Boydstun

Muslims contributed to algebra but did not invent it entirely.  A contributing factor was the increasing use of a more compact notation for numbers instead of the Roman numerals, what is now called the Arabic numerals.  But the Arabic numerals were not Arabic, they first occurred in India.  This gives the clue that Arab culture flourished when they could be peaceful trading empires.  Unfortunately for those peoples who were not part of the Arab culture, such periods of peace only occur after victorious jihads that leave behind no handy additional targets for conquest.  

The same question can be asked about the common cold, appendicitis or malaria. Do you know by your own reason that these things exist, or do you merely rely on the expertise of others who say that they exist? I have personal sensory experience with the common cold and appendicitis, and not malaria. I now know that Turkey exists, though I do not know directly that Iraq exists, however, I have friends (whom I trust, perhaps unreasonably so) that can attest to the existence of Iraq.
There is a simple formula that can be followed to deny all knowledge: just deny something. If you claim “I personally had covid”, the counter-claim would be “How do you know it was covid that you had, not something else?”. Indeed, Peikoff discusses the procedure in his explication of reason and certainty – to be certain, you must not just have evidence for a proposition, you must eliminate all evidence, even conceptual evidence, for alternatives. You could say “Possibly I had covid” or “Possibly I had appendicitis”, but how can you rule out all of the alternatives. It is always possible to say “It might be something else”.
The key to not devolving into epistemological nihilism is to reject unsupported denial as a logical tool. To deny that an individual has appendicitis or the common cold, you must offer superior evidence that they have a specific alternative. My initial hypothesis regarding covid was that I had strep throat. I refuted that in two ways. First, the probative throat pustules of strep were lacking. Second, the antigen test was positive. My knowledge of what I had was not complete, for example I do not know which of 5 variants I was infested with, and certainly not which of the thousands of sub-mutations. The broader lesson is that you don’t deny knowledge just because you are not omniscient.
If you intend to discount the testimony of scientific experts, you have to have superior evidence that they are not to be trusted. In fact, scientific experts collectively provide the essential evidence against themselves. I always urge people to directly engage the peer-reviewed literature as best they can, though I can’t make heads of tails of physics publications. An article will (should) contain the seeds of its own destruction, identifying weaknesses and alternative accounts, because the reviewers demanded that those seeds be planted.
Unfortunately, most popular knowledge of science is transmitted in untrustworthy venues. I don’t know whether Science is trustworthy in other areas, but I can tell you that it is completely untrustworthy in the area of linguistics, where it occasionally publishes an ill-researched article. Blogs are plainly untrustworthy. So, a crucial skill in evaluating scientific claims is being able to evaluate the credibility of a journal, which is a very difficult task.
Belief in climate change is a major problem, because it's a very specific package deal which is partially related to something else that the senses directly validate – weather change. "Climate change" is an ill-defined assertion that cannot even be spelled out as a concrete scientific hypothesis. Covid, on the other hand, is a specific, testable, and tested scientific claim.
 

The Legal Concept of Evidence
Necovore, I don't know if the preponderance-of-the-evidence rule for civil suits is itself from the Common Law Mr. Brooks purports he would like to be maintained, but most tort law is developed by the Common Law. So he might well need to blame the Common Law for that standard of proof in a charge such as that brought by Ms. Carroll; I don't know. What was the evidence for her claims rated by the jury as having more than 50% likelihood of being true? (I'd imagine Mr. Trump's former boast that you can grab 'em by the pussy if you are a star [entered as pertinent evidence in the present case] probably added some weight against his claim of innocence in the present case.)
Mr. Brooks provided no specifics to his claim that "over several generations Marxist intellectuals have been transforming the American justice system" to their political ends. Which intellectuals of any stripe transform the American justice system. Did Posner's economic analysis of law? Did Epstein's writings on the takings clause in the Constitution? (No on Epstein's, though I wish that they do, and I've still hope they will.) Where in Mr. Brooks's article are specified the law review articles by and names of these alleged Marxist intellectuals who have transformed the American justice system? Surely he knows that such Marxist intellectuals would have to be specific individuals, not air through which his hand waves, and surely he knows that if he speaks the truth in naming such individuals, he is defended against libel by the truth of his claim (proven by preponderance of the evidence). So far as I know, we've the same old common law in this sector of it, undermine confidence in the legal system day after day by hollering "Marxist", "prejudiced", or "rigged" for your political ends as a Mr. Brooks might.
Are intellectuals who think there is "social justice" over and above "justice" (which is a myopic view of "justice") people who have influence on the American legal system? Specifics are lacking for the sweeping declarations of Mr. Brooks. Are such intellectuals all Marxist? Can't intellectuals have wrong-headed social ideas without being Marxist or brainlessly led by Marxists? Of course they can and do. It's easier to cry "Marxist"—and catchier to an audience stuck in whatever learning they or their elders got of social thought 50 years ago—than relaying Rawl's A Theory of Justice with its Principles, including the Principle of Liberty, or the writer in jurisprudence A. J. David Richards based on Rawls or relaying Nozick's counters to Rawl's theory. Or rendering the illuminating classics: Hart's The Concept of Law and Fuller's The Morality of Law. Of course Mr. Brooks likely has read much from those works at some point and has a fair guess as to what quarters hear which of them sympathetically or with hostility. His piece is the usual for broad public consumption: name-calling and lies for a political cause.

