dream_weaver

Do you have a specific case study in mind, or is this just a thought experiment exercise?
 
The details provided thus far are pretty scant, and do not sound like a plausible progression thus far. Many children rebel in a way that is challenging to the parents, but a philosophy is built over years and the rebellion is usually done within the framework of what he has learned up to that point in time.

Fortunately, there is no money here to be gained by engaging in stupid word games based on inherently ambiguous terminology. The students that applied themselves to understanding the subject matter probably passed the logic tests given along the way.

Is the fact that "PD likes artichokes." true or false to you Robert? The fact that PD likes them, is not dependent on whether others like them or not.
 
Edited to add:
 
When PD states: "Artichokes are delicious." - tacitly, whether explicitly stated or not, is when PD experiences the flavor of artichoke, he enjoys them to such degree that he identifies them as delicious..

In order to get anything done, you either need a plan or a habit. So, planning is “good,” and more planning “gooder,” right?   I’ve lived doing what you describe for years — the endless apparent dichotomy of being efficient and thoughtful in what you choose to do, vs. being so “efficient” and “thoughtful” that you bring yourself to a stressed-out standstill. Somehow, I’ve managed to get things done, but not without an endless stream of self-induced stress and criticism, often turning legitimate interests into terrible chores. In essence, I’ve usually accomplished the opposite of my (supposed) original purpose: improvement and enjoyment of my life.   In this past year, I decided it was time to finally address this issue “for rilz.” I’ve known the phrase, “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good” my whole life, but when I paired it with some articles by Dr. Hurd about “perfectionism,” the phrase became more relatable and realistic. He seems to really understand this mentality, and has some good thoughts. Here are a few of his articles, with some quotes to give you an idea of what he says. (The articles have more that’s worth reading than just these few quotes I chose):   Note to Perfectionists: Don’t Try to Improve!   Perfectionism vs. Happiness  
Faulty Thinking and Addiction The Dangers of Perfection   "Workaholic" Q&A write-in
  Perfectionist boss Q&A write-in   This last quote was the final crack in my “perfect illusion” which caused me to see the light. As I’ve been striving for “perfection” for at least ten years, it’s a habit that’s become part of nearly every aspect of my person. Nevertheless, for a year or so, I’ve really given it a go at the idea that perfection doesn’t exist. I consciously try to go for “good” or even “great” within a given framework or context, consciously move on, and repeat. The results have been excellent, in my general mental state, my acceptance of others’ work, my expectations of myself… Pretty much, in everything! At this point, I’m convinced, and expect five more years of this outlook to yield excellent, not perfect (! ), results.

Actually, I was considering the benefits that copyright law imparted to relationships of the author, publisher, merchants, and customers. as contrasted to a self-sufficient farming lifestyle.

Funny, I live in a house, located on some property inside a city which is part of a county in a state within a country on a planet . . . ultimately reality, of which the economic usage of "market" exists within. But I did go to the grocery store today. While I was in the market, I picked up some groceries.
 
Ilya, I find your means of trying to express yourself quite convoluted. Did you express yourself in this manner prior to Northern Illinois University?
 
Edited: Added quotes around "market'.

Focus on the good in people and shared values.
 
Some of them may be good to have as drinking buddies, or for talking sports. Others may offer a more interesting intellectual exchange.  If you're lucky you'll find a few that are exceptionally good within their chosen field (those people are worth their weight in gold almost no matter what).
 
Next, you should lead by example and promote your values (note, promoting your values does not mean showing Atlas down their throats). Ask yourself how you like to interact with people and what kind of social environment you like to be in. Show that to the people around you and guide them towards that. Show them whats important to you, what makes you tick, your passion and enthusiasm for whatever excites you.
 
Those who share something in common with you will gravitate towards you

That makes no sense to me. I found the offer ambiguous and therefore not something that ought to be legally binding, neither something that one could reply to with a firm conviction that it would be what he was looking for. When he rejected your suggestion, the rational response would have been to clarify why you think Randi was the name he was looking for. Instead, you turned aggressive implying that he was trying to cheat you out of your earned dues.
After that type of response, a typical customer would have told you to go to hell. However, in my opinion, he realized that his offer had been ambiguous, and even though your suggestion was not what he was looking for, it did give him the opportunity to conceptualize what he was really looking for, and what he did not want. Obviously not worth the $100, but what the heck, it is just money, even though he's a long-time retired guy a $100 isn't much these days. Anyone who's been in the Objectivist movement as long as he has understands the filth and accusations that some people (not you, but folks who seek mileage from this type of episode) will throw around. In my personal evaluation: the easiest thing would be to give in to the blackmail and send you your $100.

