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Thread: Ayn Rand–The Author People Love to Hate

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    Ayn Rand–The Author People Love to Hate




    If you understand nothing else about Ayn Rand, understand this, as succinct a summary as she ever made @ http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/objectivism.html:

    At a sales conference at Random House, preceding the publication of Atlas Shrugged, one of the book salesmen asked me whether I could present the essence of my philosophy while standing on one foot. I did as follows:

    1. Metaphysics: Objective Reality
    2. Epistemology: Reason
    3. Ethics: Self-interest
    4. Politics: Capitalism

    If you want this translated into simple language, it would read: 1. “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed” or “Wishing won’t make it so.” 2. “You can’t eat your cake and have it, too.” 3. “Man is an end in himself.” 4. “Give me liberty or give me death.”

    If you held these concepts with total consistency, as the base of your convictions, you would have a full philosophical system to guide the course of your life. But to hold them with total consistency—to understand, to define, to prove and to apply them—requires volumes of thought. Which is why philosophy cannot be discussed while standing on one foot—nor while standing on two feet on both sides of every fence. This last is the predominant philosophical position today, particularly in the field of politics.

    My philosophy, Objectivism, holds that:

    1. Reality exists as an objective absolute—facts are facts, independent of man’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears.
    2. Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses) is man’s only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival.
    3. Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.
    4. The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. The government acts only as a policeman that protects man’s rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    I absolutely got into Atlas Shrugged. It took all of 4 chapters before I found it hard to put down. I'd rather get paid for what I do than just give it away. I'd work for gold, too
    The Fountainhead is another good one.
    For waltky: http://quakes.globalincidentmap.com/
    "The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."
    - Thucydides

    "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote" B. Franklin
    Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum

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    Quote Originally Posted by stjames1_53 View Post
    I absolutely got into Atlas Shrugged....
    Long book, but very good.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Perianne View Post
    Long book, but very good.
    it is a political rant described as a romantic novel
    For waltky: http://quakes.globalincidentmap.com/
    "The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."
    - Thucydides

    "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote" B. Franklin
    Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum

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    Rand has always been contentious. Altruistic liberals hate her self-interested philosophy. Religious conservatives hate her atheism. For a long time, Rand and libertarians like Rothbard went after each other, but that has subsided and the two movements are more compatible today. In a facisnating book, The New Libertarianism: Anarcho-Capitalism, J Michael Oliver has tied Rand's basic philosophy to Austrian Economics.
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    I named my first dog after her character Dagny Taggart.

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    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris View Post
    My philosophy, Objectivism, holds that:
    People can 'hold' whatever philosophy or belief they want, whether Objectivism, Progressivism, or that the earth is flat.

    The reality that Objectivism is more or less debunked both logically and scientifically won't change some from continuing to believe what they want for purely emotional reasons though. Why things that are, factually speaking, settled - like Objectivism's falsehood - continue to be 'debated' is beyond me, but c'este la vie.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris View Post
    Rand has always been contentious. Altruistic liberals hate her self-interested philosophy. Religious conservatives hate her atheism. For a long time, Rand and libertarians like Rothbard went after each other, but that has subsided and the two movements are more compatible today. In a facisnating book, The New Libertarianism: Anarcho-Capitalism, J Michael Oliver has tied Rand's basic philosophy to Austrian Economics.
    I don't see anything to gain from hating a deceased Jewish medicare recipient who was more likely just a product of the ignorance of her outdated era than a methodical liar. Rather, her followers are simply hocking an outdated, faith-based ideology and just like religious fundamentalists or militant "trans rights" activists, resort to denying objective reality when it conflicts with their beliefs or ideology.

    The "four points" of the Objectivist cult mentioned in the OP are straight-up in conflict with modern scientific knowledge on many points, so it shouldn't be a matter of 'hating it', just a matter of it being straight-up untrue:
    1. Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses) is man’s only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival.
    Scientifically debunked. This is likely just a holdover of the outdated "Tabula Rasa" theories, but this has been largely debunked by modern science and psychology, which reveals that humans (just like all other organisms) have certain pre-encoded, hardwired instinctual behaviors and understandings.

