necrovore

In The Prince, Machiavelli speaks of how a ruler who needs to do something unpopular can simply get one of his subordinates to do it for him, and then, if worst comes to worst, he can not only deny responsibility, but make a public spectacle of punishing the subordinate.
A government can not only use that to wield "unpopular" powers, but also powers that it is not supposed to have in the first place. In the United States, censorship is one of these powers -- and the subordinate in this case is the "privately owned" corporations, who "volunteer" to be subordinates because they have to, because the government wields various carrots and sticks. The government has figured out a way to get the practical effects of censorship while not doing it itself, thus having plausible deniability. This depends on allowing a few big corporations to have their hands in almost all speech -- and then the government "delegates" the power of censorship to them.
I think it's actually is proper to call this "censorship," because, when it comes down to it, it is the ruling regime doing it -- indirectly.
The corporations aren't really doing it of their own free will. If somebody puts a gun to your head and makes demands, then whether you agree with the demands or not doesn't really make any difference -- although the gunman might tell you that things will go better for you if it seems that you do agree. But it's a little different when the gunman is the government: people who really do agree might not mind the gun at their heads, because they figure, "the bullets in that gun are for other people, people who disagree... but I agree, I co-operate, so I don't have to worry about it."
When the corporations become unpopular, the government can make a big spectacle of "trust-busting," and the showmanship on this has actually already begun -- but you'll find in the end that, even if the government theatrically breaks these companies up, it won't make any practical difference. A few new rules will be announced, nobody will go to jail, and if you end up with two or three Facebooks or whatever, they will all toe the same line.
In a free market, companies would compete for people's business, and a company that started banning people for their political views would simply drive those people into the arms of the competition. A company in a free market wouldn't ban people for political reasons, because it's suicidal.** So why are companies doing it? Because they're confident that there is no competition for those people to go to. Why are they so confident? Because the government is guaranteeing it. We don't have a free market.
Trump has failed to grasp the nature of this problem and thus is proposing incorrect solutions.
However, once again we see some people claiming that there isn't really a problem at all, and that if people are being kicked out of the public sphere for their political views, it's just "the free market at work." That isn't true either.
(Some Republicans are doing one other thing wrong -- when they see the power being wielded, they don't want to eliminate that power, they want to take it over for their own use. That's not right, either: some powers cannot be used for good, at least, if good is defined as "promoting human survival.")
Over the decades, there have been a lot of people complaining, rightly, about smaller "public-private partnerships" than these, and how such partnerships somehow manage to wield government powers while simultaneously not being subject to any constitutional restrictions because "they aren't part of the government, they're privately owned."
Well, now we're coming to the culmination of the trend: companies and government are, for all practical purposes, just aspects of the same thing.
To save the free market we need to separate these things: the only ultimate solution to this censorship problem is a separation of state and economics, which would include the elimination of all of these powerful regulatory agencies, so that the regime has no way of compelling compliance with its censorship desires.
** This sentence isn't correct as worded. A magazine publisher, for example, is not "suicidal" if he only accepts certain kinds of articles for his magazine. A phone company, on the other hand, would be "suicidal" if it tapped in on people's calls and cancelled their service over their views.

You should read about "the arbitrary" in OPAR.
First, you write "A casual inference, relying on the claim that there are casual structures, makes it very low probability that the farmer has not produced a green bowlingball-size sallad since there has not been any rain at all and other farmers have seen their fields turn into dry deserts. There are not enough ingredients for such a phenomenon to be produced." But the evidence you provide is actually enough to justify a probability of zero, not just "very low."
Second, the claim "that you can't trust that there are reliable casual relationships in the world" is a claim that reasoning as such is impossible. As Peikoff puts it, "reason cannot be neutral in regard to such a claim." So that claim should be dismissed.
I would therefore conclude that the eleven people are lying.

I guess my argument for objective morality would go like this:
First, establish objective reality. If your audience doesn't accept that, then there is no reason to continue.
Then, I'd do the "argument from the hamster":
If you want to keep a hamster alive and thriving, you have to follow certain rules. The same thing is true if it's a human instead of a hamster, although the rules are more complex. (Humans don't thrive in cages.) The same thing is true if the human you are trying to keep alive and thriving is yourself. That argument should be sufficient to demonstrate that an objective morality exists. It doesn't say what the rules are, but that can be the next step.
p.s. I'm aware that this argument takes it for granted that the purpose of morality is to keep yourself alive and thriving. It's possible to explain why that is the proper purpose, but I'm not doing it in this post.

That doesn't make sense to me. "Arguing specifically for Objectivist morality" is like proving that 31 is prime, whereas "arguing the more general, abstract point of whether an objective morality can exist" is like proving that there is such a thing as a prime number. Not only should the latter be easier, but it is a prerequisite for the former.