I found the article a bit disappointing, though not surprisingly so. Nice to have a new result, sure, but the potentially most interesting part was the implication that AI contributed something. It seems to me that they whiffed the explanation of how AI contributed anything to the process, something that could not be done as well by a handful of smart people and a supercomputer. For example, why, specifically, is it necessarily to use AI (and a supercomputer) determine whether the material can actually exist in reality, why can’t you just hand-code a supercomputer program to do that.
Perhaps (as suggested in the article) it was that the human scientists had a prejudice against certain possibilities, so they would be inclined to skip over a solution that actually works but goes against conventional wisdom. If that is the case, this has more significant methodological implications about the conduct of science.  I have long held that one of the most significant flaws in typical human reasoning is the common failure to seriously consider alternatives, to check your assumptions. So why would the two types of ions be expected to compete with one another and result in worse performance. What is the observational evidence for this position? Did they also make an underlying high-level theoretical discovery about the theory?
I know that Science News is all about the executive summary, not the in-depth understanding of the big picture (i.e. stepping outside of the box), but somebody has to care about the big picture.

Don't Tread on USA!
The US has said they will not attack targets inside Iran for their use of terrorist organizations to attack Iranian opponents. I hope, however, that the US has not taken destruction, sooner or later, of the entire Iranian navy off the table as among US retaliatory response actions.*

Welcome to Objectivism Online, Pidge.
Which did you read first, The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged?
In the three times you read Atlas, can you recall any of how it was a different experience for you in the different readings? 
What were the years in which you first read these two novels? 
Here is a picture of me in college in the late 1960's, which was the era I first read Rand, together with photo of Rand in the early 1950's:

@Pokyt is a new Staff Member and Moderator. This doesn't (yet?) appear in his profile. His profile specifies only Newbee and 
Unfortunately, there was no prior notice about this addition to the Staff Member and Moderator.

I was provided evidence of Pokyt's appointment when I received several e-mail notifications informing me of warnings being issued.
I added EC to the roster as well.
As I mentioned last year, of late I've limited myself to updating the forum software with Invision sends out a notification that the software has been updated.

I don't have an answer for the role not appearing on my profile, so I'll defer to @dream_weaver or @DavidV on that one. I can, however, say that both me and @EC were just made moderator within the last few hours. It was pretty fast, and I'm sorry if you thought there should be more notice given, but it is what it is. Maybe one of the admins can make an announcement if they think it's appropriate.
 

Economic Freedom – Haley!
Vote for Haley in the Primary in your State! Anti-intellectualism is one reason, which, joined with others, Rand condemned the Presidential candidate of '68 George Wallace and his movement as proto-fascist. Trump should be condemned just as Wallace and for those same reasons and more. Wallace was not the nominee of either Party. Still, he won seven Southern states and a million votes. Had he gotten the Democratic nomination, as earlier in that century he could have, he could have won the presidency. Support for our constitutional democratic form of government is actually pretty weak, I gather, among the anti-intellectual portion of the citizens. Mr. Trump stirs that weak portion for support. Plenty of shallow sloganeering all around, of course, as ever.
I gather Haley will be in this at least through Super Tuesday, with her bloc-dollars from Mr. Koch and pals, with at least that money source. Her turn to raising the issue of economic freedom, I notice, coincides with the unwavering support of that by Koch across the decades. 