    Likewise, this is observed in other species as well, such as ants, which are apparently born with the knowledge of how to build ant mounds comparable to human metropolis (complete with irrigation and plumbing systems), despite lacking any brain comparable to the human neocortex (or "monkey brain", which is the part of the brain responsible for human thinking or reasoning).

    http://videos.komando.com/watch/3782...will-shock-you
    1. Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.
    This is part just a "statement of faith", part just pseudoscience. Man defined as an "individual" is just a mental construct, not an "objective reality" defined by natural sciences.

    Man is biologically speaking, a collection of individual cells working in unison, so whether one defines man as an "individual" or as a "collective" to begin with is purely subjective - just as if one defines a man as an "individual citizen", or merely one of the cells which makes up the individual state, is also subjective.

    Man's "individuality" could only have an objective existence if man could somehow continue to exist 'in a vacuum' even if all of the cells which compose that which he defines "his body" died, but since he cannot, biologically speaking, then neither can his "individuality" exist except as a linguistic construct.

    -

    So since 2 of the "core principles" of Objectivism have been shown to straight-up contradict scientific realities, the philosophy should be rendered obsolete, but I doubt that will stop peddlers from continuing to sell those books and present it as fact, heh.
    Last edited by Devil'sAdvocate; 10-11-2017 at 08:00 AM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Devil'sAdvocate View Post
    I don't see anything to gain from hating a deceased Jewish medicare recipient who was more likely just a product of the ignorance of her outdated era than a methodical liar. Rather, her followers are simply hocking an outdated, faith-based ideology and just like religious fundamentalists or militant "trans rights" activists, resort to denying objective reality when it conflicts with their beliefs or ideology.

    The "four points" of the Objectivist cult mentioned in the OP are straight-up in conflict with modern scientific knowledge on many points, so it shouldn't be a matter of 'hating it', just a matter of it being straight-up untrue:
    1. Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses) is man’s only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival.
    Scientifically debunked. This is likely just a holdover of the outdated "Tabula Rasa" theories, but this has been largely debunked by modern science and psychology, which reveals that humans (just like all other organisms) have certain pre-encoded, hardwired instinctual behaviors and understandings.

    Likewise, this is observed in other species as well, such as ants, which are apparently born with the knowledge of how to build ant mounds comparable to human metropolis (complete with irrigation and plumbing systems), despite lacking any brain comparable to the human neocortex (or "monkey brain", which is the part of the brain responsible for human thinking or reasoning).

    http://videos.komando.com/watch/3782...will-shock-you
    1. Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.
    This is part just a "statement of faith", part just pseudoscience. Man defined as an "individual" is just a mental construct, not an "objective reality" defined by natural sciences.

    Man is biologically speaking, a collection of individual cells working in unison, so whether one defines man as an "individual" or as a "collective" to begin with is purely subjective - just as if one defines a man as an "individual citizen", or merely one of the cells which makes up the individual state, is also subjective.

    Man's "individuality" could only have an objective existence if man could somehow continue to exist 'in a vacuum' even if all of the cells which compose that which he defines "his body" died, but since he cannot, biologically speaking, then neither can his "individuality" exist except as a linguistic construct.

    -

    So since 2 of the "core principles" of Objectivism have been shown to straight-up contradict scientific realities, the philosophy should be rendered obsolete, but I doubt that will stop peddlers from continuing to sell those books and present it as fact, heh.

    I don't see anything to gain from hating a deceased Jewish medicare recipient who was more likely just a product of the ignorance of her outdated era than a methodical liar. Rather, her followers are simply hocking an outdated, faith-based ideology and just like religious fundamentalists or militant "trans rights" activists, resort to denying objective reality when it conflicts with their beliefs or ideology.
    Stupendous bit of ad hom. Really remarkable.

    Scientifically debunked.
    Oh? Then please do debunk it.

    This is likely just a holdover of the outdated...
    Sounds like you're guessing.

    It has nothing to do with anything you guessed at.



    Man defined as an "individual" is just a mental construct...
    OK, then who is posting?


    so whether one defines man as an "individual" or as a "collective" to begin with is purely subjective
    One could also categorize a cell as a collection of nucleus and cytoplasm and membrane, or a nucleus a collection of chromosomes and a nucleolus. Going the other route one coould categorize an indivdual human being as a part of a collective or society, and that society a part of mammals, and so on.

    Your argument seems to be with meaning itself.
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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