dream_weaver

@Boydstun, I wasn't thinking on the margins, when the thrust has been more of a general attack on perfection, as a more general concept. With refrigeration, you have a grasp of what can't be achieved. In circularity and straightness, acceptable levels of perfection can be stipulated and maintained/produced. Even with such a specification, it is known (abstracted) what the level of deviation is a referenced of.

What is this notion of "perfect" to which you are referring, if it does't exist? If it doesn't exist, then those who use it are uttering nonsense brush it aside. If it does exist, one's inability to grasp it leaves them where, exactly? A standard of perfection that cannot be achieved is duplicitous.

Thanks for quoting Rand. I was hoping for a definition that was more substantial. Presumably the faculty that is making communication, such as it has been so far, between you and others on this graciously offered website that you found reasonable enough by your own 'faculty of reason' [your own mind] to apply for posting privileges on.

*** Thread split: Russian invasion of Ukraine/Belief of Mainstream Media Narrative ***

I had to look up asymptote. If you can conceive of a circle with as large a radius as you can (nearing infinity would be best) and then conceive of a straight line drawn another plank length farther away, that would be a concrete that would serve as a basis for me. Limit has many more contexts to it, thus delimiting a particular limit you had in mind would lay some groundwork for doing something similar. As an example, on engineering drawings, limits of size are specified. If the material was to be 1mm thick, ±0.05mm, the size limit could be between 0.95mm and 1.05mm and still be acceptable.

Why, @The Laws of Biology, do I get the impression you tend to view man as a helpless plaything of natural forces beyond his control? You posit some stark contrasting views, then leave them hanging as if they are unresolvable. You're well read, but you seem to be adrift on your sea of information. Man is a moral agent. His mind need ascertain what is right and wrong, and not by a consensus based on the fact that not everyone uses language like the nominalist or the subjectivist. You are oscillating,at times, between a benevolent and a malevolent universe premise.

I can provide some earlier thought Ayn held on the nature of psychology from her first journal. All instincts are reason, essentially, or reason is instincts made conscious. The "unreasonable" instincts are diseased ones. This—for the study of psychology. For the base of the reconciliation of reason and emotions. As to psychology—learn whether the base of all psychology is really logic, and psychology as a science is really pathology, the science of how these psychological processes depart from reason. This departure is the disease. What caused it? Isn't it faulty thinking, thinking not based on logic, [but on] faith, religion? All consciousness is reason. All reason is logic. Everything that comes between consciousness and logic is a disease. Religion—the greatest disease of mankind. [bracketed] were added in a later edit by someone other than Rand. She had also revamped her notion of religion from "the greatest disease of mankind" to "a primitive form of philosophy" along her way. As to Rand's position on the subconscious being carte blanch dismissed as mysticism, that does not gel with the fact of her recognition of the phenomenon, and such a hasty conclusion on your behalf might not be warranted on the matter at this time. Given her track record, and the track record of those who interpret her, I lean toward trying to understand and integrate based on what is available from her and by her. She went on to hold instinct as an automatic form of knowledge, but another passage that has caught my attention more than once over the years wraps up this May 16, 1934 entree: Some day I'll find out whether I'm an unusual specimen of humanity in that my instincts and reason are so inseparably one, with the reason ruling the instincts. Am I unusual or merely normal and healthy? Am I trying to impose my own peculiarities as a philosophical system? Am I unusually intelligent or merely unusually honest? I think this last. Unless—honesty is also a form of superior intelligence. Things that could make one go "hmm?"

If one holds that Objectivism is a philosophy for living on earth, the question of 'saving the world' or 'saving others' should only come up in the context of what value the 'world' or 'others' have to you as an individual. Living in a rational society provides benefits that could not be acquired living on an uncharted island or a struggle to be self-sufficient off the grid. Personally, I like growing a small vegetable garden, even though a portion of it often gets pilfered by the local wildlife. It reminds me of how convenient it is to have grocery stores that rely on professionals that grow much of the world's food much more efficiently than I can on a modest suburban lot. For what it's worth, @The Laws of Biology, The Psychology of Psychologizing is available at the ARI Campus. It reminded me of how Hank Rearden offered Lillian (among others) the benefit of the doubt at so many steps along the way. It ties in with part of Galt's Speech as well: "While you were dragging to your sacrificial altars the men of justice, of independence, of reason, of wealth, of self-esteem—I beat you to it, I reached them first. I told them the nature of the game you were playing and the nature of that moral code of yours, which they had been too innocently generous to grasp. I showed them the way to live by another morality—mine. It is mine that they chose to follow. Man, by the grace of nature, is a moral being. And with another H/T to Miss Rand, she saw it too when she expressed in her essay Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World: There is a tragic, twisted sort of compliment to mankind involved in this issue: in spite of all their irrationalities, inconsistencies, hypocrisies and evasions, the majority of men will not act, in major issues, without a sense of being morally right and will not oppose the morality they have accepted. They will break it, they will cheat on it, but they will not oppose it; and when they break it, they take the blame on themselves. The power of morality is the greatest of all intellectual powers—and mankind’s tragedy lies in the fact that the vicious moral code men have accepted destroys them by means of the best within them.

