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This guy is good! An Example of how to reply to critics

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Over at JREF, the scientific skeptics forum, a poster (Dinwar) is doing a great job of responding to critics of Objectivism.  His first entry in the thread called "A Natural Disaster in Galt's Gulch" is one of 12 posts on the thread:



            

Quote:  Keep in mind most of what I know about Objectivism comes from a friend's college dorm mate who used it as a pretext to steal all his stuff and never clean up. Basically a "because you allow me to get away with this I will continue to do it" sort of excuse. It still makes me angry.
    


So what you're saying is that Mr. Thompson is your ideal Objectivist. 

To put it more clearly: that wasn't Objectivism. That was someone lying about Objectivism. O'ism views the Supermen in the same light as any other moocher--that is to say, as more or less the physical embodyment of evil. Rand's heros actually all make the opposite mistake: they take on TOO MUCH responsibility, not too little.



I'm an Objectivist. Yet I've fought floods and fires, helping save property that's not my own. I did it for my own selfish reasons (no damn river is going to defeate ME, and I love my father). I also used to help clean up after parties (I really, REALLY don't like cleaning up stale beer when I'm hung over). I'd much rather live in a society where I can ask my neighbor for help than one where I can't, and am demonstrably willing to put my life on the line to establish such a society. THAT is an Objectivist view of the world: this is what I want, and this is how much I'm willing to pay.

 

 

He also does very well in this thread (A Philosophy Professor discusses Ayn Rand in his ethics class) starting with post #

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That guy is really good! Unfortunately he and the other O'ists got swamped by a collection of leftists who seemed unable to follow a basic progression of thought.

Actually, what I learned from there is the fact that some leftists seem to believe that the essence of debate is not to communicate ideas but to "defeat" your opponent by taking him down through whatever means necessary, including willful misunderstanding of arguments. Examples from that link:

1) "Sword of Apollo": "Forcing people into helping others through Social Security, welfare and FEMA, is not only immoral, but actually counterproductive. What was America like before these things? What was America like when being "on the dole" was generally considered shameful?"

"Tony": "Slavery, illiteracy, state-sponsored censorship, women without the right to vote, living standards that today are associated with third-world poverty...

...I think I'll keep the entitlement state."

That is a perfect example of willful ignorance. Assuming that "Tony" had an adequate level of rational ability to join a forum such as that, he knows perfectly well that those things he listed had nothing to do with capitalism or the entitlement state. He's just saying that because those things are bad and a casual reader might be tricked into believing that because those bad things existed before entitlements that entitlements fixed those bad things. An excellent example of someone not even trying to communicate ideas, just trying to score points.

2) "Carn" (in response to my very favorite leftist argument, the "why don't you just move to Somalia" one): "And what is that "everything else" that due to the use of "and" is also necessary to avoid the reign of warlords?

public libraries?

0.01% of every public building costs spend for art?

alcohol rations for people on welfare?

theater performances that include the use of human feces?

You seem to assume that a lot is necessary to keep warlords at bay."

"tsig": "So your real complaint is with artistic welfare cheats?"

Here, again, tsig is being willfully ignorant to score points in the argument. He knows perfectly well that this was not Carn's point, just that these were examples of unnecessary actions of government (to illustrate the point that the choice is not between modern European socialisms and anarchy). But, it makes Carn's point look petty to claim that all he cares about is artistic welfare.

I don't know who is interested in this, but I thought I'd share some of what I got from that link, particularly since I've been thinking a lot about the willfully evasive psychology of some leftist "intellectuals".

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Yeah, doing a great job tilting at windmills is still just tilting at windmills.

 

A fair point if the focus is on his debating opponents in that thread (as if most of them were really debating.  Hah!) since they will not be convinced of anything.  The value of his (Dinwar's) work is that it may capture any number of previously undecided folks that read those threads for some kind of information on the subject.  There is a saying: "How do you eat an elephant?   One bite at a time."

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