Yet you still have no personal evidence to support your position, it is entirely based on believing the claims of other people. That would be fine, if those other people are shown to be credible and trustworthy. I have no reason to believe that Massey is trustworthy, and based on my reading of her FOI-related posts, I conclude that she is not trustworthy w.r.t. this particular issue (which is whether covid exists). You on the other hand, apparently have faith in her belief, and use her postion as the basis for your own argument. Your challenge to the covid-existence is ineffective, because you have not provided any evidence that supports the claim that covid does not exist, which is necessary to overcome the direct evidence of the senses, which cannot be rationally denied, that covid does exist.
You might imaginably argue that there has been a specific misidentification, for example you could claim that covid is a bacterium, not a virus, or you could argue with the specific scientific classification of covid, but you have not done that. Your argument also seems to depend on an invalid package deal, a mixed wall of scientific and political claims. All of the political issues such as lockdowns and mask mandates are red herrings w.r.t. the scientific question of the existence of covid. Every known Objectivist, as far as I have been able to discern, holds that it is not the proper role of government to show down businesses, mandate a suspension of property rights, force vaccinations and mask-wearing etc. irrespective of their scientific beliefs about the nature of the disease. Feel free to challenge improper governmental action, but don’t lump in nihilistic unscientific claims there covid doesn’t even exist.
As I mentioned before, “SARS-CoV-2 Production, Purification Methods and UV Inactivation for Proteomics and Structural Studies” provides prima facie scientific evidence, of the type that you demanded, for isolation, purification and distinct identification of the virus. Scientists have shouldered the burden of proof, now the burden rests on those who deny that proof. You claim, in broad terms that many such studies “on closer examination, have not actually done so”, but you do not provide any evidence in support of that assertion. The subsequent sentence “Numerous FOI requests worldwide for records of isolation have resulted in "no records found" (any administrative exclusions notwithstanding)” is irrelevant as I explained above (FOI requests provide evidence of government records, not scientific results).
My main point here is that science is a specialized kind of knowledge, not the same as philosophy, and making any scientific claim requires the integration of massive amounts of existing knowledge. At best, you can reasonable declare that you are personally not persuaded that covid exists, just as you could reasonable declare that you are personally not persuaded that the Earth is a sphere since you have not directly seen any evidence supporting that claim and you do not accept the claims of myriad others who claim that the Earth is a sphere.
I do not actually accept your premise that “isolation, purification and distinct identification” is a logical requirement for an existential proof of an existent, but I have acceded to the demand and provided one reference, in the hopes that you would engage the science and abandon the irrelevant political rhetoric.

Jon, if you are on a jury, that thinking is against your logical and legal responsibility. I can believe that Mr. Trump never earned an honest dollar in his life. But if I am on a jury in a case against him, that is not pertinent to any case that might be brought against him in the law. All that rightly matters for the juror is whether the evidence allowed for consideration in the proceeding and credence in the presentation thereof suffice to show the accused guilty beyond a reasonable doubt or (in civil suit) more likely to have done the proscribed deed than not have done the deed.

Trump urging election fraud in Georgia 
I know people who supported Trump in 2016, but after such public displays of his illegal attempts to change vote counts (under a subjective faith, or at least a sales-front, "I won by a landslide"), they were not supporting him again. (That is not to say they are going to vote Democratic!) They told me that even before his indictment for illegal acts attempting to invert the results of the election. Naturally, I couldn't help but wonder why such a voter did not perceive salesman Trump back in 2016 as I thought obvious (and posted): a blowhard and con man.
But there were other supporters, some parading themselves as Objectivists, who proved to be not such innocent supporters of Mr. Trump for President in 2016 and subsequently. These are the ones who relish his subjectivism and bold lies, which they repeat. Not simply falsehoods, but repeat as lies. I've not known them in person, but One of them I thought I knew a fair bit from online talk. As the Trump term in office unfolded, it turned out that there was nothing against the free market that Trump might do which One would not rationalize away. Then, it turned out (I learned from a long-time in-person friend) that One was in fact himself, of himself, the most deceitful online companion I'd happened into.
Not that those depraved Trump ones are 100% in agreement with everything Trump says in public. They have some independent judgment on when an old lie should have been retold instead of Trump giving his honest commonsense take on something involving elections. When Trump gave a sensible look as to why Republicans did not pick up more seats in the Congress than they did in the 2022 election, these cohorts in viciousness and subjectivism would have none of it; rather, if their side lost some, it should be proclaimed as due to election fraud.
Still, there is no indication yet of a bloc of voters willing to support candidates of such proclaimed autocratic ambitions as Trump's, but are candidates who are not connecting themselves personally to Trump. Because there are not fast principles or public-affairs policies distinctive to Mr. Trump (i.e., not just Republican principles and policies had without Trump), a lot of that depravity-faction will crawl back under the rocks as the personal Madoff-sunset is repeated for Mr. Trump. Should he win re-election this year, I remain confident that the judiciary upholding the continuance of our constitutional democratic republic and the substantial continued public support for that will block the maneuvers from Trump proto-fascism to fascism. (And between you and me and the fence post, I'd expect his first interest in winning presidential power this time is to try trumping any possible criminal convictions of him in judicial process.)

