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Karlshammar

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About Karlshammar

  • Birthday 11/26/1980

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    Santa Monica College
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  1. If "this trait" refers to a biological inclination to believe that what we hear in nature comes from living things, and so on as described above, "this trait" does not exist, so the question is invalid. I don't know that "a real Truth" refers to, but if it refers to the fact that reality is objective, the reason many people believe that is because it is true, but if "Truth" refers to something supernatural as I suspect, let me ask a counter-question: why are people less likely to believe in God and the supernatural the more intelligent and well-educated they are, and more likely to believe the less intelligent and educated they are? The third question is dishonest, in that it assumes that we need to believe in God to have a sense of purpose. I have a sense of purpose and am an atheist. We also do not have an intuitive belief in the supernatural. I have not, and never have.
  2. I did not read the article, but I can dismiss the argument based on what you wrote. 1) Human beings do not automatically assume that all sounds come from something living. The claim is ridiculous. 2) Human beings do not automatically assume that all sounds that do not come from something living comes from the "supernatural." This claim is even more ridiculous. The sounds of nature are not the sounds of nature??? Obvious contradiction.
  3. Well, those restaurants prey on tourists who don't know better. Locals stay far away from those places. But then again, it's India... not exactly the home of rational thought! Those businesses would never survive in the west. And yes... the funny fact is this: even if having the government run things made them safer (which it really doesn't), for moral reasons we would still have to object to it. Objectivism is not pragmatism. But, since the moral is the practical, privately-owned businesses are better and more moral.
  4. Nope, I don't have any links. Feel free to search on the Internet for it, though. What does it matter anyway? I provided the example to show how ridiculous it would be to nationalize an industry just because people have an incentive to do corrupt things, and that in fact EVERY business have the same incentive to do that in a corrupt person's eyes. The local computer store could break into your home and smash your computer, or the local tire store could come slash your tires, and probably make a tidy buck.
  5. By your logic, private medical care creates a situation where someone gains a benefit from another person being hurt. This actually happens in India, where very nice restaurants sell food dirt-cheap, but poison it so that the people who eat it have to go to a hospital, and then the restaurants get a cut from the hospital. I am not joking about this. But this would be an argument to enforce the law very strictly when it comes to those people, not "call in the government" just because someone is not acting morally. If we had to nationalize every business where a person can gain a short-term perceived benefit from acting immorally, we'd be living under communism. Private prisons have been problematic, not because of privatization, but because of stupid regulations. For example, one private prison had a situation where prisoners went at each other with meat cleavers and all sorts of equipment for 90 minutes. Why? Because the rules stated that privately employed correctional officers ("prison guards") were not allowed to carry weapons, so the private prison just locked the area down and had to wait for armed, government-employed officers to be shipped there from the closest state-run prison. Idiocy!
  6. I don't think that your partner needs to be an Objectivist in name, or ever have studied the philosophy itself. However, they do need to share your basic premises, such as a belief in the objectivity of reality and the validity of the senses, in order to have a suceesful long-term relationship. Most normal people are like that, anyway. It's like Ayn Rand has written: all the axioms we build our knowledge upon are inherent in our first instance of sense perception, and the world-view of Galt, d'Anconia and so on is that of normal men, not something that should be unusual. And if you talk to people, you will find that most of them really do believe in the validity of the senses, the objectivity of the world and science, and so on.
  7. I voted for Rome for pretty much the same reasons as Free Capitalist. It should be noted, however, that while the Mongols had savage customs, when it came to laws, they were very advanced for an Asian tribe. For example, while even in the West you could still be executed for all sorts of ridiculous offenses, and it was even worse in the "civilized" parts of Asia (in China people were beheaded for not bowing properly to a nobleman), the Mongols only had two irrational uses of capital punishment: as punishment for adultery and cattle theft. Still, quite clearly, the Romans and Greeks are far superior to the Mongols from an Objectivist perspective. Being great at war is not one of the primary traits of a great culture.
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