Eiuol

I do. But I'm saying the "golden rule" isn't broad enough to be an ethical principle or a basis to rights, especially because other principles are better. It can't be a basis if it seems your reason to obey it is fear of what may happen to you.

The question is, why should I care to act on those principles we're talking about? If treating others how you want to be treated is only about acting as you want others to act, I see no reason to say it is better than might makes right.

Do you mean something like "Tell the truth if you want the truth"? Because plenty of people can successfully lie and acquire the truth on some level. If you fear retaliation, just get bigger guns. It's pretty easy to do. "Mutually assured destruction" is about the only time the golden rule really works as intended, otherwise there is no reason to follow "treat others how you want to be treated". Or do you mean "Tell the truth if you want to tell the truth"? The first doesn't correspond to A is A.

Things like your example of when you used to work at a warehouse. That's something to talk about, and my response to it is the same as Iudicious. News stories don't help here, they only help to point out that something has happened. If you saw, say, 50 negative news stories about the black population blaming whites in that area with a black population of 10,000, it wouldn't say much, except that 50 people did something wrong. The strongest claim we could make is "At least 0.5% of blacks unfairly blame whites".

What experience? You didn't give any examples. The numbers that exist are in studies. I mean, are you saying experience is what you heard someone say? How did you know the blacks in question disliked black people? Was it one person? A rally of 3,000 people? Do you visit the ghetto or read sociological studies to know what blacks in the ghetto do? If you have no numbers or hard facts, what objectivity is there?

Ah, whites are special, then. Yup, white people are scared, they're a persecuted silent majority. Ethnic groups are the ones who act on it, because white people are scared. Now, if they weren't scared, they might act on it. Except, some live in fear of being lynched today. Racism is a particularly big problem for white people, as they're often living in fear. Before we know it, white people will be too scared to listen to Toby Keith and only hear Lil' Wayne anymore. Blacks and other ethnic groups are scary! Harrison, your post is just loaded with problems. It's not grounded at all. I don't see any reasoning behind it. What I wrote is the only way I make sense of what you wrote.

@Nicky, from earlier: Why did you say "among blacks" first if you seem to later mean "failures and shortcomings of either black individuals or predominantly black communities"? The part I quoted is longer, because it's not just saying "blacks" as a sweeping term, and I'd agree that there are a slew of reasons for issues in many black communities. Your first post had no qualifiers on the term black. I suppose on this forum that it is unfair to say you failed to mention this, so consider this a minor point. How do you know, who measured it, and how did we qualify which is a bigger impact? The rest is aimed at JASKN: How did you determine that it can be generalized to say "blacks" and not just, "I've seen blacks do this"? This sounds too intuitive and "truthy". Any numbers to demonstrate this point? Yes, so my point is that the generalities presented so far are non-objective. Well, post #22 is fair, but it isn't a generality anyway. It's fine as an anecdote.

Stats can't lie - they are only interpreted poorly. "My experience is more informative" is equivalent to saying "I feel right". I voted something like "somewhat significant". To put all of it on blacks... that's racist in itself. It's also been given no objectivity. The most "fact" so far are totally lacking, and Harrison literally invented fact that absurd suggestion white people are being lynched in Ferguson. All we've got so far is a fancy narrative of what the truth is - not truth at all.

I've wondered about this sometimes. "Identifying with" one's gender sounds strange to me. I don't see a "male way" of acting as relevant to me, so I don't "identify with" males. I'm male, but to me it's no different than saying I have brown eyes. To others, they "feel" so male that masculinity is relevant to their psychology. The gender dynamics in Rand's novels are alien to me, and cannot be made into philosophical principles. Maybe it really is a psychological difference that can only be evaluated for each person individually.

