Oakes
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Posts posted by Oakes
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You had posted three times in this thread when I made that comment, which said that you had "two times" committed that violation. By the math, it shouldn't be too confusing for you. (BTW, I meant your first and third post)
I mentioned jrs in my first post. I don't see how I left anyone unnamed.
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Inspector,
WHICH post on page one???Post #9. I'm sorry if that wasn't obvious.
I'd just like to gently remind you that this is the second time you've complained about/attacked an unnamed person or persons in this thread.With all your emphasis on specificity, you've failed to specify when my first offense was. You didn't say a peep to me after my first two posts. If my qualifying for moderator intervention is ironic, this is irony on a whole new level.
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Just to clarify:
1) I don't mean to sound like I'm taking it out on the mods and admins; I may just have an unusually low threshold for bad ideas. I understand the difference between being mistaken and being evasive, but I find it hard to stomache this topic either way.
2) I didn't mean to imply that this topic is outside the scope of reason. What I did hopefully imply was that some topics take so few integrations to get right, only unreasonable people could go the other way. Maybe I misjudged this one? softwareNerd says this is no more obvious than abortion, which I hope is not true, since I was once mistaken on abortion as well. Never have I doubted whether parental negligence should be punishable by law.
3) Lastly, I didn't mean to imply that jrs is an advocate of child sex, although s/he may think I lumped the two topics together. Now that it's been mentioned, though, I do wonder if someone who ignores the differences in the essential nature of adults and children - arguing that children must fend for themselves just like adults if they are abandoned - would have any argument at all against treating children like adults in other areas of the law.
Again, I love this forum and respect most people in it, and I'll even concede that these arguments might have value if nobody's evading, but I don't think I'd run the policy the same way at all. The post on page one was so explicit I found it hard to concentrate.
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So, Oakes, do you think the thread should have been in the Debate sub-forum?
I haven't read much of this thread myself, but since quite a few seasoned members are participating, I assume that it is not one-sided. So, why would someone reading it focus on just one side of the argument? and what would that say of the chance that that person would be the type who would be sympathetic to reason anyway?
I don't think it should be on any forum, certainly not a debate forum since this isn't really a debate. I understand that others were challenging the view, which is fine, but even allowing people to make these kinds of arguments might suggest to casual readers that it is something rational people can disagree on.
I understand that the forum should be open to people with mistaken views - hell, I'm sure my own mistaken views still exist in the archives of this forum. But the line has to be drawn somewhere.
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The only thing that disgusts me more than jrs' posts is that they were allowed to be on this forum. A question for the admins: What exactly is the policy for advocates of disturbing views? Would you tolerate someone saying child sex should be legal? Are you willing to take the risk of having someone stumble onto this forum only to receive a backwards view of Objectivism?
Just thought I'd register my disgust. If the policy here is as lenient as I think it is, I don't see the point in posting here anymore.
-Zach Oakes
Moderator's note: This post led to a discussion on what is allowed on the forum. I have split it off into another thread (link).
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Are you saying you support the Republican party as a channel for Objectivist-oriented political change? If so, what do you think about the state of the GOP right now?
The current state of the party is terrible, but what would you expect given the ideas dominating our culture? They, like the Democrats, will only win elections to the extent that they reflect the beliefs of a large section of America. So if ARI can successfullly provide the catalyst for cultural change, the parties will change accordingly.
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Yikes! I don't even remember writing in this thread. I thoroughly disagree with myself
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This is a nice idea. I used to be enthusiastic about the touchstream keyboard, which is completely flat and allows you to mke gestures with your fingers to quickly perform actions like "copy" or "close." Their company went out of business.
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Blah I can't believe I missed this!
I can. It was at 5:30 in the morning. I didn't have any fancy TiVo to tape it while I slept, so I did it the old-fashioned way: I set my alarm
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Howard Stern might have a general contempt for the government and for rules like most libertarians, but I can't imagine what he has in common with Objectivists. I agree much more with Shrugging Atlas' pick: Michael Savage. I don't listen to him regularly, but his interview with Leonard Peikoff was excellent and showed a surprising philosophical understanding (what other prominent radio host ever mentioned the word "subjectivism"?), an understanding you'll seek and never find within the ranks of libertine libertarians.
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Demecrats do not offer a better solution, so how can Objectivists work to achieve a government which truly lets the individual be an individual?
I caution you not to mistake this as a political battle. Ultimately, it's a cultural one, which means the key task is to make clear an alternative to the subjectivism in universities and the intrinsicism in churches. Those are the main battle grounds, not ballot boxes. If we can win in those places, the difficulty of moving pro-capitalist candidates through the Republican party will be trivial.
From the About ARI page, here's their strategy for "launching this cultural renaissance":
(1) Train the "New Intellectuals" of the future by providing intensive instruction on Ayn Rand's philosophy—Objectivism.
(2) Promote Ayn Rand's philosophy in colleges and universities and introduce Ayn Rand to young people by stimulating interest in her novels among high school students.
(3) Promote Ayn Rand's ideas to the general public via mass media.
(4) Maintain a professional outreach program for business executives.
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The case itself though, brought about an interesting issue with the open source model. How does one determine if code in an open source product has not been copied over from a proprietary system or used in violation of its original license?
Yeah, this is an interesting question. How did Linux users remove UNIX code, when I assume they don't have the code for UNIX?
EDIT: BTW thanks for your post, it was informative.
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Is it the legal issue that is holding you back or the moral one?
That's a good question - I don't think it's either. The case is too complex to judge whether or not it is valid, so there is no point having moral or legal reservations (especially if you're just an end-user, who SCO wouldn't waste their time suing).
