On 2/18/2021 at 5:50 PM, MisterSwig said:
I don’t believe Rand’s philosophy is mine to revise or expand upon. I have, however, criticized her position regarding public property. And so I think her definition of capitalism is mistaken and partly accounts for some of our rifts when it comes to politics.
Thanks. Rand revised and expanded on Aristotle. I’m not saying it necessarily has to still be called Objectivism. It depends how big the changes are.
19 hours ago, Doug Morris said:
We have the power to choose rationally. To the extent that instead we let our emotions do our thinking for us, we leave ourselves very vulnerable to the subconscious and/or genetics/biological processes.
I agree. The problem is very few people choose to think, to be rational, and even among those who attempt it, there is fierce disagreement.
We know that it takes a deliberate, conscious effort to focus and think rationally, which can be a draining process, and most people simply ‘go with the grain’ so to speak, meaning to avoid the burden of thinking for oneself in large areas of their lives and having faith in established patterns of thought and action, passed down over generations, essentially allowing them to econmise on the time and effort that goes into thinking everything through rationally on their own.
But also to ‘go with the grain’ in the sense of those biological processes we are referring to. Perhaps those processes themselves exert a ‘bias’ or incentive against thinking too much. An obvious example, which may be just the tip of the iceberg, is the painful sensation one feels when focusing over a prolonged period. Another is IQ. The higher the IQ, the easier it probably is to spend the same amount of time focusing and thinking rationally, so the lower the incentive to ‘switch off’.
15 hours ago, dream_weaver said:
How do you propose to alter human nature? Are you proposing that others need to be managed since self-management mysteriously leads to your rights being severely restricted, as is the current state of affairs?
I don’t propose altering human nature, though in the future this may be possible with new technology, and may be the only way for humans to ever behave on a mass scale in the way Rand had advocated.
I understood ‘manage themselves’ to include politics. It’s not particularly mysterious why my rights are severely restricted. We live in a democratic system where people can vote away my rights/resources.
15 hours ago, Eiuol said:
Do we? If you mean first-generation adults, perhaps. If you mean the children of that first-generation, not really, they will assimilate just as well as any other child. Carnegie was born in Scotland by the way, it is not as if some standout Americans that we think of as Americans are never immigrants.
By the way, the example you gave of ethnic minorities voting for Trump doesn’t have anything to do with adapting to a culture. On top of that, not all ethnic minorities are immigrants…
What kind of limitation are you thinking of?
I suppose we would need to be more specific about what we mean by assimilate and of course it varies depending on the immigrant group.
In the UK, Muslims are extremely out of step with the average on attitudes toward women and gays. For example, a recent study found that half of all British Muslims think homosexuality should be illegal. I disagree that the average child of Muslim immigrants will assimilate to British culture just as well as the average child of indigenous Brits.
The problem is that immigrants tend to concentrate in particular areas so that the area becomes a microcosm of their homeland to an extent. I was in one of those areas recently, which is dominated by Muslims. I walked past a school in the area and it was about 90% Muslim.
Limitations based on values essentially. Discriminatory immigration policies. Perhaps a cap on Muslim immigration to stem the flow. The larger and faster particular immigrant groups grow, the more self-sustaining their culture is and the more resistant to outside influence.
10 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:
Fundamentally, each of us has a right to the freedom of movement (including international movement) so long as we’re not doing so for any nefarious purpose (such as terrorism). There are no two ways around that.
I fear you are right.
10 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:
While we should have “open” borders that allow any civilized person to live wherever the Hell they want, it does make sense for us to have some sort of screening process to ensure that potential immigrants are, in fact, civilized people who aren’t planning on manufacturing sarin gas or instituting Sharia law as soon as they arrive. And since we should be trying to constrain the welfare state as much as we possibly can, it seems prudent to also say something like no immigrant can ever qualify for any sort of government handout, for example. Once we had something like that in place we could then start trying to talk about whether we should really be giving handouts to anyone at all.
I agree so where do we draw the line on this? Perhaps there is a rational case to impose discriminatory immigration policies based on values.
You say institute Sharia law as soon as they arrive. What about simply being in favour of it? Of wanting to see it in the host country? Such a person is an enemy. There must be a rational case against immigrants who want to come here and violate our rights/don’t recognise those rights, pledging allegiance to Allah, the Quran and sharia law etc.
10 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:
The Objectivist position on borders is that they should be open - within reason.
Incidentally, I wouldn’t say that you can’t still call yourself an Objectivist if you disagree with that position - just that you’re currently wrong. 
But that happens to us all.
Do we know that, though?
I once knew an immigrant couple from Nepal who, despite not speaking the best English, acted like some of the most American people I’ve ever met. The one time I made the mistake of referring to them as Nepali-Americans I was swiftly told on no uncertain terms that they were full-fledged Americans like myself. That couple took about two years to become almost entirely integrated (with the exception of some slight accents that I’m sure they’ve ditched by now).
I bring them up, not to say that transplantation is quick, but simply to point out that it depends on whom we are talking about transplanting. Some people drag their feet while others are eager to get it out of the way ASAP.
Yes it depends on the people. Ultimately, those who already share similar fundamental values will assimilate quicker than those who don’t (but then is it really assimilation?). So those that drag their feet are the ones we ought to limit, if they are a threat to a free society.
10 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:
And those who drag their feet about it, and set up little miniature versions of their respective homelands - do they actually want to BE American (or British)? If not then what we should really be asking about are their motives for trying to enter our countries in the first place. I also know a number of Somali immigrants to my area who have no intention of ever integrating, learning English or getting a job; they came to America for the handouts. Handouts which should not exist in the first place.
Exactly. This is the issue that the west is currently facing. The development of free societies grew out of a small corner of the world by a group of very particular peoples. It has never developed anywhere else. It is surely playing with fire to allow peoples from all over the world to pour in and risk crushing that precious development, on the belief that they will ‘get it’ and recognise and defend human rights.
10 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:
Could you elaborate on what you mean by that?
See my response to Doug above. I will add the question I asked Reidy earlier; what do you make of Peterson’s point about human beings tending to form hierarchies and that there are deep biological causes of this which he shows is shared with other animals and therefore has deep evolutionary origins?
Now I’m not necessarily saying that humans cannot use their freewill and reason to overcome any biological ‘bias’ toward forming hierarchies but do you think that bias exists, generally speaking? And that there are many other biases at play that ‘push’ or provide incentives for humans to behave in particular ways which helps explain particular behaviours and trends that we can observe throughout human history, common to all cultures and races?
I also don’t think Objectivism is necessarily incompatible with this stuff. Ultimately we have to take reality as it is. The issue I have is the reality of human nature is far from well understood due to these biological processes that we don’t fully understand.
And surely if we know, or think it is highly likely, that society will never be filled with mostly Objectivists on a mass scale, then the political philosophy of Objectivism is inadequate as a prescription for the world as it is, and more suitable for the world we would like to see, that is, a world where most people subscribe to Objectivism and respect human rights. I want that world but I don’t see it happening perhaps ever.