So far, everyone on this thread has ignored Trump's attack on our system of democratic elections and orderly transfers of power.  This is a more direct and immediate threat to our rights and our general well-being than any of the other issues mentioned.  The only alternative to our system of democratic elections and orderly transfers of power is a contest of physical force to determine who comes to power.  That is a fast track to dictatorship.
People's willingness to believe Trump's lies without evidence looks cultish to me.
 

John Stossel gives an informative update on how things are going in Argentina, which elected as its president Javier Milei, a professed capitalist who campaigned on a promise to reduce the size of the government.

One of the things I wondered about when I'd heard he was elected was how much he'd actually be able to accomplish.

The short answer is more alone than an American president could:This is quite interesting and, given Milei's apparent popularity with Trumpists, I hope they notice the huge chasm between Trump and Milei on imports (for starters).

The article is a very interesting read, but has a major drawback: Although I think both the author and Milei are well-meaning, they are under the false impression that big-L Libertarianism is a friend to capitalism, and regard Murray Rothbard favorably.

This is interesting to consider in light of a recent hour-long interview (also embedded below) titled, "Libertarianism: Big Tent or Big Mess?," between Ben Bayer of the Ayn Rand Institute and Nikos Sotirakopoulos of the Ayn Rand Center UK. Within, Sotirakopoulos delves into "[t]he connection between libertarianism and the progressive left," which was largely initiated by Rothbard.


Stossel, Milei, and other better Libertarians correctly blame the left for Argentina's current mess: They and their fans would do well to consider how and why this alliance during the foundation of their political movement might undercut and ultimately defeat the battle to achieve capitalism. This engaging interview, which I listened to about two months ago, would be a great place to start.

-- CAVLink to Original

Therefore, they fabricate epidemics and amass wealth through fraudulent means.
This was the full title of the 2007 edition. The augmented July 2020 edition is titled 
VIRUS MANIA: Corona/COVID-19, Measles, Swine Flu, Cervical Cancer, Avian Flu, SARS, BSE, Hepatitis C, AIDS, Polio. How the Medical Industry Invents Epidemics, Making Billion-Dollar Profits At Our Expense.
From the book description:
Therefore I urge you to refrain from citing this book as evidence for any claim. It only subverts its credibility.
About
There are at least dozens of articles documenting the isolation, purification and identification of SARS-CoV-2, published in the leading peer-reviewed journals. Just google isolating SARS-CoV-2 virus