I think the overriding reason is that, before I heard of this case, I felt that the mix of open-source and proprietary seen with Linux made it the ideal OS, and perhaps the future of software. After hearing about the case, that potential became uncertain. The uncertainty sort of eliminates the appeal it originally had.
That's why I made this thread - to get opinions on the legalities and figure out if Linux's future is really uncertain.
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I've been thinking seriously about switching to Linux eventually. It's low-cost, open-source, and has really cool programs like Mac-on-Linux and Win4Lin that allow you to run other OS's on it. Open-source may be associated with lefties, but I believe capitalism will find the best mixture of open-source and proprietary (and interesting mixtures of the two).
One thing in particular is preventing me from taking the plunge: legal problems. SCO, which I believe owns the Unix operating system, is claiming that Linux contains line-for-line copies of its code. It has created its own "Intellectual Property License" that Linux users may pay for in order to run Linux without infringing on their copyrights; otherwise, SCO says, they are risking a lawsuit.
Anybody have any opinions about the legal situation?
EDIT: BTW, please limit replies to discussion of the legal situation, not the benefits/drawbacks of Linux itself. That's why I put it in this forum section.
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You may be talking about The Nature of Government, which is also available in the appendix of Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.
BTW, in the future, you may find the Bibliographic Search Engine at aynrand.org helpful. I found the above by typing in "anarchism."
EDIT: To be clear, I don't mean the search engine at the top of their site. Maybe you already know where it is
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Between this and Buddhjectivism, I want to both laugh and cry.
backpacker, there are a lot of wackos who like to latch on to Ayn Rand's ideas without understanding them. The page you give describes themselves as "an organized movement of like minded independent libertarian individuals," which should already indicate that this is the Free State Project on steroids.
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I am as against flag-burning as anyone here, but it starts a trend in motion that I think is far more dangerous than the abridging of property rights. Freedom of speech is, in my opinion, the most crucial freedom that we have. If the government takes our property, at least we can speak out in protest. If the government takes our speech, our property rights disappear by proxy.
Sure, but I think you're committing a non-sequitur; the fact that certain kinds of speech on the fringe are being suppressed does not indicate that the first amendment as we know it is doomed. Freedom of speech has been under attack long before this proposed amendment, whether it's the 1927 government takeover of the airwaves and subsequent regulation of them, or the recent campaign finance reform laws.
Again, I'm just as much against this as you, but choose your battles wisely.
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When you create this image of a beautiful woman in your head, an image you find arousing, are you consciously and specifically imagining that she is a capitialist and an egoist and so forth?
No; the goals, politics, history, and so forth are implied and here unimportant. What is important is that when imagining sex, it has the same goal as real sex: to celebrate both mind and body. When you are making love with a woman in real life, you aren't just celebrating her body. When recreating that reality in your mind, the same thing applies.
If you were to see a stripper or someone who posed nude or a porn star and they had a terrific body and you were inclinded to use the image of that person in your head, would it not be possible to strip away thoughts of that real person's values and recreate them in your head?I'm not clear on the context so I can't answer your question. If you're talking about physically interacting with someone posing in front of you, that's not fantasy - it's reality, and your mind cannot change reality by superimposing a different consciousness on her. If on the other hand you're talking about looking at porn, I think I've made it clear that this would be impossible with hard core porn but possible with non-nihilistic porn.
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The woman in your fantasy doesn't actually exist, you know that..right?
I'm not getting your reasoning here. You seem to be suggesting that it is okay to imagine something immoral because it isn't really happening. This brings us back full circle: Is it moral to imagine sex with a whore, a dog, a tree, or a child?
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Certainly fantasy is a reflection of values. You'll note I did not say anything goes as I specificially excluded debased acts.
I'm glad we're in agreement. First on the list of "debased acts" is having sex with a woman regardless of her character.
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LOL Oakes! I think our friend here could have sex with the trunk of an elephant, and if it provided the requisite "physical pleasure," then this would consist of perfectly fine sexual pleasure.
At least, he could fantasize about it. That's the slippery slope I prefer not to tumble down on.
EDIT: Fixed grammatical error.
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Nonsense. Fantasy is not reality. If, in a relationship one attempted to live according to such a dichotomy, then the point is obvious. We are not talking about a romantic relationship. We are talking about masturbation- a completely solitary activity (usually) and fantasy, something most of us don't confuse with reality.
Do your values change between the two? Why is it important to make love with a rational person in reality but penetrating a lobster is okay in your mind?
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What about just invisioning a nice body, or hell, even nice body parts? As long as one does not drop the context of fantasy, how is this immoral?
I have already explained why it is: it dichotomizes the body from the mind. If you believe that sex is nothing more than physical, your philosophy is something other than Objectivism. I suggest reading Dr. Peikoff's discussion on sex in chapter nine ("Happiness") in OPAR.
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Any fantasy employed while masturbating serves to enhance the pleasure; the fantasy is not the goal, but the tool.
Felipe is making a pretty uncontroversial point: When you masturbate, you would be immoral to fantasize about sex with mindless whores, dogs, trees, children, etc. The object of your attention should be your moral ideal - a strong, independent, rational man or woman.
I am assuming you do occasionally masturbate- do you do it for some other reason than pleasure? For world peace? For the advancement of Objectivism?I think this is a semantic misunderstanding: You seem to be using pleasure more broadly than Felipe is. Yes, masturbation should be done for pleasure, but your thoughts should not dichotomize the body from the mind; i.e., it should be pleasurable both physically and emotionally.
Libertarians
in Political Philosophy
Posted · Edited by Oakes
Alon, do you really think Objectivists admire Murray Rothbard? I'd gladly call him a punk, but I don't want to insult punks.