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original:

“That's not true," said Mr. Thompson brightly. "If you had a broken leg, you'd pay a doctor to set it.”

"Not if he was the one who broke it." He smiled at Mr. Thompson's silence.

​

​

'fanfic' version:

“That's not true," said Mr. Thompson brightly. "If you had a broken leg, you'd pay a doctor to set it.”

"Not if he was the one who broke it." He smiled at Mr. Thompson's silence. But then Mr. Thomson thought for a moment and declared "Okay, so suppose I have broken your leg -- want me to set it for you, or do you prefer to remain as you are?"

Galt: Break it.

Thomson: That's fine with me. Get the doctor.

​

​

Rand rightly declared that reason is a choice and implicitly, that force is choice. Thomson in the 1st scenario, the original, is more reasonable (or more cowardly) than a man who could choose force could be. It's written like she has faith in Thomson's 'somehow' not resorting to force will prevail and that for Thomson, his ability to act unreasonable and apply force is NOT a choice; that 'somehow', Galt's manner and nature will take command of the situation and keep Thomson cowardly or meek.

​

So I am wondering: is mr Thomson's non-force a choice (as she explicitly declares it to be) and if it IS a choice, why is he not simply choosing force and not reason and being a psychopath like lightweight Dr. Ferris or worse?

​

FWIW I think I already know the answer, but I want to know what others think more than I want them to know what I think.

To cut to the chase, are there any examples of obectivism put to practice on a socieity level? Maybe a country built on these principles, or some sort of society, to show how objectivism works in practice.

Long story if you want to read: so like I'm just drawing a comic, just for a hobby, and there's this part where the characters visit a lot of different countries, so I'm making a bunch of fictional countries, and then I came across Ayn Rand and her philosophy, and heard about Atlas Shrugged (but didn't really have the time to read it yet it's so long) and from summaries I get the point that Rand is suggesting that a society could be built from her principles, given that the main characters move away at the end of the book (I think?) So it got me interested but from a little searching I didn't come up with a lot of real-life examples of this put to practice, so I'm asking it here.

Wow that was long. Anyway, thank you!

This is one I can’t seem to find any supporting for. That the $ is a “U” over an “S” to mean U.S or (United States). The only other story I can find is that of some pesos story that I find “hard to believe” to say the least. But never the less I was curious if rand story was true however I can’t find any backing to support it

I’ve done some looking and it seems there is no constitutionality for succeeding from the union. But this makes no sense to me. Should it not be a right. The right of voluntary association. To leave a relationship you voluntarily joined and thus be voluntarily allowed to leave? Seems odd that this would not be the case and wouldn’t be a right

For example. Say two parents live in Boston but the mother wants to move to LA for a job. They have a kid. Both of them wants the kid but the father does not want to leave. What would be done? What would the law have to say about this in who keeps the kid?

Just curious if anyone has put any thought into this topic I started on the other day. Whether it be art, music, video games, physical items beyond art. What makes something a masterpiece or not a masterpiece?

So as far as I’ve ever known the statement of “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” has been the mantra. But is this rational? I’m having a hard time saying so that if a group asks for a bus or a plane and has hostages (human life, of which it is meant to protect) it seems a bus is completely rational to give.

But in my mind the ideal play would be to do basically whatever they ask as long as it isn’t giving them a nuke to trade one person for thousands. And then after the trade hunt them down and take the bus. Not simply not negotiate whatsoever

I don't see Ayn Rand being a supporter of the looter and fake christian Donald Trump. Nor do I see her ever supporting Biden. RFK Jr.? A Libertarian candidate? Another party?

How do you see this shaking out? Is there any candidate that you are relatively comfortable with as an Objectivist?

Per Objectivism, there is no such thing as validly fractionally accepting a principle and every practice implies a principle.

But there is such a thing as fractionally accepting something.

Why is it always better to be an absolutist? Presumably, because being partial about the right concepts lets in the wrong concepts, which means being bad and implicitly sanctioning the bad of others.

My question would be: does what counts as bad always remain stably the case that it is bad, and if so, why is that an assured case? In other words why are the 'good' and the 'bad' in the intellectual domain reliably eternal that we might then never need to think further about what is good or bad?

tl;dr why the 'blackness' of non-black and the 'whiteness' of non-white, i.e. morals are not colours?

Would you prefer to describe yourself as an anti-forcer or anti-forcee, i.e. which emphasis makes more sense to you?