I got something about 16 months ago: mostly a persistent sore throat like strep (without the blotches). My wife was also feeling crappy, then she hollers down to me that she had covid, I took the test again and the test device showed lines. I infer that I had covid, but I don’t “know, with certainty” that I did. The main question, then, was “what should I do?”. I decided to take the benevolent path and not risk transmitting it to others for the requisite time, and just waited to get over it. The alternative would be to assume that I don’t have any bio-disease, so maybe I would go shopping or partying, or something.
In other words, when you don’t know “for absolute positive certain” what the correct conclusion is, you have to carefully weigh risks and the quality of knowledge that you have. My direct knowledge was pretty minimal, everything that I know about covid is second to third hand (I don’t classify “common knowledge” as “knowledge”, and gen-pop health services announcements are also not “knowledge”, they are social-management strategies). Mask facts and distancing facts were prime examples of ideologically-engineered conclusion which had a mild relation to scientific fact. The 6’ figure was derived from standards applied to doctors, a number for reducing chances of getting whatever the patient was emitting (20’ closer to the Truly Safe distance, also completely impractical for ordinary human interaction). I decided to read a couple of serious (paywall) articles when the plague first happened, and like everything else in medicine (and science in general), I found multiple tiers of information.
Popular media and politicians rely on the lowest level of pseudo-information, the executive summary. This is strictly a series of conclusions and recommendations, and no evidence – the existence of evidence is implied. You can either accept or reject the popular statements, but to do so on a reasoned basis, you have to work hard, ultimately you have to engage the peer-reviewed scientific literature. This goes for covid, lipids, pollution, global warming, species endangerment, homelessness, and every other hot-button political issue. I just don’t have the bandwidth: I’m gonna do what makes sense for me, knowing that death is always possible and fearful death-avoidance isn’t living. Others may prefer to prolong their process of dying, in the mistaken belief that living is “not being dead yet”.
Anyhow, I assume your grandfather had something, which the professionals decided was “covid”, and it isn’t important whether covid is “one thing” or “a class of things”. In terms of declaring what they (the CDC mouthpieces) should have said or done, the one thing that I would fault them for is the huge missed opportunity to elevate the population’s understanding of science. They could have focused more on evidence and logic, rather than the resulting conclusions. The main reason why they did not was that suggestion any possibility of doubt would encourage irrational rejection of conclusions that were not absolutely, definitively and with certitude proven beyond imaginable doubt. Some aspects of this thread are ridiculous, mainly the implied conspiracy theory that nothing actually happened, it was like the staged landings on the moon. Sweeping aside the innuendos and nit-pickings at the lower margins of the science, there are only two important questions. First, was there a disease (or class of…) – can we rationally be Holocaust-deniers about the event? I say no, it happened, details of the disease are of lesser importance. The second question is what the government should have done, and that is pretty obvious at least here: nothing. The function of government is not disease control. But we have been saying this for decades, covid presents nothing new, and IMO losing serious ground in that struggle for hearts and minds.
It is up to the person who cares to find the evidence that objectively (in)validates their conclusions. It would have been nice if the CDC had packaged the science better, but there shouldn’t be an official governmental voice of science in the first place, so applying a “should” to a “shouldn’t” requires you to embrace a contradiction.

This is a ridiculous thread. My own grandfather died of COVID and I know plenty of people that have had it. It exists. 

