JeffT

I'm the same JeffT who posted on The Forum for Ayn Rand Fans.

I wouldn't have felt compelled to post there except for the presence of the second-to-last paragraph in the essay.


You didn't just ask people not to "endorse" and "publicly proselytize" TEW. That would indeed be unjustified in most cases, if one was not convinced thoroughly of the theory's at least probable correctness, or at least of the probability of a major, true contribution of part of the theory. You asked people not to "even mention" TEW. Two of your examples of who not to mention it to were "your friends" and "your professors"--generally not what I would consider to be "publicly proselytizing" (or even publicly mentioning).


I have been aware of TEW for years from seeing Objectivists talk about it on the Internet, and I've never assumed it was true. But I have been interested in the theory because Objectivists I've highly respected in a large number of different contexts support it, and think it may be worthy of others' interest. Asking readers not to mention the theory unless they understood the physics in-depth, was, in my opinion, a pretty clear impugning of the character and honesty of these prominent Objectivist supporters. Your argument that they are dishonest requires an in-depth physics study to understand, yet contradicts the great intelligence and rationality I have observed in Objectivist communities (in non-TEW contexts) by some of its supporters, so you would be asking me to suspend my consideration of all that I already know until and unless I have such time to consider an in-depth physics argument.