Another way of putting it: "stay off my money" types versus "I'll stay off your money" types.

No, these aren't anti-concepts and yes, you can take both, but don't...

This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. This desire to not have kids. I would think. In my mind. That as life is the standard of value to what makes it good that one of the highest values you could ever achieve is that of being able to create more of it yourself and you being the one responsible for it. I would think that would be a likely conclusion to the end of the conceptual chain of living a good life.

So why did Rand choose otherwise?

Like there are tons of paintings and stuff out there of ocean lines and sunsets and stuff but this seemingly doesn’t qualify as “art” under rands definition. That it has a message a theme and an underlying conceptual level of something that it is trying to say. About life or some other topic. What do you call this if it isn’t “art”? Is it wrong to call this art? Because for as long as I can remember anything that is a creation of the mind in some artistic pursuit or expression has always fallen under and called “art” so what else would it be called?

most academics I've talked with think it's a joke but I've yet to read any serious refutations of it from any academic.

Question inspired by the collectivist r/AskReddit post ''When have you seen a community come together in a way that restored your faith in humanity?''

This doesn’t seem to make much sense to me much like the Nazi situation. When you’ve got guys walking around with skulls on your caps you’ve got to wonder if your the bad guys. Some with the confederares. If you biggest backers and supporters of the war are the ones owning people you’ve got to wonder. But not everyone was a slave owner im sure that fought. So why do it? It doesn’t make any sense to me when you don’t gain anything from it. So does anyone know the reasoning for why this is?

I can understand it from a generals standpoint, vaguely. Being an armchair warrior sending others to die might make you think less about the reasons when you don’t pay the price. Ivory tower situation. But for the common man with a musket this doesn’t make any sense to me why you would. And there were so many of them to which makes me even more boggled by this

Anyone agree that in Atlas Shrugged it illustrates that the world is not merely full of predator-like monsters, but a great many prey-like or "bottom-feeding opportunist" monsters in the world as well?

The problem is to naively think the continuum only extends one way and the opposite kind of monster couldn't exist, and that's one thought in my head that I'm glad has forever perished.

Speaking obviously but I'll not resist articulating: on the Objectivist side there's the risk of myopia to predator-like monsters because there is a blend (who knows what ratio... Alan Greenspan seems to think about 2% on Wall Street don't have an evil bone in their body...), which is who and for whom the book (again, obviously) mounts a defense of - and on the common, non-intellectual man's side it's obliviousness to their own potential to collectively become a monster themselves.

To Ayn Rand's mental vision, it was glaringly obvious that they could and had become monsters, and I could relate to a frustration she may have had in not having any power to immediately change them. Perhaps that is why she wrote Atlas?

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I'm in this situation where I'm in a room with a socialist and a few other people on a fixed schedule talking about current world events, and it always turns into a debate between us. His latest argument is that I'm just misinformed, that I'm buying the west's propaganda, even if the west nowadays is closer to his position in most things. We are talking about someone who argues that Ukraine, a country with a Jewish president, is run by literal Nazis.

As frustrating as it is to argue with someone who rejects logic and truth, I find value in these debates. I think I learn a lot about human reasoning and honestly it's kinda funny. But more importantly even if I don't speak up I would still be in a room with someone who claims capitalism doesn't work so I need to debate him or puke immediately, those are my options.

Lately he's just resorted to challenging everything I say even when it's insane to do so, like the conspiracy theorists do. If I say for example that people in South Korea are richer and happier than people in North Korea he won't argue it's the west's fault like most socialists, he's argument is that's not truth and I haven't been there to know if the media is lying about it. My argument is we are all somewhat influenced by propaganda from every side of every issue, but the truth is objective and we should strive to get closer to the truth through logic and diverse sources of information. But to someone who rejects logic to the point of defending socialism, that sounds like I just admitted my sources of information are wrong and he still argues that his are 100% objective and pristine. It's the thing Orwell talked about where he's just consuming propaganda that calls everything else propaganda. He argues every source who disagrees with his "facts" is just lying.

As much as it sounds like his argument is stupid, I can't argue my sources of information are immaculate, and the stupidest arguments are the hardest to debunk. I don't think I've read Rand's take on the issue of the veracity of information but it's a very relevant topic these days. What do you guys think? What's the objectivist point of view on this? And especially how can I argue about it? Everyone in the room is college educated.