Yes, but why should anyone care about altruists? He is pretty callous, yes, but it's not so bad as deliberately abusing others. Nietzsche didn't say the masters were better than slaves because they preyed on the weak. I don't know of passages where he says preying on the weak is bad, nor of any passage where he says it is good. There is a passage where he says the stronger people will dominate with the right system in place and in effect the weaker people exist for the sake of the strong. He didn't say that we ought to manipulate the weak to achieve our ends, but hey, at least they're good for something. That's not the same thing as saying enslavement is worthwhile or good. If anything, N advocates too much solitude and isolation in his writing. I wouldn't say "determined by", just that some people are born with a weaker will than others. Sort of like how self-esteem is important for moral action, but lower self-esteem makes it harder to be moral. For N, there is a degree of cultural determinism, though - depending on your biology and culture, your will to power can only be so strong. That is a fair interpretation. I'd just add that he wouldn't say only economic strength. It's more like an elitism where only a select group of people have enough strength of will to be as good as Dagny. But even these elites can end up weak, like James Taggart. He had the right biology and environment, but ended up weak in comparison to Dagny. Or take daVinci - N admired him, and no doubt thought he was "overflowing" in greatness. The question we should answer is, why are only some people geniuses of creation, while others aren't? Rand puts a lot more weight on personal responsibility than N, for instance. Not really. Some Nazi leaders who knew better deliberately quoted N out of context. N's sister published two of his unfinished works, "Antichrist" and "Will To Power", without his permission after he died. She even cut out passages that didn't fit the Nazi narrative. His sister had no business doing this - he stopped talking to her because she married an anti-Semite and moved to South America. N was subject to a lot of distortion by people who had ulterior motives. So, "based on" N's beliefs is closer to "cherry picking passages that can be distorted as Nazi propaganda". No doubt, N is a moral relativist - note that relativism doesn't say all moral codes are equal, it only means more than one code is valid. I don't see how he downplayed free will.

Get some stats in here, STAT! Seriously though, until you can back it up, you'd be saying "I don't know if it's a problem or not". I don't know any hiring numbers right now, so I'm refraining from saying if racism is a problem in hiring. If you're only posing the idea, that's fine. But without stats, we can't say "black people perpetrate the most racism" either. There's too much truthiness in this thread.

He didn't accept that it's possible to generalize a moral code based on human nature, even though he did speak highly about life and value creation. I don't think he used the qualifier "absolute", but he does talk about the intrinsic treatment of morality. Subjective morality wasn't a solution, his attitude is more like rejecting the concept is the best option. N was for the "re-valuation of all values", so it is my belief that Rand's use of the term morality is fine for N's philosophy since she basically questioned morality then re-defined it. Here's the scan to the page: http://imgur.com/a/hwlhz#16 The first post links to them.

response to Eamon, part 2 It is true that some passages written by N look as though he flatly denies free will. In a passage in Daybreak, he compares saying "I lay down here, but I will to lay here" to saying "The wheel is rolling, but I will it to roll". That is, he says there is no real difference. At the time, he may have really thought that. At the least, he's saying that merely claiming you did X isn't necessarily evidence of choice or that any"one" did that. Daybreak was written before Zarathustra, so I think he changed his mind. In BGE, he denies that there is an "Ego". There is no "little man" inside anyone's head that is separate from the body. N also says no one is "Absolutely" free because the mind isn't in its own special realm or substance, or even Platonic form. To say we are free to do literally make choices in ANY manner we choose is a causa sui - we'd ask forever the first cause of choice, like asking who made God. Remember though that will to him is not just a question of volition - it's also your subconscious. Some things are still your choice, but not direct choice. N is clear that he sees us all beginning with a given degree of will to power, the power of value creation, ability to master one's virtue, etc. A good example is Edie Willers versus Dagny. Rand would say that although Willers wasn't as skilled Dagny, he can still be just as virtuous. N would say that Willers cannot be just as virtuous because there is an upper limit of his virtue due to biology and culture. Dagny has a higher limit, or no limit at all maybe. I don't totally agree with N, but it's no where near saying we have no ability to determine our outcome in life. There is a degree of control, not predetermined. As for wanting masters to trample slaves... There's no evidence I'm aware of that he thought that's what he thought was best. The "best" to him was the ubermensch who doesn't care so much about others that they want to trample anyone. He didn't describe the ubermensch that way.

Whaaaa???? Lynching? No one has been lynched in this manner. You do realize lynching involves killing? You seem to say "racism is only something minorities do, white people are victims". What in the world are you talking about?

Technically speaking N is amoral but it doesn't mean he also rejects that there is a way to judge "better" and "worse". He does reject that morality is useful to achieving greatness, but mainly what he rejects is that there is an Absolute morality. So what N does is throw out intrinsic morality and not using morality to explain his view about life. Read all of BGE 260 that I posted in the images. He explains in the second paragraph in my scan BGE 260d that good and evil is traditionally used for slave morality, i.e. altruistic and self-denying morality. As a result, his aim is to tell people that the terms "good and evil" should be thrown away, because the tradition is so destructive. Instead of morality, he admires nobility of ancient Greece, value-creation, and passion. Yes, ideally, N would create a moral code, but what he admires is not far from what Rand says is moral and admirable. Either way, he doesn't say there is no distinction between good and bad. See my scan BGE 260a. N did NOT speak of trampling others as admirable, all he did say is that the masters are better than slaves insofar that slaves aren't pro-life. BGE 260 doesn't even discuss trampling. Other passages can be seen that way, but he still doesn't talk about trampling on what he thinks are "weak" people. At worst, he just didn't care what happened to them. Now, as I said, I think he supports aristocracy, but more the sort in ancient Rome that had a nobility but didn't attempt to abuse others. No, N didn't say it is bad, but he does describe in various passages where the masters don't care to abuse anyone in the first place. I added all the images so you can decide if I understand N. See my scan named BGE 212c for the sort of people that N believes are even better than these masters. Some of it is what he sees good in "master" morality. I don't agree with it all, but he explicitly says "the master of his virtues" is part of the greatest sort of man. The rest of the book is a lot of thinking/questioning of morality. I'll get to the free will part of your post tomorrow.