You can find various discussions done here on Hickman. https://forum.objectivismonline.com/index.php?/search/&q=hickman&quick=1 On a separate search I did using a no longer readily available Searchable CD delimits Hickman to her: Journals - Part 1: Early Projects 1 - The Hollywood Years It looks as if she uses "brilliant" as a quality of a character she was creating based on aspects of Hickman, and not applying it to Hickman himself.

Two clips from an interview with David Kelly by Mark Scott from March 6, 1992. More David Kelley and Objectivism (03-06-92) The second clip may be of more relevance to this conversation with an endorsement by Mark Scott for David Kelley's book "Truth and Toleration."

As of this day, these were the top five entries on a Google search of "open objectivism", "closed objectivism". "open objectivism", "closed objectivism" The Case for Open Objectivism Open Objectivism - Page 4 - Galt's Gulch Open vs Closed Objectivism Part 1 by Aaron Day and David Kelley Introduction to Active Objectivism The Ad Hom Instinct Mark Scott had David Kelly on his radio show shortly after the schism became manifest. Invitations extended to Leonard Peikoff, Ayn Rand and Peter Schwartz to appear on his radio show in the Detroit area were declined. Mark, a staunch Ayn Rand aficionado and independent thinker, was not overtly pleased. Many of his broadcasts are available on The Mark Scott Project. I cannot attest if the interview is available, as I've not personally sifted through all the materials. I do find the Open vs Closed Objectivism, followed by Introduction to Active Objectivism a play on her identification of an open mind versus a closed mind versus contrasted with an active mind. Still, if one takes what Miss Rand held to be the philosophy of Objectivism, it provides a platform for actively processing the material provided by one's senses and deriving objective conclusions from therein. Fact and Value is currently still freely available. Peter Schwartz has an edited version available in The Voice of Reason. Here are some thoughts from another individual that I've encountered recently, though on a different but perhaps related matter: Learn to identify good intent. Learn to identify honest errors. You have far fewer adversaries and enemies than you imagine. Most people ... including most of the people who disagree with you ... are on the same journey you are. Save your weapons and your vitriol for real enemies. There aren't many, but they are out there. And you'll be a much better fighter if you're not wasting your ammunition (and your moral integrity) engaging in friendly fire.

Rand's contention with the libertarians at the time dealt with the superficial use of terms, i.e., freedom applied as a floating abstraction to justify a whim. If memory serves, it was this in conjunction with selective quoting of her writings in an attempt to ride on the coattails of the credibility she had established for herself that drew the bulk of her ire.

The lexicon offers the following under politics: For government, the citation from Galt's Speech would lend itself well to mine within.

I saw a reference to the material as "Rearden Plastic" elsewhere.

How about individual rights instead of safety, @Easy Truth? The purpose of government being to identify, protect and uphold individual rights.

A people who are consciously and deliberately deciding they do not want to be governed by the people around them? Sounds organized even if not formalized on the face of it. And should a roving gang of thugs rise in their midst, what then?

Anarchy is no political system. It would be harder to make a case that a politic would be formed by three on an island.

The smallest unit would need be minimum three. Two to interact and one to intervene [govern]. Consider two individuals on an island (where a quantity of one would need morality the most.) With two, "might makes right" has nothing to intervene. With three, a potential for a mightiest to be a purveyor of justice exists. (which is an argument for 'might makes right' on the face of it."

Is it possible that Comte merely articulated what was prevalent in his observations, isolating the characteristics of doing for others, be it God or society, and integrating it into a new concept?

It is not so much a lever by which to move culture, economics, war and peace, and everything. Rands observation was that reason and morality were the [tools] that shape history. Philosophy is not a lever to "foist" on others into line. Philosophy is absorbed from the prevailing philosophical winds, so to speak. Most do not explicitly identify their own philosophy. Even Objectivism is not a "lever" to move the world. It holds that morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live. When this becomes the status quo, the political climate to do so will be back in the hands of a pro-American philosophy. In this sense, Objectivism is about freeing you to identify your own values and practice the virtues geared toward achieving them.

Tangential thread: [W]hat is the objective basis of politics?

Some selected elements form Galt's Speech. [M]an's reason is his moral faculty. A rational process is a moral process. Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality[.] The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. Interestingly enough cult is utilized in Galt's Speech as well. The more I've examined the speech the more it appears to be an advocation of morality in distinction to what drove her to ask "why" of existence and let nothing stand in the way of what is surely perplexing to many who have yet to put their proverbial finger on it, the "inverted morality" that has gelled over the millennia while advances in other areas of thought provided the magnificence that has risen. The term cult is better applied to where efforts to understand are not being applied, than to delineating what are the essentials that warrant applying the effort(s) required for understanding.

That, I shall leave to the court of final appeal.

Tolerance, or precision of 0.01%, or in terms of the 800 lb gorilla (ha!) to 1.5 oz. Is that 800 lb ±1.5 oz, or 800 lb ±0.75 oz for a total range of 1.5 oz? And while investigating the more easily relatable example of precision, a quick check of 800 lbs equates to 12,800 ounces of which 0.01% is 1.28 ounces.

It hasn't been passed yet, and prices of many things have increased. Legislative regulation often imposes increased costs borne simply out of the extra activity to ensure compliance.