IDC

That's a good point. We must keep in mind that we don't actually know.

Yes, exactly. Also the moral responsibility for the innocents deaths would not be ours, we are just defending ourselves. The moral responsbility lies with their own government who made themselves a threat to free countries. Logically, we should not feel guilty (even though the whole thing would still be a giant shame).

I think the message is that one can tell the difference between reality and dreams. Another message is what hell existence would be if it truly were subjective - it would drive you crazy. So though it seems like a subjectivist movie I think it is really anti-subjectivist.

As this is an Objectivist board, I think instead of trying to guess sensible categories in advance of experience, we should just start out with a flat list of threads (ala Usenet). Then slowly observe over time what categories of posts people really are posting, and define the categories objectively on that basis.

Check out this lecture by Dr. Leonard Peikoff where he deals explicity with the question of enemy civilian casuallties. http://forum.wgbh.org/wgbh/forum.php?lecture_id=1150

Just read the book "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" to see what France used to be like when they had the same renaissance mentality as the U.S. Also England stood alone against Hitler for a long time, and see capmag.com for the story of how they fought slavery. Don't underestimate the Euros, they will make a comeback sooner or later...

The proper response is to go over there and sort them out.

I don't think they are the same house. If the kid says "I built this" of the first house it is true, but if he says it of the second it is false. If they really were the same there couldn't be a different answer of who built them.

Perhaps they could call it "Windows XP: Sanction of the Victim version" The sad thing is, Europe used to be great. I'm sure if the European governments just got out of the way of the Europeans, they could be again. But then again, the governments are probably just a product of being too close to the origin of Kantianism.

Try indymedia.org. All sorts of lefties there - animal rights, anti-globalization, communists etc...

Yes, they intended the outside world to collapse. Don't forget that it was an out of control socialist government at that time. No, because being invited to Galt's Gulch was not based on whether you were a good person or not. So him not being invited doesn't say anything about how good he is. It was just based on whether your absense would hasten the demise of the system or not. So the fact that Eddie was not invited and Dagny was doesn't say anything about Eddie's morality.

Galt's gulch wasn't a place for *all* the good people. It was only a place for the elite people so the world would collapse. Eddie represents all the basically good and decent people in the world who are not creative geniuses. What would happen to them if all the geniuses left? Maybe they would be ok, maybe they wouldn't. And note that is the situation Eddie is in: maybe someone will come along, maybe they won't. By constrast the looters and moochers are shown as having no chance.

Dagny just gave him what he wanted. He didn't want to choose, and yet choosing is the essence of thinking: choices are what drives a thought process forward, on and on. So if he didn't want to choose, he didn't want to think, he didn't want to be consciousness (in a human sense). He didn't want to be a human. OK, we can arrange that...

Well I don't know about Windows, but on Mac if you hold down the Command key when clicking a link it opens in a new window beside the main one.

Yes... I just saw a news conference on TV and she was saying we have a "moral obligation" to help people in poor countries. If she was reading AR, she didn't "get" it.

Insane LOL. Links are what the Internet is all about...

Isn't it true that we could choose anything for our standard of truth, e.g. the Bible, but we choose existence because we want to be objective. Isn't it the same for ethics then? If we take as a given that only alternatives can be values - only things that you have a choice about attaining - then only living entities can be objective. Because it is only to living entities that existence itself is an alternative. Sure, we could pick anything as our standard of value, but the fact that we're living enables us to use existence. Edit: and it's not just that we "want to be objective" it is that we are starting our reasoning from the most fundamental given - with nothing else below it, nothing it's validity rests on.

I agree that a guarantee from GC that posts will not be edited would be ideal, but he has made his decision and we must respect that. The ability of moderators to edit will not be taken away. Therefore you either take your chances or just send a link...

It is a link, but not an improper link. Since it is a real and genuine post, it is the most proper of links. I just think the only way to ensure no one edits you work or puts words in to your mouth is to keep the data on your own computer. I'm not trying to subvert anything here, just suggesting a way the Speichers can get the security they want and still be able to participate.

Betsy/Stephen, One way to ensure your posts can't be edited, even by GC, is to make them a page on speicher.com and then just post a link in the forum. The moderators can only edit the link, which will break it. In effect you are limiting their powers to deleting.

On another forum I frequent, they have a "Deleted Posts" thread. It is just a thread like any other. Posts are never deleted or edited, they are just moved to this thread. That way the process of moderation in completely transparent. Anyone can view that thread just like any other.

Imagine for a second that you had never grasped the distinction between the animate and the inanimate. What would the world look like? Notably, looking at the actions of the animate and not knowing they could die, their actions would not appear to be chosen according to any overall standard. You could form the concept "goal-directed" based on their achieving their subtasks, but the idea of evaluating everything according to an ultimate standard would not be there. It is only once you have separated the animate out and realized that they can die, that you can start to see the idea of acting to a standard. So the concept of "value" is dependent on the earlier concept of "life" epistemologically. Values simply *are* the things that promote your life. If, having formed the concept, you forget it's epistemological roots and start using something else as the standard of value, then "value" becomes a stolen/non-objective concept. As a creature with free will you still must choose to value your life, but if you choose anything else it is not the real concept value. Regarding the procreation question, even if some animals do value copulation over their own lives, it remains that epistemologically it is the inanimate and their non goal directed actions that we must separate out, which means "life" is the dependency. If you hadn't made that separation, it would be a world of indestructable robots...

One reason to support private charity in general might be that you are creating an environment where it is hard for politicians to argue for more entitlement programs. Edit: there are lots of specific reasons to support specific charities of course, I am just saying in general.

I think in saying the universe has mass, The Durande may be relying on the law of physics which says to find the mass of a collection you add the masses of all the things in the collection. But that rule is not an an a priori given, it itself is derived from observation, and the observations it came from were not the whole universe.

1) Concepts can be objective too, it all depends on how you form them. 2) A contradiction is a sign that you've made a mistake somewhere in your reasoning. Avoiding contradictions saves you time thinking down paths that are obviously false. Cheers Ian