Turns out the papers were published in Metaethics, Egoism, and Virtue: Studies in Ayn Rand's Normative Theory

Great find, Reidy! That one looks to be about virtue primarily, but I'll definitely ask about a copy I can read.

Then see a better doctor and seek legal advice. It doesn't sound like you've seen things through enough to say that you can't make a case in court to at least say the doctor gave insufficient warning about risks. Did the doctor tell you what would happen if you abruptly stopped the orthotics?

Reidy asks good questions though. Have you seen an MD about your injuries? I mean, if the doctor is to blame, it just takes seeing another doctor to confirm that in fact you were given dangerous advice. Then go to court with that. Am I missing something?

I did just walk away from it. It wasn't really going anywhere.

As far as I understand - and I'm new to Nietzsche at a level deeper than passing interest - I don't think he talks much about how information is acquired. In the "Perception" part above, and based on what I've read in snippets elsewhere, he thinks the senses are required for evidence of the truth. Unlike Rand, Nietzsche doesn't fix objectivity. He only says what's wrong with it, mainly, that god and society are not any better answers. Some say he's a non-cognitivist, that is, the truth exists, but it's not possible to find the right answer. I say he's more of a cognitivist, where the truth is knowable, except he didn't provide a theory of how. Will to power I'm still trying to understand, but a strong will here would be a desire for power over life for creative ends. It includes your consciousness and subconsciousness (he calls subconsciousness unconsciousness). He'd probably say those with a strong will are better able to accept the truth rather than rationalize it.

Nietzsche isn't like those philosophers at all except perhaps a slight regard for Hegel. He hated German nationalism (he was stateless - he didn't have citizenship anywhere). You couldn't lump him with them at all. He's more like the kid kicked out of class for ignoring the teacher.