So, enjoy your $100, but I doubt it was for value given. Therefore it is simply value taken. Not illegal... you basically played him for a sucker.

Whereas the last time I re-read the book, I found myself re-reading Galt's speech.

Its a testament to Burgess' integrity that he is paying based on the ambiguity created, but Randi clearly doesnt fit in my book....

I have nothing to contest, nor even add to your post.  It was beautiful.  However, I believe we are being played and I find it painful to see efforts like yours being spent on ends like his.
---
 
This seems to be a request with a very specific sort of motivation; a motive that most of us, on this forum, know all too well.
 
This is a reference to his actual motive; the thing he means by those words:
 
And his own description of the alternative state of non-love:
  
 
He did not call this non-love evil or destructive.  He called it perfect.
 
"It's good to suffer.  Don't complain.  Bear, bow, accept- and be grateful that God has made you suffer.  For this makes you better than the people who are laughing and happy.  If you don't understand this, don't try to understand.  Everything bad comes from the mind, because the mind asks too many questions.  It is blessed to believe, not to understand."  -Ellsworth Toohey
 
If you find yourself struggling to even begin to comprehend that then take a long, hard look at this.
---
 
Ilya Startsev is not a diabolical mastermind like Immanuel Kant or Ellsworth Toohey.  He only intends to be one, once he gets the hang of it.
Once you've got a mental handle on everything above, read this:
 
And realize the full meaning of "I want to understand how you understand it".

Then look at the difference between "I want to understand how you understand it." and "I want to understand how I understand it."
 
The first statement could easily flow from Dale Carnegie's book "How to Win Friends and Influence People" in his adage of "Seek first to understand . . ."
 
The two primary questions that mark one of the entrances into the great hall of epistemology are "What do I know?" and "How do I know it?" is all about understanding how one understands.

Harrison asked: "But is such difficulty essential to property rights?"
 
By tracing the history of the replication of printed knowledge, and understanding how technological advances identifies how the act of copying becomes of lesser and lesser value until the answer to the question, wherein does the value of Atlas Shrugged lie? Surely it is not in the costs of setting up the printing press, or replicating an e-book. If Ayn Rand had not written it, it would simply not exist. The point would be mute. What does not exist, cannot be replicated. Since it does exist, what specifically is it, and to whom does it rightfully belong?
 
If I labor to farm, I do so in anticipation of the likelihood of the harvest, i.e.: to get paid, even if only in the form of food from the harvest or livestock.
If I labor for an employer, again I do so to get paid - if on a farm, perhaps in food or livestock - or in industry, some form of wages, some of which may be used to trade my wages for food.
 
The underlying principle is that man, in order to live, must produce his own food, or a product or service others are willing to trade him food for (even if by proxy of monies.)
 
If someone is to labor via research and compilation of ideas into a book, why should the application of this principle be any different?
 
Here too, the complexities of the details to address this begin to proliferate from this point forward.
 
Edited: Added, Struck out.

Another example, our knowledge of gravity provides a basis for some of our knowledge.
 
From the opening paragraphs of  Wikipedia on Eads Bridge:
The Eads Bridge is a combined road and railway bridge over the Mississippi River at St. Louis, connecting St. Louis and East St. Louis, Illinois.
 
The bridge is named for its designer and builder, James B. Eads. When completed in 1874, the Eads Bridge was the longest arch bridge in the world, with an overall length of 6,442 feet (1,964 m). The ribbed steel arch spans were considered daring, as was the use of steel as a primary structural material: it was the first such use of true steel in a major bridge project.
 
The Eads Bridge was also the first bridge to be built using cantilever support methods exclusively, and one of the first to make use of pneumatic caissons. The Eads Bridge caissons, still among the deepest ever sunk, were responsible for one of the first major outbreaks of "caisson disease" (also known as "the bends" or decompression sickness).[5] Fifteen workers died, two other workers were permanently disabled, and 77 were severely afflicted.
 