I disagree with this: Objectivism is closed and nobody can add to it.
Keeping it closed protects it from people who would misrepresent it. It means that if somebody wants to know about Objectivism there is only one place for them to go: Ayn Rand, because she wrote it.
This doesn't mean reality is fake or should be ignored or anything like that: I can, and must, still add to my knowledge, and this may include adding to my own philosophical ideas, if appropriate.
After all, Objectivism says to base your ideas on reality -- not merely on Objectivism itself, and not on Ayn Rand.
If I find it necessary to add to Objectivism, the addition is not part of Objectivism; it's mine.
My take is opposite there, too: anyone can say that someone is or is not an Objectivist. But nobody can compel anybody else to agree with such a pronouncement (which might be correct or might not).
Perhaps surprisingly, I find that I don't often care whether or not somebody is an Objectivist. I do care if they are a liar, thief, murderer, etc., and it can also matter to me if they are mistaken, if the mistake affects me, regardless of whether the mistake is an honest one.
As far as using one's own judgment and judging other people, there is a proper way and an improper way. (This is also true of reason in general.) It's proper to use your judgment to protect your life and all the things that go with it (your friends, your property, etc., and this includes protecting your ideas from misrepresentation), but I don't think it's proper to use judgment as a club to beat others with, or to use it as some sort of public display.
I believe in self-defense, and I believe that criminals should have to give back what they have taken (to the extent possible), but I don't believe in "punishment" per se.
If somebody makes a mistake, reality will "punish" them enough. Reality can be very unforgiving. Aside from self-defense (if appropriate), I don't have to do anything.

To my mind, a platform is something different from, say, a magazine.
If you have a set of ideas that you would like to promote, a magazine is more appropriate: you can solicit submissions (either from the general public or only from specific people), evaluate them, and publish only the ones you like. You can also write stuff yourself and publish it in your magazine. I suppose two examples would be Marc Da Cunha running Capitalism Magazine, and Craig Biddle running The Objective Standard.
When you decide to create a platform instead, you are creating something different. It's the Internet equivalent of opening a bar or a speakeasy, where people can come and talk with other people, and all you do is provide the facility. While you might advertise an affiliation with certain ideas in the hope of attracting people who want to talk about those ideas, you can't really control the details of what they say. If you want that level of control, then you need to run a magazine instead.
Sometimes when you run a bar or a speakeasy, some people can get rowdy and disruptive, or do inappropriate things, and it's proper in those cases to ask them to leave. If people are disruptive repeatedly, they can even be asked to leave permanently.
However, I think it would be inappropriate for the owner of a bar to listen in to people's conversations and kick out well-behaved people merely because, as the owner, he doesn't like or agree with what they are taking about. The bar owner is within his rights -- it's his bar, after all -- but I wouldn't want to go to a bar like that.
(What would you think of an auditorium owner inviting a bunch of people over for a "debate" with him, and then when they start to win the argument against him, using logic and evidence, he asks them to leave? ...)
I also think it would be inappropriate for the phone company to listen in on people's calls and cancel their service if they say anything the phone company disapproves of. The company may be within their rights, but it's doesn't seem to be a good thing to do.
I think the law should (and sometimes does) recognize that, by default, the person who visits a bar or a (legal) speakeasy, or who uses a telephone, has a right to expect that he or other people would not be kicked out or disconnected because of his or their expressed views -- and on the other hand, the bar or speakeasy owner, or phone company, wouldn't be liable for what his customers say. This is why such things as "common carrier status" are supposed to exist.
It is common for laws to recognize that certain situations are commonly assumed by default. You are still free to run things in the non-default way, but you would have to inform people if you are doing so. (To do otherwise could be interpreted as fraud.)
An example of such default assumptions is weights and measures: if two people enter into a contract, and the contract specifies "kilograms," they have to agree on what a kilogram is. If the contract doesn't specify otherwise, then it can be assumed that the standard kilogram is being used.
There are other examples, though, including, for example, if someone buys food, it should be safe to assume that the food is safe to eat, or that if it's unsafe, both parties to the contract know about that characteristic and agree to it.
If you run the sort of bar that kicks people out for enunciating certain views, then you'd probably have to post a sign so that people know that, and what the objectionable views are, before they come in.
Ideally, if you choose to exercise editorial control over what people say, then you also assume liability for it, but if you don't exercise the control, you shouldn't have the liability. I think that's what Section 230 was supposed to do, but apparently it isn't working right, because there are now too many companies who are exercising editorial control while claiming that they are absolved from any liability for that control.
So what standards should you use to ban someone or delete a post? Do it only if they are making the service unusable (the way rowdy people fighting in a bar would make it unusable for the regular customers).
If you want editorial control, start a magazine.

