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Pokarrin

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Everything posted by Pokarrin

  1. I thought "good samaritan" laws were designed to prevent someone from being sued for causing harm while making a reasonable attempt to help someone in peril?
  2. C.S. Friedman for science fiction - This Alien Shore is brilliant David Gemmel for Fantasy - Druss in particular is very nearly a complete denial of all mysticism
  3. I don't think anyone can be said to own the air or the climate; the property I was talking about was both the company owner's factory and the customers' individual wealth that they use to purchase goods produced by the factory. I agree that running a factory such that a great deal of soot is thrown into the air can have a negative effect on air quality, but that's a separate issue from property rights. This basically comes down to an individual's willingness to hurt himself; he can simply choose not to buy goods from the factory that pollutes the air he breathes. In fact, this very trend has begun with the rise in popularity of "green" products in the U.S. market (I can't speak for foreign markets). The fact remains, though, that you don't have the right to spend his money for him. As regards the damage caused by factories with whom you don't choose to do business (but others do, thereby causing you harm indirectly), that's a matter for suit in a court of law, not for the legislature. Assuming you could show the harm done to you and its origin (I suppose you would have to name multiple defendants in a particular industy), there is no reason to have specifically "environmental" legislation and certainly no reason to apply arbitrary market manipulations to coerce adherence to an undefined standard like a "clean" environment.
  4. I agree completely with KurtColville, but just to add my own two cents: - Just because someone may (or even is certain to) make a bad decision regarding his own property, that does not in any way give you the right to take that decision away from him. It doesn't make it any better to assume that right simply because there are a large number of people involved.
  5. I fall more into the category of inclined than adept, but I'll take a stab at this. Could it be that the book's logic was simply badly stated? What if it were changed to the following: "A set P is a subset of Q if no element of P is an element not of Q" It's kind of a subtle difference, and I think it boils down to the purpose of the empty set. Does it later become important, in order to maintain logical consistency, for the empty set to be included in every other set (perhaps in relating Set Theory to classical mathematics)? It's been awhile since I took calculus, but I vaguely remember that every power of your variables held a place, even if the coefficient was 0 (or an empty set of that power of the variable).
  6. I just realized I didn't answer your question completely. Regarding the person allegedly in 'power', the point of Atlas Shrugged was that a formalized system of looting established for the benefit of those who do not produce anything requires the consent of the producers. When that consent is withdrawn, the looters find themselves powerless. For a real life historical example, I submit for your consideration the French Revolution; the French people decided that the nobility that controlled the product of their labor was not contributing sufficient value to justify their existence, and demonstrated their power by violently removing said nobility.
  7. If a man allows others the right to claim the product of his effort as theirs without exchanging any value in return, he is trusting them to allow him to survive by their choice, not his. While it is technically possible for a man to survive without property rights(if those who own his effort are sufficiently benevolent), he has no power to sustain his life on his own, because he has surrendered his only means of doing so. It's even worse if this practice is forcibly applied to a large group of people. If you need an example of this, pick your favorite communist country and observe the rampant poverty and starvation that are the hallmark of that economic system.
  8. Ayn Rand saved my soul. I had been searching for a philosophy my entire life, and never found anything I could actually agree with. By the time I was twenty-three, I had read the Bible, the Tao Te Ching (sp?), some of Plato's Dialogues, a few books about witchcraft, Aristotle's Metaphysics, the Qur'an, and quite a bit of Nietzche. I also read a lot of fantasy and science fiction, which, to me, was the most coherent and rational approach to philosophy I had yet encountered (SF more so than fantasy). Shortly after joining the Air Force, I discovered politics, and for several years considered myself a conservative with reservations. Socialism was, and still is, a lot scarier to me than religion. By the time I was thirty, I was somewhat frustrated with finding a philosophy, and was balanced between just becoming a christian (or at least claiming to be one), and trying to write my own comprehensive philosophy based entirely on reason and reality. I discovered Objectivism by reading in a forum about Terry Goodkind (I was looking for a list of the Wizard's Rules at the time) that he was an Objectivist. Since I felt I was too lazy to write my own philosophy, I decided to check this one out. I started with Wikipedia, and found not a single point I could disagree with, so I read her novels (in order of publication), then VoS, then OPAR, and I'm currently waiting for ITOE and The Art of Fiction to appear at my local bookstore. I'm currently re-reading the Sword of Truth series a bit more thoughtfully than I read it the first time.
  9. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,391821,00.html It's always astonishing to me to see such blatant anti-industrialism, even though I know it happens daily. I just can't conceive of a person who knows, by his own admission, what benefits a project would bring to people, and still subsumes human needs to those of 'nature'. This quote from the article really sums it up for me: Not only does he admit that this project would help mitigate the effects of the drought and boost the local economy (good for everyone), he also blatantly contradicts himself by saying they need to "arouse opposition" to prove it's not popular. If it's not popular, opposition shouldn't need to be aroused (just organized), and if it is, no opposition can be aroused, except by lying to people about possible negative effects of the dams. They would have to lie because, according to the article, the feasibility study has not yet been done, so there isn't yet sufficient evidence to make a judgment of that sort.