On June 14, 1874, John Robinson led a "test elephant" on a stroll across the new Eads Bridge to prove it was safe. A big crowd cheered as the elephant from a traveling circus lumbered towards Illinois. It was believed that elephants had instincts that would keep them from setting foot on unsafe structures. Two weeks later, Eads sent 14 locomotives back and forth across the bridge at one time. The opening day celebration on July 4, 1874 featured a parade that stretched fifteen miles through the streets of St. Louis.
 
Mr. Eads researched ribbed arches used historically. He had a grasp of the compressive strength of steel. He had his engineers come up with a cantilevered rigging system to close the arches.
 
His approach rested on integrating several areas of science - determining one particular way specific materials ought be used to accomplish his goal.
 
Where the material properties of different steels available? It would behoove the likes of the Carnegie's and Rockefeller's of the era to provide the various known attributes of their respective products to their perspective clients.
 
A modern Machinist Handbook provides many formulas for analyzing various beam shapes for various structural properties. Some of the formulas had to have been around already by the late 1800's.
 
The 'ought' varied according to the selection of a L beam, an H beam, an E beam, etc., in conjunction with how much mass it was envisioned to work with.
 
 
Side note: Thinking about the various points about Reardon bridge brought up in Atlas Shrugged, and some of the parallels that might be drawn from this excerpt. The steamboat owners organized against it, People doubted it could be done because it had never been done before. Yet those on the project that saw the evidence in favor of it for themselves, pressed on undaunted. Rand's test was not 14 locomotives and a circus of elephants, but the fastest locomotive she could run - with her aboard.
 
Anyway, back to the rest of the story . . .
 
Considering the value added by copying a text seems comparatively easy relative to untangling the complexity that a project like this appears to undertake. I'm getting into this a little deeper than I thought I would when I first started typing this response. Let's see where we go from here.

Or too difficult to comprehend with a comprachico mindset.

A Brief Allusion About Copyrights
 
CUI-11. Patents And Copyrights
Originally in The Objectivist Newsletter, May 1964
 
Patents and copyrights are the legal implementation of the base of all property rights: a man's right to the product of his mind.
 
Both of these articles belong to Ayn Rand. In fact, they are the same article; verbatim. The first time it was printed was in May 1964, when it was sent to her subscribers of The Objectivist Newsletter. The second time, it was under a contract negotiated with a publisher as part of her book: Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal.
 
It was in this article she identified the notion of intellectual property as the subject of patents and copyrights. Ok, so she renamed the article from “Intellectual Ammunition Department” to “Patents And Copyrights”. As the owner, she was entitled to do so.
 
Starting with the identification of the fact that every type of productive work is a combination of mental and physical effort, thought and physical action translating thought into material form, where the ratio of these two aspects vary according to what is being done. Observing someone gather dead grasses, twigs and an assortment of larger branches and piling them up to build a fire is a technique that most children can perform with little parental intervention required. Copying an inspiring novel letter-by-letter, punctuation_mark-by-punctuation_mark, is a task most literate individuals can do.
 
For nearly two centuries, (starting with Plato around 400 B.C. till 1400 A.D.) this was the way literature was replicated. Until Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable type printing press, the physical labor of copying was a significant part of the object’s value – over and above the value created by the originator of the idea.
 
The development of the mimeograph machine, by Thomas Edison, and the later Xerox machine, by IBM, reduced the time and effort required to duplicate the printed page to a fraction to that of copying by hand. With the advent of computers and the connectivity provided by the Internet, anyone that can use a computer and has access to the web can copy just about anything. No longer is the physical labor of copying a significant source of the object’s value, especially in the realm of literature.
 
So wherein does the value lie? In the fourth paragraph, Miss Rand posits the crux of her discovery and puts it forth her formulation. While a scientific or philosophic discovery which identifies a law of nature, a principle or a fact of realty not previously known is not the exclusive property of the discoverer because he did not create it.
 
“Intellectual property” is a discovery Miss Rand made during her keen exploration of existence. As such, a philosophical (or scientific) discovery which identifies a law of nature, a principle or a fact of reality not previously know, cannot be the exclusive property of the discover because she did not create it. She can copyright the book in which she presents her discovery, and she can demand that her authorship of the discovery be acknowledged, that no other man appropriate or plagiarize the credit for it-but she cannot copyright theoretical knowledge.
 