I've been thinking about this overall topic for a while, and I am beginning to think that Leftism is indeed the greater evil. My reasoning might be different from Bernstein's, though. (I read his article but I was never able to watch the debate.)
To review what Peikoff said in OPAR: Objectivism holds that existence has primacy over consciousness, but most philosophies hold the opposite, i.e., that consciousness controls existence. For them, the question becomes one of whose consciousness controls existence, and the classical answers are: God, society, or oneself.
I've posted before that "each variant of the primacy of consciousness has its own political party." (In the USA.) So the Republicans believe that God's consciousness controls existence, the Democrats believe that society controls it, and the Libertarians believe that one's own consciousness controls it.
But the interesting question is, what happens when the facts of reality contradict the primacy of consciousness viewpoint -- when you hold one of these beliefs, and existence is "resisting" you, what do you do?
If your own consciousness controls existence then you'd seek to control existence by changing things in your own mind. As a result, you'd probably be willing to entertain just about any idea, just to see how it affects your reality. If your current ideas don't work, you just keep looking. (This has a superficial similarity to the Objectivist approach -- but it lacks the requirement that your ideas have to conform to reality. Instead it expects that reality shifts and changes according to whatever ideas you hold.)
If God's consciousness controls existence -- and existence resists you -- then too bad: you can't control God. All a religionist can do is "accept God's will," or pray and ask Him to change it.
Religionists are infamous for trying to force others to "accept God's will," and this is why they take it upon themselves to punish sinners and so forth, but they do not believe that this actually changes reality. They merely believe they are demonstrating their loyalty to God by acting on His behalf. (He could as well act on His own, but why wait?)
From an Objectivist perspective, there is a big loophole in a religionist's views: if you can demonstrate that reality is really a certain way, then they will be forced to concede that God must be allowing that, and then they must accept it.
I think this loophole is what provided Aquinas an opening. First, he could demonstrate that man has the capacity for reason. (So God must have allowed that. Why?) Second, he could demonstrate that the behavior of reality (which, for a religionist, is an aspect of the "mysterious" will of God) could actually be determined by reason. Aquinas's conclusion was that God would not have allowed man to possess reason if it were any threat to Him. So the path was open to the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.
Of course, a religionist may be persuaded to accept reality for the time being, but sometimes they will pray fervently for God to change it, and sometimes they will have so much faith that God is going to change it for them, that they start acting to cash in on the change before God makes it, e.g., "I can print unlimited money without causing inflation because I have some pull with God, and He'll change the laws of economics for me, because I'm His faithful follower -- you'll see!" And in fact the virtue of "faith" encourages such behavior. To believe in God means to believe that God is going to change things before he does. (And then He never does, and disaster ensues, and they shrug and say, well, God's will be done.)
There are also cases where a religionist might think that his knowledge has come directly from God and therefore supersedes reality. However, facts are stubborn things.
But then I come to the Leftists.
If society's consciousness controls existence, then you would seek to control a non-compliant reality by controlling society more. If reality is non-compliant, then it must be because too many people are thinking the wrong way. I think this is why leftists are obsessed with influencing and controlling society, and why their beliefs naturally lead to dictatorship. They have to control the thinking of large numbers of people, because that's how they seek to control reality. And if reality continues to disobey, they tighten the controls on society even more.

That is a non sequitur.
It's not "undermining standards of rationality" to refuse to dismiss evidence that other people want dismissed. (In fact, I'd say it's the virtue of independence at work.)
It certainly isn't "actively promoting subversion."
Saying "the election was stolen" doesn't say what to do about it. As Peikoff puts it in The Ominous Parallels:
As I've said before, I think storming the Capitol was a horribly bad thing to do (so bad, in fact, that I think it's a lie to call the perpetrators "Trump supporters," because what they did did not actually support Trump), but just because some people try to enact a very bad solution to a problem doesn't mean we should deny the existence of the problem.
Even if you don't think the election was stolen, the fact that reasonable people think it was, indicates that there is too much doubt about the accuracy of the results. There are good reasons for such doubt and it's a mistake to dismiss those reasons.
The correct thing to do is to come up with a better solution. This might mean developing ways to ensure the integrity of future elections, and putting them into practice. Some state legislatures are already doing that. (I think it's telling, though, that HR 1 systematically does the exact opposite, making it easier for the Democrats to steal future elections. If it passes, it will severely undermine confidence in those elections, and in the government as a whole. It also makes the Democrats look even more guilty of stealing the last election, because it systematizes the exact same methods they were previously accused of using to fraudulently enhance their vote counts in certain key states.)
I think censorship, including self-censorship of this kind, is evasion.
Contradictions cannot exist in reality. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect one's knowledge, including philosophy, to integrate all facts without contradiction. That's one of the main tenets of Objectivism.
I was raised as a Christian and with the edicts that you shouldn't read certain books, listen to certain music, or watch certain movies. As a teenager I realized this was in contradiction with the First Amendment: if people aren't supposed to see certain things or hear certain things, why is "freedom of speech" there? What justifies it? Christianity doesn't have a good answer for this. Christians claim that "America is a Christian nation" but many of the ideas that the Constitution rests upon do not come out of the Bible.
Leftism doesn't have a good reason for the First Amendment either. Leftism is just secularized Christianity anyway. But those who think that people's thoughts create reality, think that, in order to remove something undesirable from reality, they need only remove it from people's thoughts, by censoring it.
Censorship does not work. The underlying reality is still there. But more to the point, for Objectivists, censorship isn't necessary. If you hold that the complete integration of your knowledge is both necessary and possible, then you don't have anything to fear from the new facts you might learn.

