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dream_weaver

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Everything posted by dream_weaver

  1. Any choice of the lesser of two evils is nothing more than a choice for evil. You stated, as you believe "that supporting and defending S&P was a really dumb thing to do, and is counter-productive to the cause of liberty." I stated that "I would find supporting and defending what I consider to be dishonest money more counter-productive to the cause of liberty." I did not state that you are "supporting" "dishonest money". I did point out that equating US debt is its own currency is not a fact that would substantiate the assertion that "any serious observer see what was really going on there: S&P wanted to unelect Obama and curry favor with the other party. Simple politics."
  2. If this is the allegation, Your equating that the US debt is its own currency, comes across to me as confused as those that would pass off freedom is slavery, or one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Debt and currency are not one in the same. Is this the part of your basis of fact? That may have been your original case, and I may not have been clear as to the allegation that I thought required supporting. Personally, I would find supporting and defending what I consider to be dishonest money more counter-productive to the cause of liberty. As I stated earlier in my response to your clarification on inflation, this just helps me to place your economic assessments into their proper perspective.
  3. Why is the objective to have to refute assertions by the available facts? If it is to be a plausible explanation, the onus of demonstrating that it is possible, probable or certain belongs to the asserter to connect it to the incontrovertible facts.
  4. That helps to place these particular posts, and your other economic threads into perspective. Thanks.
  5. OP, Could you please identify what the component units of inflation are?
  6. One reference to this phenomenon would be outlined at this snopes.com report. Wikipedia also references this as well. It appears it is a difficult sell at the movie theater as well. If MacDougall's 21 gram hypothesis does not mean anything, it could underscore why it is a bit hard to explain.
  7. In a letter to Professor John Hospers she responded with "the crucial issue here is: is the ultimate cause of man's behavior within his control—or is he ultimately moved and motivated by forces outside his control?" to distinguish between determinism and equating her view of the cause of human behavior from Freud's, in part to Hospers having wrote: "As long as we accept the statement that there ARE causes for human behavior, why need one be so alarmed that Freud has discovered what some of these causes are?"
  8. GDASS, you illustrated Tanaka's points quite succinctly!
  9. I thought it might have been anthology.
  10. Have you considered that "[r]ationality," according to Ayn Rand, is "the recognition and acceptance of reason as one's only source of knowledge?"
  11. Death is the final act of life.
  12. Silicon Valley billionaire funding creation of artificial libertarian islands "There are quite a lot of people who think it's not possible," Thiel said at a Seasteading Institute Conference in 2009, according to Details. (His first donation was in 2008, for $500,000.) "That's a good thing. We don't need to really worry about those people very much, because since they don't think it's possible they won't take us very seriously. And they will not actually try to stop us until it's too late."
  13. You have many terms you are bringing up here. Altruism, happiness, selfishness, pride, sin, value, vanity, reason. In addition to reducing a proposition to perceptual data, a proposition is made up of words, each of which to be reduced as well. To start with, Objectivism does not have a principle, per se, which states that altruism leads to unhappiness. It is more of a derivative of analyzing altruism among other things. What is altruism? What would you have to know before you could form the concept of altruism? Do you envision altruism as a moral code? Do you consider altruism as the teachings of the Dalai Lama, or Jesus of Nazareth, or of the reigning Pope? What do you know about altruism, and more importantly, how do you know what you know about it?
  14. Objectivism would refer to the method as reduction. Leonard Peikoff outlines this in Objectivism, The Philosophy of Ayn Rand as: "Reduction" is the process of identifying in logical sequence the intermediate steps that relate a cognitive item to perceptual data. Since there are options in the detail of a learning process, one need not always retrace the steps one initially happened to take. What one must retrace is the essential logical structure.
  15. You would start by breaking it down much like TLD did here.
  16. More precisely, it is the proposition which should be evaluated as true or false. The proposition "Things fall down when dropped" is usually substantiated by observation. The proposition "Things raise to the ceiling\sky when dropped" is only observed in special cases. (Consider a helium filled balloon.) The proposition "A rock rises or floats to the ceiling or sky when it is released" is actually contradicted by observation and should be dismissed as false. The proposition "Gravity works through invisible undetectable creatures which pull and push particles together" could probably be dismissed as an arbitrary assertion. The proposition "God works through mysterious ways. Ways which we cannot understand" contains an invalid concept and should just be dismissed out of hand.
  17. Principles are either true or false. Principles that are derived from human behavior either accurately describe the observation(s), in which case they are true, or they do not, in which case they are false.
  18. Fair enough. Just consider it as some additional "thought fodder".
  19. That you have made your acquaintance with some happy altruists. Is it possible that you are confusing causal relationship with correlative observations?
  20. In "Selected Topics in the Philosophy of Science", Dr. Binswanager addresses this topic among many others. In your description you mention "objects" and "entities" refer to empty space as regions essentially devoid of objects or entities. Would you consider a "gravitational" or "magnetic" field qualifing as an entity, or just merely as an existent? If a gravitational field is an existent, would it not "fill" the plenum between two objects? Please take this as an inquiry of clarification, not of contention.
  21. According to Objectivism "wealth is a product of man's capacity to think", but this does not mean that those who exercise that capacity are necessarily wealthy. edited for typo.
  22. Are you suggesting that rationality is measured by the value placed on him by others?
  23. What about a society that is irrational? The irrational need the rational to be able to survive, not vice versa. Edited to add an afterthought: Speaking of the difference between irrational and rational: What would be the difference between irrational analysis and rational analysis? What would be the difference between irrational inquiry and rational inquiry?
  24. Ok, you have now acquainted us with some names of some people who seem to be happy, and have a notion of altruism. ? ? ?
  25. Distinguishing the crucial differences! This should have be stated: Introducing an altruist practitioner (although it cannot be practiced with full consistency) who happens to be happy, only acquaints you with a happy altruist.
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