The Atlas Shrugged sequence is actually happening

Greenspan was rightly here disciple - one in her choir of tight-knit followers.
Later he departed from the flock, and Objectivists shun Greenspan nowadays - see www.capmag.com and Salsman.

Greenspan got involved in the building of castles-in-the-sky by straying from the hard-core capitalism and into corruption of minds through smokes-and-mirror capitalism.

Absolutely - there are absolutely no absolutes in the universe - that is absolutely true ... :p
And morals are for religious people - other people adhere to ethics, and don't mind what people think - but respect their individuality.


Nature by evolution and adaptation, and ecosystems that are sustainable - all work... I hope everyone understands that.
I read LewRockwell and CapMag as well - although I'm not libertarian or Objectivist. Important to stay oriented and intellectually alert.
 
Quote from Gringinho:

Greenspan was rightly here disciple - one in her choir of tight-knit followers.
Later he departed from the flock, and Objectivists shun Greenspan nowadays - see www.capmag.com and Salsman.

Greenspan got involved in the building of castles-in-the-sky by straying from the hard-core capitalism and into corruption of minds through smokes-and-mirror capitalism.

Absolutely - there are absolutely no absolutes in the universe - that is absolutely true ... :p
And morals are for religious people - other people adhere to ethics, and don't mind what people think - but respect their individuality.


Nature and ecosystems that are sustainable work... I hope everyone understands that.
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my point is that her objectivism never worked anywhere but inside her circle-jerk and for selling books

one of her disciples was placed in the ultimate position to 'road test' the philosophy, and when the rubber hit the road it fell apart

I dont buy that 'it's a personal greenspan anomoly' - I think that for whatever reason, it doesnt hold up in the real world

With such a perfect real world opportunity to showcase the philosphy, and such catastrophic consequences, there's no 'do overs'

lot's of people would like 'do overs'

the completely fucked taxpayer, for instance
 
I totally agree.
Objectivism is more about cult-followers. Impressionable young people becoming infatuated.
They use strong logics - but we who know logic a little better know about Gödel's incompleteness theorem and model theory.
 
Quote from Gringinho:

I totally agree.
Objectivism is more about cult-followers. Impressionable young people becoming infatuated.
They use strong logics - but we who know logic a little better know about Gödel's incompleteness theorem and model theory.
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Gödel's incompleteness theorem concerns homogenic sets such as the natural numbers. It shows that certain statements about the natural numbers can be proven to be neither true or false.

If you feel that this theory justifies you in throwing logic overboard then you can do so at your own peril.
 
Quote from FerdinandAlx:

After listening for a few evenings, I showed my logical-positivist colors. I don’t recall the topic being discussed, but something prompted me to postulate that there are no moral absolutes. Ayn Rand pounced. “How can that be?”

“Because to be truly rational, you can’t hold a conviction without significant empirical evidence,”

“How can that be?” she asked again. “Don’t you exist?”

“I ... can’t be sure,” I admitted.

“Would you be willing to say you don’t exist?”

“I might....”

“And by the way, who is making that argument?”

Maybe you had to be there – or, more to the point, maybe you had to be a twenty-six-year-old math junkie – but this exchange really shook me. I saw she was quite effectively demonstrating the self-contradictory nature of my position. ... It dawned on me that a lot of what I’d decided was true was probably just plain wrong. Of course, I was too stubborn and embarrassed to concede immediately; instead, I clammed up.

Rand came away from that evening with a nickname for me. She dubbed me “the Undertaker,” partly because my manner was so serious and partly because I always wore a dark suit and tie. Over the next few weeks, I later learned, she would ask people, “Well, has the Undertaker decided he exists yet?” (p. 41)

Taken from "How Alan Greenspan Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the State" which in turn took it from Greenspan's book.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/long/long19.html
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No different than Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy.
 
Quote from Gringinho:

I have some friends who go to the Objectivist annual conference in the US every year, and I talked to them, unfalteringly and fiercely loyal as they are to Objectivism.

I think that "the common good of capitalism" is isomorphic to the integrity and sustainability in a systems model of Laissez-faire. I disagree strongly with a number of points in Objectivism, and Ayn Rand was a miserable being with regards to her personal life... but of course she had some good points. In my epistemology research I did follow Objectivism very far down to find out what really makes sense, but in the end found it to be flawed.

Objectivism is very strong on logics, and that is something I like. That is also the appeal to many young newcomers - and later indoctrinated into Objectivism. And that cult-feeling of Objectivism is something I never can accept - strongly individual as I am. Objectivists read their books like it was a bible and never adapt to anything - just apply. Most Objectivists fail in debating at some point, beause they need to "refer to their books" - unable to think and reason for themselves - but enthralled in their books and seminars. They can be loyal followers, but fail to lead and innovate - that is their social psyche flaw.

The aggression in Objectivism is the strongest objection that I have, and also the thing that makes Objectivism very far right-wing.
Sustainable systems are much more about preserving integrity and allowing consensual evolution to happen, by adaption.
Objectivism would fail by their aggression to be able to keep stability, but would like the Neocons just become polarizing.
:)
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<p>I know very little about Charles Dickens or if he had a philosophy.

I know his works in literature were works of art and detailed and described truths that were universal.

In that light, I could care less about who Ayn Rand was, and what philosophy she developed and promoted.

I have read many great great works of literature, and Atlas Shrugged CANNOT be denied its place in 20th century American literature. I have great fondness for Sinclair Lewis and Main Street and Babbitt in particular but Atlas Shrugged is every bit as significant.

She NAILED so many truthes in that book, that is not fair to judge her apart from what she really was, and that was an American novelist of the HIGHEST order.

Those who get lost in her eccentric personna and contrived philosophy are just that, LOST.

I say put the ad hominen aside, and admit Atlas Shrugged is an extraordinary work of art, whose time was then and NOW, and like all works of art span time.

Atlas Shrugged nailed some universal truthes of human nature, and boys like Jorge, Hank, and Bennie only serve to prove its timelessness.
 
Quote from FerdinandAlx:

Gödel's incompleteness theorem concerns homogenic sets such as the natural numbers. It shows that certain statements about the natural numbers can be proven to be neither true or false.

If you feel that this theory justifies you in throwing logic overboard then you can do so at your own peril.
More...

See model theory - the implications of Incompleteness is that no logical system can contain/model "everything".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predicate_logic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deductive_system
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundness

And for logics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propositional_logic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_logic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraconsistent_logic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialethism

As you can see - there is much to "logic"... much more than "people in the street" understand :p
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_bivalence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degree_of_truth
 
Objectivism makes an incredibly strong case concerning the objectivity of moral judgments. The argument that certain values (or lack thereof) will contribute to a certain breakdown of any social system is the strongest case made against ethical relativism that I've come across thus far.
 
Quote from FerdinandAlx:

Objectivism makes an incredibly strong case concerning the objectivity of moral judgments. The argument that certain values (or lack thereof) will contribute to a certain breakdown of any social system is the strongest case made against ethical relativism that I've come across thus far.
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Morality - what others think you should do, social control, collective opinionating, forced consensus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shame_society
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilt_society
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality

Morality comes from religion and other authoritarian control. Period!
Objectivism is an aggressive form for philosophy - but admittedly strong on logics. In politics they are extreme far right-wing.

Ethics - how to best do some action
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-level_utilitarianism (my favourite approximation)
 
Ayn Rand was a good writer.
Atlas Shrugged is a compelling, well-written masterpiece of literature, fiction but still takes the moral point across.

I was not saying the book was crap.

There... happy?
:D
 
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