I've actually tried that, and it's surprising how often it is that the most fundamental disagreement is in metaphysics. Too many people believe in the primacy of consciousness.

Was every allegation of fraud proven false by forensic examination of the ballots?
Were the elections in every state carried out according to their own and federal constitutional requirements?
Most cases were dismissed on standing and other jurisprudential findings , not on a full hearing of evidence or discovery.
Did TX and seventeen other states irrationally petition SCOTUS ? Sycophants the lot ?
 
 

I suppose on the "speech has consequences" front, Glenn Greenwald has written a pretty good article citing a 1982 Supreme Court case which ruled that, if you speak, you can't automatically be held legally responsible for "inciting" the actions of people who commit violence, of their own will, as a result of your speech.
The same legal reasoning would apply to Donald Trump. Even if some people were inspired to violence as a result of his speech, his speech is still protected under the First Amendment.
The same reasoning applies to Stephen King, too, who has written (decades ago now) about how a very small number of his fans have turned out to be creepy serial killers and such. Even if such people find Stephen King inspiring, that is not Stephen King's fault. I'm sure he'd rather not have them as fans. But, importantly, he is not legally liable for their illegal actions, either.
Luckily he wasn't dragged into court, the way the band Judas Priest was, when two of their fans committed suicide and it was alleged that their music "caused" the suicides. (The band won that case.)
I'm sure that Donald Trump has had some fans that he'd rather not have.

I have a hunch that this will turn out to be a false-flag operation done by Antifa people, sort of like the attempted kidnapping of that governor a while back. The press went on and on about that, remember? Until when the perpetrators were discovered to be associated with Antifa, at which point the press suddenly fell silent...
This move was probably designed to intimidate Republicans out of objecting to the electoral votes of states where fraud turned the election. The Democrats are already giving the "shame on you Republicans" speeches, as if the invasion of the Capitol was caused by Republican objections. "See what kind of behavior your objections are encouraging?" they seem to be saying.
Trump never asked for anyone to do anything like this. There is nothing to protest yet -- the process hasn't even played out yet and, without interference, could conceivably have come out Trump's way. There is no reason for Trump to have interfered with it, or to have encouraged anyone else to -- and there is every reason for the Democrats to have done so.
And yet, we hear again that "Trump's rhetoric" is to blame. But Trump isn't the one who has been saying "Burn it all down"...
Funny how calling out fraud and trying to investigate it allegedly destroys democracy and undermines the system -- but committing the fraud in the first place is apparently OK. Obviously the honorable thing for the Republicans to do is to drop all their objections and allow the Democrats to get away with it (sarcasm).

I'm curious what people think of this... I'd like to see a list of all the states this is happening in, and I'd like to know the probability that it could happen by chance.
I mean, regardless of what you may think of the source... these are actual numbers, and it should be possible to check them... right?

[In response to Jonathan's original post]
I don't think one can learn philosophy in the same way that one learns a foreign language. When you learn a foreign language, you are mostly learning new words (and grammatical constructions) for concepts that you already know, such as learning that the Japanese word テレビ is "television" and so forth. You don't learn anything new about televisions by learning the word テレビ.
That's a fundamentally different process from the one you would use to learn entirely new concepts, and it's also different from the process you would use to add "depth of understanding" to concepts you already know. These are the processes in play when you learn a philosophy.
For these, it seems like the important thing is being able to give examples of a concept, and being able to identify the concept from examples of it. It might also be important to be able to identify that some things are not examples of a concept, and why they are not.
Knowing how to define the concept will help a great deal with this. (Recall, the "definition" of a concept serves to distinguish the concept from other concepts, and is usually written as "genus" and "differentia.")
I think reduction can also be helpful, but I'm not sure it's fundamental.
For learning a new concept, consider how you would explain "television" to someone who had never seen one before.
For adding "depth of understanding," consider how your understanding of "television" would change if you learned how to build one.
p.s. On further thought, I want to recommend Ayn Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology as a good book to read through.