) If you want to sleep with her, but you think she won't want to if you answer her question honestly, then lying in that case is a form of fraud. Unethical at least, possibly illegal, depending on the question. If you change the subject and she rolls with it, then you can assume she didn't think it was important enough.

There's a little bit of word-play or word-dropping here. A government holds a monopoly on the legitimate use of force (i.e. the legal use of retaliatory force). This doesn't mean you can't shoot someone posing an immediate threat to your life, and it doesn't mean you can't hire a body guard. It does mean you can't call Blackwater and have them track down and imprison the guy who stole your car last week. The anarchists here are as guilty as welfare statists of abusing the concept of "rights." You don't have a right to start a "defense" business which would compete with the government, because you don't have a right to arrest or imprison people. We give that authority to the government in order to protect individual rights via an objective rule of law.

+1 (I'm on reading 4)

Perhaps I should have said "no extension" rather than "zero extension." IF space emerges as a relationship between particles, and if the universe consisted of only one particle, there would be no space, and the concept of "density" would be meaningless. Volumetric density depends upon a 3-D space, which requires at least four particles (assuming the emergent-space scenario). I don't understand your complete dismissal of particles, I thought from reading old threads between you and Travis Norsen, that you prefer the De-Broglie-Bohm approach to QFT of particle guided by wave.

Why is that notion ridiculous? Extension can arise (emerge) as a relationship between particles. To insist that a particle must have extension because larger entities made of particles have extension is reductive determinism.

As I see it, in Physics, the concept of matter is what separates entities from the broader group of existents. Energy exists, but only as a property of matter (an entity or group of entities). Entities (material objects) act. Physicists should determine the physical nature of those entities. Whether particles or fields are the fundamental material object is independent of the source of the concept "matter" (which is wood or timber in Latin). I don't see how the "infinite"* spatial extension of fields is any less tenable than the zero spatial extension of particles as a candidate for the ulimate "stuff." The perceptual origin of "matter" are those objects in everyday life which have finite, non-zero, perceivable spatial extension (not particles). *"Infinite" above means extending the entirety of whatever space there is (i.e. not localizable)

Peikoff covers honesty really well in Understanding Objectivism, which I just finished reading and highly recommmend. Do you mean reduction to axioms or first princples? If so, Oism doesn't work that way. Briefly, I would say rationality arises from the need to live by principles and reason as man's means of survival. The other virtues come from rationailty and other aspects of the context of life as a human (individual and social). For example, Peikoff says that honesty can only be fully validated by referring to at least some of the other virtues (e.g. independence, pride), which are at an equal level hierarchically.

The progression of time is so ubiquitous to us that it is difficult to talk about, or even imagine exactly, the timelessness of the universe. It seems to me that The Wraith may have made a verbal slip by using "began." The first and third sentences of his post clearly show what he means. Additionally, I disagree with your reduction of the use of "begin(ning)." It is completely valid to say, "The natural numbers begin with 1.", where "begin" is not associated with the progression of time. Another way to put it would be to say the big bang was the first event in the universe. This means that if you trace all physical events to their preceding cause, you will reach an end (errrr, beginning) at the big bang. In the chain of events between the big bang and now, the big bang is first, so it is the beginning. Time arose with the big bang. See Webster's: On a side note, I wonder if I'll be around in 7 years when someone decides to necro-rebut a post I've made.

I was not trying to assert that as the case. My point was, and remains, that in light of GR, space exists as a relationship between entities. It does not have an independent existence. The predictive success and relative completeness of QFT are certainly no reason to ignore the background-independence of GR (See the efforts of Smolin, et al.) There is no absolute space, so there are no absolute locations, positions, distances, speeds, etc. Point taken. (Pun intended.) Thanks for the link. It is a great paper.

I don't think the test has strong validity because: 1) It is self-administered/self-answered (People may answer how they want to be or how they evaluate themselves, rather than ow they actually are.) 2) A number of the questions ask you to choose between false alternatives. 3) Like you said above, you can sometimes score just over the dividing line between types.

Looks like I have some reading to do.

Location, motion, and any other concept dealing with space or measurement of distances only has meaning as a relationship between two (or more) entities. In the case of your being moving in one direction, you must ask: "In one direction relative to what?" If the whole universe were just one entity, that entity couldn't be said to be moving. Your question depends on aspects of the universe such at matter/energy density, etc. Last time I heard a talk about it (>15 years ago), physicists were leaning towards space having an overall positive curvature and that it is finite, but unbounded. This means space is similar to the surface of a sphere or torus, you can move indefinitely in one direction, but it is limited in size. If you look at a simple case of two particles moving steadily away from each other, I would say that space grows as the particles separate. The distance between the particles, in this case, is space. There is no space "out there" waiting to be filled with a particle.

Can you provide the full Peikoff quote please? I remember Rand saying something about this in ItOE, but not Peikoff. A common definition of plenum is "a space or all space every part of which is full of matter." I take issue with this definition, because it assumes space can exist without matter. After reading Einstein's Relativity, I believe that space has no existence independent of matter. It is merely a relationship between entities. Reality is background-independent. Space as a background functions to make predictions in Newtonian physics, but it is not reality. Say you have four particles oriented at the vertices of a tetrahedron and nothing else - that's your universe. Some would say that the space in the middle of that tetrahedron is empty. I would say there is nothing in the middle of those particles (neither matter nor space). Space in this scenario is the collection of relationships between each particle with every other particle (i.e. the 6 edges of the tetrahedron). Nothing is infinite, and the fact that you arrived at such a conclusion should have made you rethink your process. What I think is meant when Objectivists say the universe is a plenum is simply that nothing cannot exist - there is no such thing as "empty" space. But this should not be taken as an impetus for positing something which fills a space incorrectly assumed to be there. This leads to infinite regresses where you decide that if there are two points, A and B, that there must be some point between them A', and some point between A and A', A'', etc.

The domain is registered to Domains by Proxy. I wonder why the owner doesn't want anyone to know his info. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domains_by_Proxy The opening paragraph on the page has no fewer than nine grammar/spelling errors. You'd think they could've spent someone's $10k fee on an educated and/or native english speaker to write for their site.

From the article, it looks like it was not a scanner malfunction, but the original owner failing to completely scratch-off the ticket. The person scanning the ticket also didn't notice the problem. I'd say it boils down to the local laws regarding who owns trash while it's in a bin waiting to be picked up. I think the original ticket holder lost any claims when they tossed it in the store's trash.

Aesthetics is the study of beauty. (Proper) art is applied aesthetics. N'est pas?