By committing her understanding of  “Intellectual Property” onto paper, she can make this theoretical knowledge available to her readers. And she does so, by utilizing the trader principle. When two people agree to the terms of an exchange, it is to the mutual benefit of both parties to do so.
 
The United States has had copyright laws on the books nearly from its inception. While in her copyrighted work she cites the Great Britain’s Copyright Act of 1911 as the most rational, the article was made available under the protection of U.S. copyright law. When an individual purchases an item that has been copyrighted, they are agreeing to the terms of the exchange.
 
The Intellectual Property is the text of the work as put forth by the author. The theoretical knowledge contained therein is made available via the copyrighted work. It is the readers’ responsibility to discover the idea which the work embodies, should they so desire. Even so, nature does not guarantee the success of any human endeavor.

Your comment was posted and replied to on his blog. Maybe you could forward in a follow-up comment the works of Randi which support your nomination?

You are not living for the sake of what you produce, but for the purpose of trading (or sharing) it with others.
 
It is hard to imagine an individual, say on an island - but not necessarily, growing enough produce to feed himself and his livestock requiring trade with others. A man who cultivates the soil - hunts or sustains livestock for meat and clothing - crafts his own abode from the environment, would be exempt from requiring trade to produce his own wealth for himself. Granted, this ignores many of the benefits that trade enables, but I would suggest it is a consideration omitted from your rationalization here.

I'm open to the idea that astronomers do not integrate electrical phenomena into their explanations, or that comets are denser and more like asteroids than ice cubes, but the hand waving here is just too much. Its too easy to hand wave refutations.

Just what voltage and total energy delivered are required to vaporize a comet? Are these numbers consistent or contradictory with anything else we know? No numbers are given.

The linked article only claimed a brightening at 2.3 million km away from Jupiter, not a destruction. That is a distance beyond the orbit of Callisto, the outermost of the galilean moons. This could be corona discharge due to a high electric field difference between the comet fragments and the planet, just as they claim cometary discharges are. There is no way in hell lightning discharges from Jupiter's atmosphere are reaching out that far. Electrical force is subject to an inverse square law, and 2.3 million km squared is pretty damn big number.

There is no discussion of which way the current is moving, but I'll assume the Sun is positive and the cometary halo is negative, and comet fragments are still negatively charged with respect to Jupiter. Charge distributions on charged solid bodies are on the surface, not distributed within the volume. There is no way electrons leaping from the surface of a comet fragment can destroy it. If the charge and current were reversed, the surface would light up but charge recombination would occur only on the surface and not penetrate to the core of a dense body. The sudden thermal gradient of a hot outside and cool inside can cause some damage (fracturing) but it isn't going to explode from the inside.

There is a limit to how much a comet can be electrically charged. Because like charges repel, there is an equilibrium point where the mass of an electron attracted to the mass of the comet is equal to the total repulsive force from the the net electric charge. Has anyone done the math on that? (and from googling a bit, the photoelectric effect of starlight will be knocking electrons off thus lowering the practical maximum charge.)

This is a pertinent issue. I quote from The Divine Right of Stagnation by Nathaniel Branden (Rand, Ayn, Nathaniel Branden. The Virtue of Selfishness. 1964: 117f, original italics):
 
Capitalism's tempo (likened to the hectic Nietzsche's tempo, for me) is greater than that of Socialism. Some people just want to be lazy and invincibly ignorant. Others want to evolve.

There'll always be anarchist-leaning folk who think of themselves as Objectivist, or largely so. And, so, there'll always be sites, sub-reddits, and forums that serve this audience.

There's not much to be gained from bashing one Objectivist-labelled "forum" on another, nor from making a list of all the bad ones.

It's my sense that people who're looking for Objectivist-related discussion will soon enough find the site/forum that fits their view. Not just on the anarchist/non axis, but on other dimensions too.

There appears to be a slight vitriol here toward Capitalism, and more directly toward Objectivism.
 
Historically, the Luddites became known for attacking what they did not understand. When the labor-saving device made their debut on the scene, naturally these machines where built to perform the tasked being performed of the day, only more efficiently than what was being performed tediously and less efficiently.
 
Did the Luddites embrace this new advance in the application of reason to the problem of production? Quite contraire. The proud new owners of these fine pieces of machinery enabling higher productivity than previously possible often found themselves the victims of vandals.
 