This post is an hommage to Leonard Peikoff (b. 1933) for his contributions to the philosophy Objectivism. His biggest contribution of written work is his book OBJECTIVISM: THE PHILOSOPHY OF AYN RAND. His second most important written contribution is his essay “The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy” (ASD). This was published in THE OBJECTIVIST, a journal edited by Rand (d.1982) and N. Branden, in five installments from May to September of 1967. Peikoff was 33. (Those were the nominal dates of those issues of the journal; at times the journal was behind its target dates for publication.) ADS followed immediately Rand’s series “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology” in that journal. Three years before ASD, Peikoff had completed his PhD dissertation THE STATUS OF THE LAW OF CONTRADICTION IN CLASSIC LOGICAL ONTOLOGISM at NYU.
The only substantial supplement to Rand’s theory of concepts since ADS (and two papers by David Kelley in psychology of abstraction in the 80's) is my paper “Universals and Measurement” (2004), which addresses magnitude structure all the world must have if Rand’s model of concept structure is indeed applicable to all term-concepts. https://forum.objectivismonline.com/index.php... I hope soon to complete an amplification and recasting of an issue raised within ASD: necessities in truths.
I’d like here to recount my own personal sequence of events concerning Rand and Peikoff. I had been given THE FOUNTAINHEAD and ATLAS SHRUGGED by a cousin-in-law S. Swift at Christmas 1966. I was a freshman in college. On the first page, the invitation page of ATLAS, beginning “What Moves the World?” Swift had written “Read The Fountainhead first.” On the title page for Part I of ATLAS, he had written “Let your actions be guided by rational choice", which was really good orientation I needed at that time. He had underlined the opening line of that novel. I carefully read them in the summer and fall of 1967. I was in a private mental hospital that summer I read THE FOUNTAINHEAD, and my doctor kept encouraging me to finish it. It saved my life, and thereafter I never again required psychiatric care.
After those novels, I began reading Rand’s nonfiction books that were out at the time, and I read THE OBJECTIVIST, which was at my University library. Peikoff’s ASD introduced me to the Analytic-Synthetic distinction, and over my many years, I have studied its appearances in the history of philosophy and another distinction by that name in the history of mathematics.
In second semester of my freshman year, I had my first course in philosophy, which was mainly an argued layout of all that is, by a Thomist professor, who was superb. He had been trained at the University of Cologne after WWII. But I did not learn of the A-S thread in philosophy until I read Peikoff’s essay on it. I continued to take philosophy courses in college—I minored in it—concluding in my final semester spring 1971 with a seminar on THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON, under another superb professor, who was from India and who had been trained at the University of Gottingen. I pursued graduate studies three times in my life, once in physics, twice in philosophy. I had to withdraw for various reasons in all cases, but learned enormously from those studies. I am an independent and inveterate scholar.
I had seen Ayn Rand on the Johnny Carson show at the home of my friend Swift. https://www.youtube.com/playlist... I did not see or hear Peikoff speak until about 1974, when I took a recorded lecture course of his on the history of modern philosophy. https://www.youtube.com/playlist... Very good. During that decade, I was working my way through Fredrick Copleston’s A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. Completed. I took Peikoff’s 1976 recorded lecture course THE PHILOSOPHY OF OBJECTIVISM when it was presented in Evanston, north of Chicago. That greatly renewed my enthusiasm for the philosophy as one of much width and depth.
I read Peikoff’s THE OMINOUS PARALLELS when it came out in 1982. Five years later, Peikoff published his intellectual memoir “My Thirty Years with Ayn Rand” in THE OBJECTIVIST FORUM. I wrote him a letter thanking him for sharing that and telling him how eagerly I was looking forward to his book on Objectivism, stemming from his 1976 lectures, that he had been working on for some time. And how important I thought it was. He thanked me.
In 1991 the book was issued—OBJECTIVISM: THE PHILOSOPHY OF AYN RAND. It is very fine, accessible to the general educated public, and indeed it proved very important to setting out the philosophy of Ayn Rand in a systematic and comprehensive way, as the philosophy had been developed by the end of her life. That book put Rand’s thought as a comprehensive philosophy more decisively pinned on the map of philosophy. Life accomplishment “as difficult as it is rare.”
(This photo is Peikoff and Rand early in their association.)

 

Here is what Bard AI bot says (I know, I know!):
Q: Was the isolation, purification, and identification of SARS-CoV-2 documented? Where?
Bard: 
Having had bad previous experiences with AI bots, I insisted:
Q: Please double check the above info.
Bard: 
Therefore, maybe - just maybe - there are records that document the isolation, purification, and identification of SARS-CoV-2.
I also verified the existence of (2 out of 4) of the cited articles and they do exist indeed.

That blog post describes in general how viruses ‘work’ , even the mechanism by which the corona virus in question binds to the  human ACE2 receptor site. But it doesn’t explain how a virus from a bat that doesn’t use a bat ACE2 receptor site evolved so quickly and with such affinity to that site in humans. There was/is speculation that a chimera virus was assembled with the needed furin cleavage site to facilitate such affinity, but blogs posts suggesting those types of analysis would be more ‘in the weeds’ and not for the laymen as this blog example is expressly targeted.
Intentionally released or not , it is obvious that Covid was the product of virus fuckery.