  10. I believe I understand what you all have been getting at. It doesn't matter if I call myself an Objectivist or not, so long as I don't represent an opinion as being based on Objectivism without some supporting reference. Any opinions of mine not directly supported by (or derived from) Ayn Rand's (or Leonard Peikoff's?) work are simply mine, and I alone take reponsibility or credit for them. I can't help but feel that I've wasted everyone's time with what seems, in retrospect, a fairly simple matter. If so, I apologize. As a side note, I have figured out, based on this discussion, why I have been unable to quit smoking; it's rather like choosing a career-do you want to be an electrical engineer, or do you want to design electrical systems? I have been thinking only that I want to not be a smoker because being a smoker is bad for me. When I think about having a cigarette right now, however, I conclude that I do, in fact, want one. Wanting (or even smoking) a single cigarette does not make me a smoker, any more than believing in capitalism makes me an Objectivist, so I have been able to justify every cigarette as just a temporary indulgence. The point is to ask myself why I want a cigarette right now. The answer, of course, is that the chemicals in my brain say so. I am not a creature controlled solely by chemical reactions, and I will no longer behave as if I am. Thank you all (especially DavidOdden; your reasoning is sound and always pointed) for helping me reason this out. P.S. I didn't start this thread to help me stop smoking, but I'm glad that's where it brought me!
  11. I should probably have included this quote from Dr. Peikoff's "Fact and Value" article to begin with, since it clearly explains my fear that if I am premature in my self-identification as an Objectivist, I may become one of those frauds he warns us against, however honestly I may have gone about it.
  12. A few of you have asked why I care whether I can call myself an Objectivist. I hesitate to say simply that I should use my own rational judgment, because that opens the door for any idiots who want to steal some of Miss Rand's thunder to say whatever they like in the name of her philosophy and claim to be Objectivists in their own rational judgment. Many people on this forum have observed precisely that behavior, and it's potentially poisonous to a philosophy to allow people to do that. One way of preventing it would be if there were some means of objectively determining (in a way demonstrable to others) that you are qualified to speak as an Objectivist, rather than, as I had already been calling myself, a student of Objectivism (Thanks, DragonMaci). As far as smoking is concerned, I mentioned it solely with regard to Objectivism as an example of irrational behavior on my part, since I do smoke too much and I know it's unhealthy. My status as an Objectivist, however, matters not at all to my decision to quit smoking or not, except inasmuch as it helps clarify my ability to think, and thus to make more intelligent decisions overall. The rest of my question had to do, finally, with whether Objectivism is to be defined as the total contents of Miss Rand's mind (i.e., all of the knowledge and integrations that made up her view of existence); or simply her published system, which of course would be much less restrictive, as far as membership is concerned. I now suddenly remember that she referred to Objectivism in that same quote as a "philosophic system", not a philosophy, thus perhaps answering my question. If you understand and agree with her system and try to behave accordingly, you're a student; if you succeed in consistently behaving rationally and are able to arrive at the same principles through your own rational thought process, you may call yourself an Objectivist, if you want to.
  13. Having read quite a bit of the available literature (OPAR, Anthem, We The Living, The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, Return of the Primitive, and The Virtue of Selfishness), I've decided that I agree with all of the basic principles of Objectivist philosophy; in fact, I can't think of any point I don't agree with. This led me to wonder if I could legitimately call myself an Objectivist. My most obvious problem is that I'm a smoker, which I know for a fact does not advance any possible purpose I might choose for my life. Can I call myself an Objectivist anyway, so long as I know my behavior is irrational? I don't think I can, since Objectivism is quite clear that knowledge that doesn't result in action is pointless. Ayn Rand herself quit smoking when she became convinced that it was unhealthy. As a result of my ponderings, I began to wonder who could call themselves Objectivist, since I'm willing to bet that no one consistently and in every instance behaves exactly as Ayn Rand would have counseled, nor does anyone always think or behave even in accordance with her written work. Then I remembered a quote of Ayn Rand's that Dr. Peikoff used on p 2 of OPAR (mine was published December 1993) in which she says that, not only does everyone need a philosophy, everyone in fact has one, whether they acknowledge it or not. She defines a philosophy in this context as "an integrated view of existence". This led me to the thought that Objectivism is literally "The Philosophy of Ayn Rand", and in the sense that she describes philosophy in general, could not possibly be anyone else's, since everyone's integrated view of existence is necessarily going to be unique to that person. Based on this, I can only conclude that no one is an Objectivist, since Ayn Rand is now dead. If I'm being too strict (or perhaps defining Objectivism incorrectly), I would like to know if anything has been written that suggests criteria I could use to determine my position on the Proximity to Rationality Spectrum, or if such a thing could even exist.
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