Can someone explain Ayn Rand to me?!

then again, rand (as with so many other rationalists) ended up veering sharply into "natural law" concepts (i.e., what bentham rightly called "nonsense on stilts.") hence, the particularly strident dogmatism of rand and her most devout followers. which is why in the end i'm an empiricist (and a very cynical one at that -- WHO IN THIS BITCH LIKES HUME?!?) and oh yeah, to tie this in with someone else being bashed herein -- chomsky is also a rationalist.

i fear i'm not making any sense.

Ie. a half-baked pseudo-philosopher who ventures into "the novel form" without the slightest regard for the several types of ambiguity which fiction requires, viewing it only as a vehicle for (ahem) "ideas"?

In which case "the novel" turns on its author and exposes her presumptions more efficiently than any analysis of her "philosophy" ever could.

Science is a method of gaining knowledge by systematically studying things that actually exist and have real effects. The notion that someone's health can be affected by the prayers or wishes of strangers is based on nothing but imagination and faith. Such blind belief represents the rejection of reason and science, and is not worthy of serious, rational consideration. What's next? A study of the medical effects of blowing out birthday candles?

Every minute these doctors spend conducting this sort of faith-based study is one minute less spent on reality-based research--research that actually has hope of leading to real medical cures.

Dr. Yaron Brook
Ayn Rand Institute Executive Director
Irvine, CA

Ayn Rand's "objectivism" is great as a personal philosophy if you see yourself as hard-working, skilled, independent, and intelligent. It's not so hot as a social or political philosophy. As tempting as it sometimes sounds, I've never been able to leave my friends for new associates that share some crazed level of intellectualism and instinctive drive, which is probably fortunate. Rand's absolute meritocracy would be great given a completely level playing field but then she'd lose the plot device of dramatically shunning or turning your back on the establishment and its corrupt ways.

i.e. on the unpopulated sands of mars

ps http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_abolitionism

It's actually testing hypotheses and seeing what happens, if you knew beforehand what the "real effects" were you wouldn't need to do any studies to see if they were real or not. If you're a God vs Science type and you're on the side of science it seems like it would be more useful to have an empirical test proving prayer doesn't work than to just say "we don't need to test it, it's obvious". It's using two things to prove each other, saying that prayer is useless because there is no proof and that there's no point getting proof because prayer's useless. It might be obvious, but it's worth testing non-obvious things too.

http://media.urbandictionary.com/image/large/orly-37424.jpg

mike h OTM about personal v. political.

"Yes, at first I was happy to be learning how to read. It seemed exciting and magical, but then I read this: Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. I read every last word of this garbage, and because of this piece of shit, I am never reading again." - Officer Barbrady

Number of Playboy centerfold models since 1959 whose bios claimed their favorite book was by Ayn Rand: 12 [Gretchen Edgen, The Playmate Book, General Publishing Group (Santa Monica, Calif.)]

More like "philosopher." I mean, you can claim that anyone who comes up with ideas about the material world and personal interactions is a philosopher, but western philosophy was already reasonably stratified by the 20th century. To most people actually studying philosophy, Rand is pretty much treading over territory that's already been well-covered and refuted. It'd be like calling someone a "mathematician" after they refused to study established work then came up with pi being about 3.2 after thinking about it.

You would think "well, duh," and yet you can probably get some philosophers still to disagree about this.

It seems sometimes like philosophers try to simplify things too much. I mean "reality" is so complex, how can one theory really describe everything?
I once watched a porno that discussed the philosophy of PLato.

The professor said Plato had a vision for a perfect society but it would never work becuase rich people will always want to "bed down" hot women who are plebians.

Why am I not surprised at ALL that this is in Irvine?

Without any explanation, this statement doesn't really mean anything. When you try and explain what it means, I think you'll find plenty of philosophical opposition however you go about doing it. As far as I can see, there's still no real consensus on epic, vague metaphysical issues like this.