In thinking about religion, especially as regards its social aspects, I'm continually surprised at how often I come back to conservatism as a nearly fundamental driving force, whether in epistemology, metaphysics, or ethics. The question always remains: conservative of what? The only plausible answer that I ever see put forward, especially concerning the origins of animism, is: belief in the afterlife as revealed in dreams/hallucinations. No doubt mystical experience has its roots in a very early, all-consuming intrinisicism, notably the kind exhibited by children, but what is the origin of that intrinsicism? Is it possible that mysticism is itself a kind of epistemological conservatism?
For example:
My father appears to me, alive and well, and asks me to bury him. Conclusion: Look, there's my father.
Granted, my father died a week ago. However, it has always been the case that, when my father appears to me alive and well, it is because, naturally, there's my father. Conclusion: I was right all along. My father is indeed dead, and there he is, alive and well. One day, I too will be dead and alive. How can this be true? Better ask my father.
Furthermore, is it possible that idealism itself has its roots in a kind of cosmic sociality? For children, I think there is often an implicit identification between parents and metaphysics. I think something similar happens when idealists/intrinsicists convert to materialism/subjectivism and adopt the myth of "the myth of scarcity" -- in other words, "capitalism creates poverty". On Marxist grounds, the Myth of Scarcity occupies the same metaphysical position as Original Sin: unavoidable yet not permanent (in the Marxists' case, we rise to grace rather than fall from it).
This position, of course, stinks of social determinism, but I don't see why mysticism can't be an outgrowth of what, in primitive times, was a more or less tribalistic social determinism. We were social before we were rational, and irrationalism has a self-perpetuating nature. Is it the case that happy accidents were necessary in order for man to discover reason and individuality/selfhood? Are mysticism and authoritarianism really all that different? Of course, Rand didn't take the argument this far, but I think Objectivist epistemology seems to imply it.
Also, I'm curious about what you mean when you say "holding in abeyance", mostly because I don't hear that phrase often. Am I to take it to mean some kind of evasion, in this case of mortality?
This would all be a good start on a possible explanation for a problem which has been plaguing me: why perfection as an epistemological starting point? The story of the Garden of Eden sounds to me to be just a metaphor for childhood. In other words, mystics - of spirit or muscle - just don't want to grow up. In other other words, childhood is the sham in their eyes. There is no such thing as security or guiltless pleasure on Earth. Not ever since Abba Father made it that way. And I think it makes sense that this approach would be so persistent. I don't know any parents (personally) who would have a good answer to the question of how to teach children that that life after childhood (ignorance) isn't essentially a matter of sacrifice and pain.
Seen this way, it is no wonder that Christian ethics is so ass-backwards. The metaphysics is rotten from the core (pun not intended).
Ironically, this realization played no role in my own fall from theological grace. It was the denial of free will (via Wikipedia articles) that was my "fruit". I went on to have some existentialist-style "optimism" about life choices, but it took me a long time to see how in the world man could be viewed as heroic in any sense other than Byronic.
Funny enough, one could re-construe the Garden of Eden as a warning against mysticism. If the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life are taken as metaphors for beliefs in a utopian existence, which occur to one as effortlessly (and non-rationally) as eating a piece of fruit, then yes, leaving behind the peaceful modus operandi of cultivating a garden - a knowledge which is, as you say, superior - would be a fall from grace. And working to satisfy your now limitless desires would be painful indeed. It was Baconian obedience ("Nature, to be commanded...) that was the true virtue in the Garden.
Perhaps Rand did misunderstand the story. Perhaps the authors of the Bible did as well. Max Muller's contention was that religion is a "disease of language" and that early mystics were more like poets than priests, using and abusing the power of metaphor. One theory I've been thinking over is that part of how religious beliefs develop (and how intrinsicism operates socially) is that ideas are communicated as metaphors and then understood as literal and that a sort of cycle is formed where beliefs are passed around between those with philosophical tendencies and those who preferred magic. Is it possible that there was rational wisdom in the Creation story that underwent this process? Surely, intrinsicism has never had a total monopoly over the mind. 

The facts about Manning are physical facts of his surgery, hormone injections, and consequent changes in its body. Also, its facts of action as charged in his criminal conviction. The facts in the charges against Assange will be determined by a jury from the evidence. Those facts are whatever they are already, but they will not be accepted legally unless he is convicted. We have designed that legal determination process such that some guilty people will be judged Not Guilty even though the alleged facts of the case as brought by the prosecution are indeed the facts of reality; so that fewer innocent people will be wrongly found guilty.
Persons who have their sex changed by surgery and hormones are not the same as someone who senses they are psychologically a different sex without such a physical-alteration project (I'm not entirely convinced there are any such things as male versus female sexual psychologies, such as put about by Rand and Branden, that are independent of brainwashing of the children by the culture, i.e., there may well be no such distinct psychologies that are purely an outcome of biological nature). In official government documents, I'd think the proper pronoun or salutation for them is just as for those us who don't feel that way. Manning is in a different category: the category of having undergone the medical, physical alteration, last I heard.
There is a marble sculpture of old of an hermaphrodite, which turns my stomach. Also, I dislike drag queenery. But the circumstance that such matters are top political issues for voters grossed out by such sculpture or human behaviors is bad for the future of our country. Such cultural issues promoted to political hay have gotten way out of proportion in comparison to the circumstances that people are having to pay so much for groceries or are having their life savings stolen due to government-driven inflation or, as could come in the future if the federal budgets in the red are not stopped, police protection and armed forces can no longer be paid.

