Tomer Ravid

The "Randian cult" conspiracy is primarily a fallacy of conceptualization. It involves such epistemological errors as non-essential thinking (which leads to bad metaphors, e.g., "You believe that you are in the center of everything the same way people used to believe that Earth is the center of mass of the universe," etc.), invalid, out of context usage of concepts (the same causes Marxists to hold that liberty is the equivalent of so-called "oppression"), as well as the absence of an explicit stand of evaluation (e.g., atonal music is "sophisticated," anarchy is "freedom"---ask yourselves wha

Whether I have or haven't read enough, I am not interested to discuss. At any rate: what ethical knowledge do you think I lack?

You must have not understood the proof of man's ultimate value as his own life correctly. The proof does not imply that life is an ultimate value because without life you cannot achieve any of the actions which you regard "values," whatever they are, but that they are not valuable to you as long as you are not alive. The whole concept of value refers to and comes from life. Consciousness is conscious is an axiom implied in all of your says and acts. Life is an end in itself. Without life, as far as you are concerned, there is absolutely nothing. That ultimate value is called ultimate becau

Ohhhh, so that's your claim, right? Pretty much begging the question, I'd say. No, it isn't; it is a contradiction. It is a contradiction in your view that violating individual rights is legitimate if done to protect them. The non-contradictory alternative is that you should not force the protection of individual right upon people, and, at the same time, the fact they cannot or do not want to afford for any reason doesn't mean they have no rights. But hey, don't attack me. It's not me, it's my "straw-man." He has really no self-control.

From my Facebook inspirations: Aristotle, Newton, Thomas Jefferson, Ramanujan, Ayn Rand, Richard Feynman, Mike Mentzer (yes, I know he hasn't had a deep understanding of Objectivist epistemology, but I really tend to like the concept of a greatly educated bodybuilder; this combination of mind and body clearly does remind me of Radian heroes), Steve Jobs. All these were innovative geniuses, and---to different extents and in different ways---had an impressive biography and held generally positive premises.

Both unreal and unsophisticated. Trust me. Will you?

I have to re-read that article, if I ever read it (that's right: I have never read VOS since I did not find it necessary to delve more into it, or rather, I am pretty certain of ethics and I don't think I can be englightened much by another book about it). I assume that if there is a "right" to medicare, then it is a physician's duty to serve any ill or miserable person. Rather than a brilliant scientist, a doctor turns into a slave of the mob. And then, as soon as the government obtains a monopoly over medicine, he will have to obey its rules and work under their conditions (just to make it

Besides the second paragraph which provides the general overview of the issue, it is based on arguments you and Grames (from the other thread, though I have not read it all) made the way I remember them. I could just make a comparison, but let's make it simpler: With which of the above statements do you disagree? Furthermore, is there any argument for taxes that did not appear in my reply?

You know, that's not such a great compliment. To make it clear, observe that Rand advocated reason before egoism (which means a mathematician who loves his work but is a self-proclaimed altruist and socialist is morally superior to an "individualist" barbarian), and the egoism she advocated was rational egoism, not the Nietzschean "egoism." (Although even that doesn't apply to this case: They are ultra-conformist and reputation-driven creatures, which, to some extent, was opposed by Nietzsche.)

I was not too focused and careful while writing this post. My editing in []:

I am not proud of it, but in that hackneyed case sounding like those Objectivists who can only implicitly quote Miss Rand would be necessary. All the arguments I am going to be refuting are highly similar to those of the average anti-capitalist: Briefly, man has to rely on his judgment to rationally contend with the facts reality, thinking is a volitional process. But the momentary whims of an incidental thug are not facts of reality; man can neither predict nor rationally handle them. His only way to survive them is therefore to avoid them ahead. Distinguished principle to describe a pr

Existence had existed before, and you just abstracted it. Unless you found an original algorithm, which is a tool of dealing with reality. And even then you can charge "intellectual property" for its usage: The means of using such a creation would be thinking, and stopping men from thinking would be purely evil.

Most of the ones you all mentioned, unfortunately, turned to irrational philosophy. It is better to leave philosophy aside than to hold this kind of philosophy, which at least does not constitute a deliberate distortion of man's mind. Then you begin to describe "scientists" of the humanities---no better than contemporary philosophy. I don't get it: What's the point of this thread? Just to document career changes for the sake of interest?

It maybe is an unscientific position, but I don't really care about that as long as it applies to an essentially pseudoscience---as much as the fact that Nazism is illegal (as distinct from other totalitarian theories) is politically wrong, but it doesn't bother me since they are Nazis. In the current situation, there is so much to fundamentally change---whereas some violation of certain rights of Nazi ideologists (which should not be properly used by a rational man anyway) would be a mere concrete concern to be changed while realized. Why do you consider it to be an "anti-science" act? It i

One out of five. That perfectly makes sense. Say, what do you think is the role of ideas?--Does man act solely on unavoidable instincts?--Do you think technology and wealth naturally exist?--Is thinking an impractical \ useless process?