Capitalism Forever

Could you give some examples of what kind of information I might be missing? You are, for example, certain of your existence, but you are still fallible generally speaking.

It certainly isn't; if you become 18 and are still unable to make good decisions, you'll have to bear the full extent of the consequences of your irresponsibility. But you agree, don't you, that when you have just been born, it is exclusively your parents who decide what you eat and drink, and that they (and your teachers, etc.) continue to exercise a degree of control over your nutrition until well into your teens. The details of this control are none of the government's business, but it is proper for it to enforce certain basic standards of rationality.

What about if capitalism has been proven right? Since you accept that one can be certain of one's existence, or of writing in English, cannot one be given enough proof to be similarly certain of the virtue of capitalism? Because it means that it has to be either: 1., you are infallible; 2. you are uncertain of even your own existence. Well, I'm not certain of this, but I seem to detect an Augustinian streak in him. "Who are we little men to know anything? Only GOD can know! "

Age restrictions (some of them, at least) are proper for the same reason that it is proper for the government to enforce the obligation of parents to feed, clothe, etc. their children properly. Just like children cannot be expected to make their own living, they cannot always be expected to be able to make sufficiently well-informed decisions on how much alcohol to drink, what drugs to take, how fast to drive, etc. This applies especially to newborns and very young children. Children who are brought up by good parents and teachers gain the ability to act responsibly much sooner than the legal age; however, children with lousy parents and teachers need a longer exposure to the real world in order to acquire the necessary knowledge. Plus, our present culture often encourages teenagers to "rebel," and the unnamed adversary they usually end up rebelling against is reason and reality--meaning that they cannot be expected to act responsibly until after the end of this rebellious age. In a more rational culture, the legal age could probably be lower--but until we get there, it is proper for the law to be based on the current conditions.

He sees a false dichotomy between omniscience and infallibility on the one hand, and uncertainty on the other: As for his possible motive, I found the following passage quite revealing (emphasis added):

Well, as I said, I'll believe it when I see it. Since you mentioned moods, though: Would it be possible for this robot to find itself in a mood to, say, murder someone? How would it decide whether or not to act on its mood? If it committed a murder, should its creator be punished for it--or should the robot be punished?

I have no problem believing that you could make a robot that writes rap music. But as for a robot that writes music like Rachmaninoff's--well, I'll believe that when you have shown me the robot.

I've heard of another scenario in which things warm up because of increasing entropy, resulting in a thermal death of the Universe. I haven't made my mind up yet as to which of these two is the greater nonsense...

Since the dog's new home is only 20 minutes away, it may actually be a matter of weeks or days rather than years...

Either this person misplaced a closing parenthesis, or he recognizes altruism as the cause of "greed, envy, and violence"--and would like to see more of it!

Yes. It's ironic, isn't it, that the movies that can do the most damage to your children are precisely the ones that don't come with any parental advisory--because they're made for children!

That is the premise you need to check. While it is true that each of us has his personal taste in architecture, the fact that it is personal does not necessarily make it subjective. You can, and should, form your personal standards by a rational, objective thinking process. The great difference between the business models of Roark and Cameron on the one hand, and people like Keating and Wynand on the other hand, is that the latter tried to cater to the irrational tastes that were currently popular in the culture, while the former went by the following motto: It's a bit like with parents and children. If you don't teach your children how to value things rationally, they will still have various wishes and desires--irrational wishes and desires, i.e. whims. If you then go on to "give them everything they want," meaning: you satisfy all their irrational whims, that does not make you a good parent. To be a good parent means, first of all, to teach your children to think rationally, and then to support them in pursuing rational values.

Polar Express.

Guru, how do you define knowledge?

What makes you think so? A joke can be used to convey an idea, and ideas can change minds.

Living for a hundred thousand years? I dunno, that doesn't sound so bad in itself. Of course, if it means a hundred thousand years as a geriatric case, then it doesn't sound very appealing. But if it's a hundred thousand years in a good state of health, I'd take it without a second's hesitation.

Helps plants grow faster and using less water, making our Earth greener and saving our most precious resource.

This is very different from just being a couch potato while being awake and not feeling sleepy, though. There is only so much work you can do within a day, so there is nothing destructive about not trying to do more. In fact, overworking yourself is precisely what is destructive--namely, destructive of your health. I wasn't going to comment on the question of whether or not I consider sleep itself to be productive, since I think it's a marginal issue, but anyway, if we can't get away from it, here's my take: I wouldn't call sleep a productive activity, since it is not an activity in the first place (but rather a vegetative state). However, the decision to go to sleep, provided that you do actually need sleep, as well as any action you take to improve the quality of your sleep, are IMO productive actions.

Agreed--and what's more, you are in fact being a net destroyer wealth in that case, since your body is still using nutrients, your electricity bill is still growing, your rent is still becoming due, and so on.

I think it's time we snapped out of this "left/right" dichotomy. The choice is between the wrong politics and the right politics--and on that scale, Objectivism is pretty much the sole occupant of the right "wing."

One year's worth of oil is a whole lot of oil.

Rephrasing the question just a bit: "Does recreation involve the creation of value ?" I think the answer becomes fairly obvious. What you are re-creating is your strength and vitality, which I would certainly classify as a value! (The assumption being, of course, that we are talking about rational kinds and amounts of recreation.)

It will be interesting to see how the markets react next week. It won't surprise me if we see the Dow in 6000 territory soon...And wait until it passes the Senate!

This reminds me of the couple I once saw on the street. The girl had a pink handbag, and wanted to do something (don't remeber exactly what, the important thing is she couldn't do it with the bag in her hand) so she asked the guy to hold the bag for a minute. The guy said "I can't hold it, it's pink." The girl kept asking, saying "It's only for a minute," "Don't be so stupid," etc., but to no avail: the guy just couldn't bring himself to hold a pink handbag in public. The girl began to sound quite frustrated with him in the end--I would say, understandably so...

You and I must be talking about a different standard then (I had the SI or "Systeme Internationale" in mind). Anyway, let's drop this distraction and talk about coffee! I'm curious to hear Space Patroller's explanation of the exact mechanism by which the consumption of hazelnut-flavored coffee turns me into an agenda-driven wuss! (Or is it the other way around?)