Metaphysics/Epistemology Reason - False charge: N is not a supporter of reason To be specific, N doesn't support or disregard reason. Rand claims that N said reason is not valid - in Birth of Tragedy as Apollo vs. Dionysius. I haven't read that book, but he does think he went too far into subjectivism later on in his life. N apparently finds reason to be prone to rationalization. He doesn't praise reason as Rand does, to be sure, but he doesn't speak against it as a whole. Objective reality - False charge: Man's will gets at reality; N didn't believe in objective reality. N did NOT believe reality is only a will. The "will to power" is a creative sense of life that is active and forward-looking. Man doesn't create his reality, but he certainly determines for himself whether something is true. Plenty of times N speaks against extreme skepticism, or those who try to deny the truth for their own vanity or evasions. Reality is what it is, regardless of what one wishes. Nor is N platonic. We do see reality, not an "imperfect" reality. Against intrinsicism - I doubt I need to say much. N uses the term objectivity, but he's talking about classic notions of objectivity, which is "disinterested" knowledge and taking yourself out of the picture. Thus, it's no surprise he bashes Kant and Descartes. BGE 59, 108, 207 Words stand for concepts - Although N talks about concepts having a purpose for communication and understanding, he's pretty clear that words stand for concepts. Elsewhere, in "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense", N says a concept is formed when it is given a word. BGE 268 Perception - Knowledge and your thinking originates in perception. More is in "Truth and Lies" BGE 134 Certainty/Skepticism - Certainty as a feeling matters - skepticism in an absolute sense disgusts N. N doesn't talk about certainty in epistemological terms, but he hates the uncertainty where a person doesn't say Yes or even No to a question. The sense of skeptical he supports seems to be stand against faith or accepting ideas without evaluation. Free will - N denies that there is an "Ego" that controls the body and its thoughts. There is nothing "above" and "beyond" the body, the mind isn't "higher". He rejects libertarian free will, and rejects that an individual can be "absolutely" free. That is, there are some constraints that you can't just pretend aren't there - or in Rand's terms, the mind has an identity. Ethics The good - False charge: The good is the willing for power, asserting one's will on others to survive. Total misunderstanding of "will to power". It isn't power in the sense of power over people, but the sense of power over life. This is in contrast with people who are spineless and only drift in their life. The good is admirable, heroic even. It's confidence and dislike of selflessness. BGE 260 Superiority - False charge: We are born to be masters or slaves; some of us belong to an inferior class of beings, by birth. Master/slave morality is an account of morality's history! Sure, N likes the masters more than slaves, but it doesn't mean he supports a "master" in totality. In this passage, the two are being described, and N even says there is a mix of the two in more mixed cultures. Now, he does say some people are born inferior, but he doesn't mean we're all either masters or slaves. How you're raised matters to N, so he does see a genetic factor in how virtuous we can be - some will always be better (see Rand on Edie Wilers and Dagny). Rand puts less weight on biology with regard to the degree of our virtue. BGE 260 Standard of Value False charge: Commitment for "No reason". I honestly don't get this criticism. N often will talk about life as a driving goal for all that is admirable. Virtue - N doesn't believe in morality per se, but he believes in virtue. Reason isn't a virtue to N, but honesty, pride, and individuality are in some form. Productivity too, but mostly in the sense what a virtuous person does is create things. N takes after Aristotle in describing how a virtuous person acts. BGE 63, 77, 81, 107, 261 (extremely similar to what Aristotle said about vanity) BGE 212 is the better description of what a great/virtuous person does. BGE 206 describes a non-virtuous person. Politics Conflicts of interest - False charge: N said there are constant conflicts of interest. This is true, but it's false that this is at all against "there are no conflicts of interest among rational men". N just said it happened a lot, nothing deeper. Ruling others - False charge: N never said that ruling over others is what the will to power is. It is power towards reality, creation is power. He isn't nice about those lower in rank (NOT a class ranking), but he doesn't say power over others is a good goal. BGE 203, 263 Against multiculturalism - Like it or not, some cultures are better than others. The Romans and Greeks were better than N's contemporary Europe. Other Masculinity/Femininity - N distinguishes between the two in a similar way. He sees them as psychologically different, and that men are more dominant. It's deeper than that, though. I don't think he finds that women are inferior, but he does think poorly of women who try to deny their femininity. Philosophical predecessors - N is opposed to Plato, Kant, Spinoza, Pascal, Schopenhauer, British Empiricists (e.g. Hume). Comments on some differences Philosophical style - N speaks in metaphor a lot, not really philosophical precision. Then again, Rand doesn't write like mainstream philosopherrs of her day either. N also sometimes changes his mind by the end of a work (Aristotle did it too). Rand usually only wrote on a topic once she was sure and already planned out what she'd write. BGE 277 is how N would come up with new ideas while writing. Rights - I can't say N believes in rights, it's not so clear to me. He seems to only deny rights that make us equal in ways besides legal equality. BGE 203, 212 Aristocracy - N doesn't advocate any particular form of government, but he seems to think well of aristocracy, as long as it is led by great people. Maybe this is closer to thinking well of the Roman government and emperors-for-life.

Recently, I've studied a lot about Nietzsche (I'll refer to him as N - it's a pain to type it a lot). I think he is not given enough deserved attention in relation to Objectivism due to misunderstanding him, or taking Rand's infrequent/rare statements criticizing N as accurate as her criticism of Kant. I want to fix misunderstandings. I've read things Steven Hicks wrote, and watched his "Nietzsche and the Nazis" documentary, so I am aware of existing literature by at least one supporter of Rand, but Hicks doesn't get it all right. Even more, here is a short talk Rand gave on N: Rand attacked a straw-Nietzsche, misunderstanding anything N said or meant. Rather than an exhaustive analysis, I'm going to mention the similarities briefly. I'm hoping to get comments on any point to discuss it further. A lot of elaboration is possible, and I don't want to write a book here. By the way, I'm primarily considering N starting at "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" - his earlier works aren't as "final", similar to how I only consider "The Fountainhead" and onward for Rand's philosophy. I organized by general topics. Where I say false charge, I mean charges against N in the video I linked. Where I say BGE, I'm referring to "Beyond Good and Evil" numbered parts. I also uploaded images of the pages here. They're all in numerical order.

It's more what they didn't do. If someone fails to do their job, it's only a matter of finding out their incompetency. You haven't disputed that, so I'm suggesting the tear gas and rubber bullets were a large part of what the police did wrong. If these things worked, the riots would've stopped. If 53 officers can't handle it, then they should step down and leave it up to people who are better equipped and able. I guess it depends on how we use the word "defend". Defense can be something passive like walls, no force at all. Or defense can be active, where someone breaking into your house is shot. It could go further than that, where you are posted and awaiting the use of force, just as soon as you see imminent initiation of force different from immediate danger. As far as I've seen, the first two are fine for individuals. The last one is the domain of government.