The following is purely for the sake of sophistry; to think of how you would rebut the following hypothetical:

You are engaging in a political conference, speaking about the Virtues of Selfishness and Capitalism as the only moral system of economics, when confronted by a Marxist.

The Marxist states that they agree with you, with certain caveats - that those who are producers of value and live independently have rights as humans while those who are dependent upon you do not. The life of dependents is only made possible by the sanction of their victims. They do not have a moral right to make demands upon others. The proper remedy to a parasitic relationship between the productive and non-productive is revolution, using violence if necessary.

Now, I have my own rebuttal to this ethical overlap between Objectivism and Marxism but would generally agree on the principle.

How would you rebut (or affirm) this ethical principle if confronted?

The Randian/Aristotelian purpose of art is that it portray man or the world as they could or should be. Rand writes:

Since a rational man’s ambition is unlimited, since his pursuit and achievement of values is a lifelong process—and the higher the values, the harder the struggle—he needs a moment, an hour or some period of time in which he can experience the sense of his completed task, the sense of living in a universe where his values have been successfully achieved. It is like a moment of rest, a moment to gain fuel to move farther. Art gives him that fuel; the pleasure of contemplating the objectified reality of one’s own sense of life is the pleasure of feeling what it would be like to live in one’s ideal world.

— The Romantic Manifesto (pp. 28-29). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Can you name examples of art that meet this standard? (Apart from Rand’s own fiction, of course.)

For movies, Schindler’s List comes to mind. It’s been ages since I last saw it, but as I recall, Schindler is a hero who fights to help good triumph over evil.

The only genre I can think of that portrays the audience’s ”ideal world” somewhat reliably is romance movies, in that they show some idealized sense of relationships. (I think such movies usually have serious flaws but they do give people, mostly women, “a moment to gain fuel to move” toward their relationship goals.)

Is there any programmer here or someone aquainted with A.I. - in specific NLP - ready for an in-depth discussion?

I have an interesting idea as to how Ayn Rands theory of concepts could play a cruicial role in the epistemology of A.I. systems

I am trying to find a lecture that Dr. Peikoff gave in which one of his audience members asked him a question about "refuting the axioms." Peikoff responded with an answer in which he mentioned that you "cannot refute the axioms." Does anybody know what lecture this was?

Additionally, there was a lecture in which Dr. Peikoff was asked about an epistemological subject and he responded with an answer that included the words "in my opinion." I am wondering if anybody knows of this lecture or if not can anyone tell me what about epistemology is merely an "opinion." My understanding is that epistemology is supposed to be all about how knowledge is acquired not how opinions are made.

People who have bought property don’t truly own it, since they must continue to pay taxes on it. It feels as though we are merely paying the government rent on the items we own. This seems so unjust.

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https://preview.redd.it/egiomt6ipnrc1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=dad484b4e20618527c4ff314019e5d4b1fb0af95

For example, most people on the left simply deny IQ. To them it doesn't make sense at all that black people can earn less than white people or chinese or jews, unless something unfair happened, usually some slavery 300 years ago or some "structural" racism that's hard to measure.

Of course, if you don't deny IQ, then something obvious show up. Group with higher IQ earn more money.

What about the right? Some are young earthers. But what's the point? So what if the earth is young? So christianity is true? I am a libertarian, I don't believe in bible. So? I am quite close to conservative.

War crimes deniers are understandable. What count as war crimes is tricky. War itself is already evil and often unnecessary.

For example, I do not mind seeing bombs falling on Gaza. That's war. Hamas attacked first.

But many things are suspicious. What choices do most of those people in Gaza ever have? Does Israel sell protection service? Do cities in Gaza have option to secede and form defensive pact with Israel? Looks, like the situation is very avoidable. Why isn't that avoided? Is this because Israel governments just want to kick out Gaza people instead of cooperating with Palestinians that want peace?

Most on the right doesn't deny climate change deniers. In general, as a capitalist, I only care about the interests of economically productive people, instead of parasites.

Now tell me, how can economically productive people that can get rich under capitalism, and have 100 years to build wealth for his and his whole family, would suffer due to 2 degree Celsius of earth's temperature's increase? The answer is none.

Anyone here denying evolutionary psychology?

Are there facts we simply disagree with?

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For example say a single mother is a drug addict, or a father a booze abuser. What if any should the process be to have their guardian rights revoked? Is this wrong? Or is this wrong to remove children from those types of parents as a violation of their rights?