The mechanical weaving loom embodied the new knowledge of the time. It was attacked by those who desired things to remain the same. In this sense, the Luddites resisted change. The Luddites did not want to change. Their response was to try to destroy the physical symbol of this change, in their feeble effort to stop the change. Now while they were successful at destroying others private property, new machines were being produced and innovations implemented along the way to improve their efficiency. Unfortunately, sometimes the owners of these machines were attacked instead of, or in addition to.
 
What has any of this to do with Capitalism or Objectivism? The analogy is apt. Keep in mind, the mechanical loom was the embodiment of the new idea. The owners were savvy enough to recognize the benefit it would bring them. Before the idea could be embodied into a machine, or another mind recognize the potential it offered, it first had to be discovered. This is key.
 
Capitalism has never been given a full political test run, but still continues to operate to this day, The black-market, which runs when arbitrary decrees seek to throttle various aspects of it, arise under nearly every political regime, where a full embracement of Capitalism is verboten.
 
So what do the modern day 'Luddites' have to fear? It is simple. The moral underpinnings that will support Capitalism in the future, the same moral underpinnings that ground Objectivism as a philosophy proper to man. To paraphrase Ayn Rand speaking through John Galt, morality needs to be discovered. Well, Miss Rand has discovered the foundations for morality. The opponents of this morality may obfuscate, misrepresent, and even muddy the waters - but the waters will settle, the misrepresentations will be exposed, and the feeble evasions exposed as attempts being unclear and confusing at best. This does not wayside the fact that such a morality has been discovered. While Aristotle's Law's of Logic were relegated to relative obscurity for nearly a millennia, it is hard to fathom Miss Rand's discovery being relegated to the same fate.
 
A misapplication of "A is A" along the way is, quite simply, a misapplication of "A is A" along the way.

Once an axiom is question[ed], it no longer serves as an axiom for everyone.
 
This is not the criteria for determining what is, or is not, an axiom. Borrowing from the Ayn Rand Lexicon:
An axiom is a statement that identifies the base of knowledge and of any further statement pertaining to that knowledge, a statement necessarily contained in all others, whether any particular speaker chooses to identify it or not. An axiom is a proposition that defeats its opponents by the fact that they have to accept it and use it in the process of any attempt to deny it.
 
Aristotle employed the use of reaffirmation thru denial to establish the fact underscored from the lexicon,
 
f one can prove that "A is A" can be rationally questioned, would it imply that it is not necessary for it to be an axiom for everyone[.]
 
"A is A" can be rationally questioned, for instance:
"What, specifically, is 'A is A' applied?"
"What is the time, specifically, that 'A is A' is valid?"
"What is the location, specifically, to which 'A is A' refers?"
"What is the cause, specifically, that makes 'A', 'A'?"
 
 
You cite: No two persons or organic entities are alike in all respects.
 
True.
Person "B" differs from person "C" in many respects. Organic entity "B" differs from Organic entity "C" in many respects.
Yet, person "B" is person "B", and person "C" is person "C"; organic entity "B" is organic entity "B" while organic entity "C" is organic entity "C".
"A is A" only tells you that person "B" is person "B' and organic entity "C" is organic entity "C".
 
To establish that "person" B and "person" C differ in many respect is to shift (or equivocate) the "A" from the particular person {"B" or "C"} to "person."  But "person," per se, is not the entity or person of either "B" or "C", but an abstraction - that is, a concept. At this point, it the issue is bifurcated from person "B" or person "C' and organic entity "B" or organic entity "C" to "person" and "organic entity".
 
Does this elicit any essential differences to you, or am I just presenting you with something you perceive as a bunch of balderdash?

If his thought experiment was ever a reality, every aspect of humanity would be so far advanced that it's impossible to imagine much of anything with accuracy. But, if this hypothetical implausibly came to pass today, I imagine you would want it briefly, like you do a beautiful woman who has yet to reveal her tiny intellect.

LOL, given how far afield some folks seem willing to go to have something to fight over, you may have a point.
 
However, as someone so old as to have actually had a face to face conversation with Ms. Rand, I can assure you she was one of the most sincere people I have ever met. So much so, it frustrated her no end that her attempts at marketing, (both herself and her work), were actually hampered by her devotion to truth. It seemed to her the general public was obtuse, because the LAST thing she wanted to respond to her effort was gullibility.