For instance, she backed Ronald Reagan --a worthless protectionist / pragmatist who was for sale to the highest bidder, and incapable of understanding basic economics. She also termed libertarians "Hippies of the Right" - a vague ad-hominem attack, among others, even though they virtually all espoused her political model (if not privately her philosophical model). She did this without bothering to think about what the results would be, if the Libertarian Party (the only consistent capitalist / pro-individual freedom choice in politics) lost one of its major bases of suport -objectivists (even the ones who dissented with varying portions of her philosophy). She gave them short shrift because the movement wasn't entirely controlled by her. One of her students, Leonard Peikoff, seemingly initially sought to widen the tent, and thus expand the ideas of individual sovereignty and autonomy to a wider (though lower common denominator) audience (much like this one, Dan Perry excluded). Upon taking over the ARI, Peikoff backpedaled in a desire to maintain Randian consistency (her legacy), and his initially more positive direction collapsed to orthodoxy.

Peikoff's book, however, still stands as one of the most accurate books ever written about political philosophy (The Ominous Parallels). Read it.

Keep in mind that most of the people on this board are just state-worshipping simpletons throwing pebbles at a target that's not bothering to defend itself. They undoubtedly vote for who mommy and daddy told them to vote for, no matter how many lives it ruins, how many innocent people go to jail, or how many people die for lack of drugs that their uncaring police-state hasn't 'approved' for us serfs yet. These are the stupid bitch college kids that never would have made it to college if it weren't for FAFSA -on the backs of everyone who works for a living. These are the dumbasses who mindlessly come out, like HG Wells' sacrificial Eloi, to vote to maintain the status-quo, without having any comprehension of what the current status-quo is ("I'm comfortable now, so I'll just vote not to change anything, or to investigate what's happening or why"). For instance, they allegedly hate Rand's attacks on altruism as a primary virtue -never refuting the fact that enforced altruism is responsible for vastly more bloodshed than any other philosophy, and that pure altruism (holding others' goals higher than your own) produces economic failure. They even incorrectly compared her views to Soviet style views, out of a mindless desire to smear her, (no doubt for any of a billion contemptible reasons, most of which revolve around misdirected jealousy) --read "We the Living" before you take their assertions at face value.

Nonetheless, the fact that ARI wishes to remain a closed system limits its evolution and effectiveness, and has allowed it to stagnate (as well as marginalized its possible political effectiveness). Thus, for all the people too ignorant of history and logic, there is no current positive example for true capitalists to point to (it's been my experience that when there is a current positive example to point to, it makes the irration about twice as likely to register to vote as a libertarian, or consider doing so with an open mind... "conservative/liberal jackass see, conservative/liberal jackass do --but not before").

For those here who want to begin studying rational philosophical thought, I recommend avoiding all areas of philosophy beyond basic Rand (For the New Intellectual, The Virtue of Selfishness, Capitalism the Unknown Ideal) and Spooner (No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority, An Essay on the Trial by Jury). For online objectiviity, you're better off at David Kelley's "Objectivist Center" http://www.objectivistcenter.org/ . You'd be infinitely better off studying science and actually doing something useful with your time though, even if you're not smart enough to have arrived at individualist objectivity on your own (Without a push from Rand or her conflicted institute).

If you're totally uneducated about economics and politics though, you can't do any better than these links:
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills
http://www.lysanderspooner.org
http://www.cato.org
http://www.movimientolibertario.org
http://www.lp.org
http://www.ij.org
http://www.fija.org
http://www.reviewjournal.com/columnists/suprynowicz.html
http://www.reason.com

Most of you, from the looks of things here, won't be able to understand too much of what you read --but please, invest the time for my sake, and the sake of all the poor people you care about oh so very much (the same ones whose businesses were closed for want of protection pay by your tax-financed thugs, and whose gangbanger kids were miseducated by your crappy collectivized propaganda camps that pass themselves off as 'public' schools, and all the poor people your damned drug-warriors have put behind bars or in the ground with their destructive black market-generating brutality). Then, maybe you could actually contribute a criticism that would have some sort of constructive effect instead of just spouting misplaced hatred for one of the very few philosophers who had a grasp of simple property rights. (The same dwindling property rights that allow you to live.)

The real reason most people on this chatroom are so against a true meritocracy is because they know that if they lived in one, they'd have to work smarter, not harder, and the one thing they fear most is being forced to think in order to survive.

Lots of Love and Good Cheer,

Jake

in your ideal society, what should happen to those who fail?

or is just 'not your problem'?

i mean, i really shouldn't be encouraging you by enganging with your 'ideas' but i want to know how you and your ilk think.