Eiuol

Yeah, that's exactly what the thought experiment was about. The purpose was the same as the immortal robot. Somehow Biddle was unable to point out that morality being objective depends on conditionality of one's existence. If somebody is literally indestructible, not even in terms of "ageless", then no moral facts apply to them. The conversation would either go towards discussing the meaning of the word objective ("how can something be objective if it depends on other criteria?"), or discussing the choice to live.

He did terrible. He made bad arguments for the objectivity of morality. The most he was able to do was completely depend on Rand, unable to come up with his own answers to questions. When he had to answer questions about objective morality that Rand did not explicitly answer, he couldn't do it. It's like he wanted to lecture Alex, rather than actually debate the issue.

It was not a debate about Rand. It was a debate against Biddle. Alex did not claim to understand Rand. He was asking what Biddle believed, proposing him questions and allowing him to make himself more clear. He asked good questions. Biddle certainly claimed to understand Rand, but failed to justify his own thinking. He wasn't able to answer the questions. His answers flailed, and when he diverged from Rand, he did even worse.

If you want advanced discussion, you need to start that discussion yourself. People with ill intent are taken care of, and quickly found out, but basic questions or answers that you think are not in accordance with your particular understanding is perfectly permissible.

How do you know? Pretty sure you never read her nonfiction either. She could be worse for all you know. But making speculations without having read anything isn't going to give you an answer. You can read any of the introductions to her fiction. She will tell you herself why she writes fiction.

I think you might be right. It's the kind of response you get when you ask chatgpt what it thinks the best movie is. When you do, it answers like a politician, trying to satisfy everyone.

Do you not see the irony? "If we force ourselves to stay within a stringent orthodoxy without adapting to new knowledge, we end up unable to make any scientific insights. Rather, since Objectivism is that which is true, everything grounded in reason and observable reality must be Objectivism." Objectivity is the master framework, not Objectivism. At least, so long as you accept that realism is true. Objectivism does not have a monopoly on philosophical realism. It just has a particular theory of objectivity that you think is true.

Unfortunately, by naming, some people use that as a way to name the only ideas that they will consider. And sometimes dogmatism even comes from naming that is so broad that Objectivism becomes synonymous with truth. "Rand was wrong, but since this other idea is true, the new idea is actually the correct Objectivist view." In any case, it's weird to me that some people have such a need to incorporate Objectivism specifically into their explicit life philosophy, without ever saying something like "Nothing in objectivism adequately deals with this issue, so here's my answer that is much better".

Taking positions about a war always amounts to supporting the killing of someone. The entire thread is practically a demonstration in discourse that is not rational in any sense. I don't participate in this thread precisely because no one seems actually interested in figuring anything out. But there is at least a semblance of discourse, even if it goes nowhere.

So stop trying to simplify it. Post something and expand on it, get into the complexities.

indeed, we definitely should completely ignore that Hamas and Palestine are different things, any support of Palestine is inherently support of Hamas. Palestine is obviously the same as Hamas. After all, it's easier to be a tribalist. If you don't support Israel, then you are part of the evil tribe. Very simple, reason not required.

You didn't, that's why I said don't try to. I mean, do you even have a better explanation for why someone who demonstrates advanced experience or has dived into deeper literature than the basics, would use bad arguments that they would have encountered before?

What it reminds you of is a good metaphor. You don't need to say "in this philosophy". You say it as if I'm regurgitating something I heard. I came up with that wording. We are mentally prepared for living life when we are in focus, when we are paying attention. But more than that, since you studied all this for many years, how can you seriously not know what it could mean? I'm giving you some pretty basic interpretations, not even controversial points. I think you're lying, because you're aware of some deep cuts and read them. You certainly already know the interpretations I'm offering you. Worse, your argument about virtue is quite simplistic, so simplistic I'm sure that you heard such arguments before. You already know why it's a bad argument. You already know that you are giving the caricature, not the actual position. You are dumbing yourself down. I'm sure you can do better. I read the book. I think he's right. But don't try to trick people here to think that by dialectical, he means Hegelian dialectic, hoping that they believe you because they didn't read the book.

Several pages later he gets into it. Your concentration is interrupted, but concentration is not a synonym for focus. The type of focus we are discussing is a mental preparedness, we aren't talking about concentration. A general state of self-control, by my meaning, is what focus enables, being ready to think about things in detail, taking control over your life and managing emotions as they come and go.

Rand speaks of thinking requiring full focus, but we can't think of full focus as the kind of focus that a ninja has. There are times of rest, and times of perceiving, neither of which is thinking per se. This does not require deliberate unfocusing. But as Peikoff is saying, focus is alertness, and being focused is a state of being committed to attaining full awareness of reality. This kind of focus is a lot like what Buddhism takes to be a state of mindfulness. You might argue that this isn't exactly what Rand said word for word, but when you assemble what others said about her ideas that she endorsed, what she agreed with, what she wrote about in her fiction, you can see that I'm saying to you is completely within her framework of philosophy. Don't be a zombie. Be prepared to think. Be in a general state of self-control. "The basic act of self-regulation possible to a human consciousness is to direct that consciousness, aimed in the direction of being aware, of being optimally conscious, of seeking to understand that with which it is dealing—or to suspend conscious focus, to go out of focus, to induce an inner fog." The Vision of Ayn Rand: The Basic Principles of Objectivism. The way he says it, focus is being optimally conscious. And these are from the lectures that Rand explicitly endorsed.