Donald Trump managed to eke out a win over Nikki Haley yesterday in New Hampshire. Haley is not dropping out of the GOP primary yet, but her battle is more uphill than I was hoping to learn from yesterday's vote.

The outcome likely means that too many Republicans are part of Donald Trump's personality cult for that party to nominate a serious candidate for President and that not enough independents appreciated the need to have a better choice than Trump or Biden in November.

That is awful.

The war for freedom is hardly over, but this particular battle appears to be lost, and we will almost certainly have one of Joe Biden or Donald Trump and -- if either drops dead while in office -- one of their Vice Presidents continuing to damage our country for another four years.

This is both a bigger deal and a lesser concern than Oh well, I'll leave President blank again in the next election.

Two articles do an excellent job of explaining why.

On the bigger deal side is the first, which I learned about from the excellent Yaron Brook's Twitter feed. It's by Briton Dan Hannon, and its title is, "This Isn't About Trump Anymore -- It's About Whether America Is the Country It Always Was." The whole thing is worth a read, and ends as follows:In the short term, things look bleak. This election cycle and no matter who wins, we could be moving from a discussion of breathing room, of how much time we have to turn the ship around -- to wondering if we can politically further the cause of liberty at all, any time soon, in America.

On the not as big a deal side of the ledger we have Ayn Rand's 1972 essay, "What Can One Do?", which I first encountered in Philosophy: Who Needs It:The essay was written with people concerned about the state of the world in mind, but it has a deeper meaning than is apparent, as is frequently the case with Rand's writings.

The passage above is a reminder, frequently needed anyway, about the nature of current trends, particularly for people interested in improving the world around them: Politics is the end product of a long conceptual and causal chain. Philosophically, it arises from ethics, and the dominant form of politics (increasingly, collectivism today) derives from the dominant ethics in the culture, which is altruism.

Until enough voices in the culture challenge altruism and its philosophical underpinnings (of mysticism and primacy-of-consciousness), our society will remain dominantly altruistic and political movements appealing to it -- be they leftist crusades to redistribute wealth or save "the planet" or right-wing crusades for nationalism or theocracy -- will always threaten to gain ground.

Change the dominant philosophy and the politics will take care of itself.

That's the easier part to see of a philosophical battle is a nuclear war. On a deeper level, one should ask, Why do I want to improve the world?

My answer is because I live in it, and I would hope any fellow travelers are at least equally selfish in that regard. That is the only good reason to want to participate in an intellectual movement. One cannot improve anything without knowing how, and one cannot know how without knowing why, and having a solid grasp of facts.

In the process of getting one's house in order and developing an active mind, one will consequently improve the quality of one's daily life by applying what one has learned.

Rand shows that the battle to improve the culture is long-range, and -- barring a true cataclysm -- much bigger than any single election. But she also shows that it is a personal battle for self-betterment that is always within the grasp of anyone who seeks it.

Speaking for myself: Short-term, while I might be unfortunate enough to be witness to the start of a dark time in American history, I'm glad I am doing so with open eyes, and am not deluded enough to see either of Donald Trump or Joe Biden as America's savior. I know that the constant media blare about Trump isn't worth too much of my time, and I can spend it on better things.

Politics can help or hinder one's life, but it isn't the whole of one's life. Thank God for that, so to speak.

-- CAVLink to Original

The greatest threat to the future of America as a prosperous place and place of civil peace is continuation of the federal deficit budgets of the last 23 years. The federal government is stealing the life savings of Americans by inflation to cover the ongoing budgets in the red. Against continuation of that: vote for Haley against Trump. The choice between Haley and Biden or Phillips will be more difficult because the Democrats are squarely Pro-Choice. But the choice between Haley and Trump at this stage is easily Haley.  As Bastiat put it: Let us try freedom.