Ayn Rand interviewed by James Day


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This is quintessential Ayn Rand. To understand her I don't think I've seen better than this. Her statement that "emotions are not tools of cognition" is exactly and precisely correct and note how she properly integrates that with morality. There is a problem, however. People studying the philosophy frequently use this wrongly to the extent of ignoring emotions as food for cognition to the point of emotional repression and/or emotional denigration. She did this herself--e.g., in AS Dagny is lectured to ignore her emotions if they conflict with her mind. Logically, then, you can let Hank Rearden fly around Colorado for a month looking for you after just giving him one thought in the doing of that. It's so ridiculous it's a reductio ad absurdum on her whole philosopy and not really fair to her or it. It's actually a reductio on her genius, not its fruits.

--Brant

the seduction of first principles can lead you astray and Ayn Rand was a seducer of the first order

this video should be put on the opening page--not just this thread--as a stand alone--so people who had no direct, first-hand experience of her can get instantly oriented when they come to OL

it appears this was done in the early 1970s before she got hit with her major health problems

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I stumbled across this video yesterday. Had not seen it before.

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Curiosity is an emotion the drives cognition. In fact without curiosity there would be very little cognition. Is the motor of a car a tool of its motion?

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Here's part two:

I uploaded this last year. It didn't get much attention on OL, and on OO there wasn't much commentary either. But it has thousands of views on YouTube, and lots of comments there. Here's a favorite exchange:

Pgrisier: It's very short-sighted and irrational in the end for Ayn Rand to conclude that the only rational actions one can take are preservation of ones individual life and well being. Humans live in social systems, where collective action is often the rational way for people to preserve their own lives and well being. Social Security, which she railed against but on which she depended for own life in old age, is a case in point.

HeraclitusPantaRei (yours truly): On what basis do you make the claim that Rand depended on Social Security in her old age? No one questions that she received benefits, or that she paid loads of taxes during her life and thus earned those benefits. But where do you get the idea she depended on it? Have you studied her will? Do you know what her net worth was when she died? Or are you just repeating lies you read on some smear-site?

Now there's something out of the bad vibe universe to share. Another YouTuber downloaded this video and then uploaded it to their channel, with no acknowledgement of where they'd taken it, or even including a 'fair use' notice. When I protested, here's the essence of the response I got:

I have spent more than 4,000 hours and USD500,000 on the project to reintroduce the rule of law into the west again. What have you done?...You men are so disgustingly selfish nowdays.

You can see the whole dialogue here:

http://www.youtube.com/all_comments?v=-U8Zv8VpKmE

How many hours and dollars one must invest before gaining the right to take things from other people without permission is something I'm interested in learning.

Note that if you want to promote someone else's video, you can easily add it to your favorites. And if you really like the content, by all means GET YOUR OWN COPY, CONVERT IT YOURSELF and then upload your own rip. Mine's pretty crappy quality, distinctively so, which is why there's no question what this schmuck did.

Recently the video of Rand's interview with Louis Rukeyser showed up on YouTube. Did I swipe it and upload it to my channel? No, I created threads on OL and OO promoting it, and I added it to my favorites on YouTube. Am I nuts, or is that the way this kind of thing ought to work?

What's funny about all this is that another channel took the Day interview video too, but they didn't just re-upload it, they added Spanish subtitles to it. I posted a comment praising them for having added value to it, I was genuinely happy to see that someone had put in that effort. It's not like I make money from having a YouTube channel (mine have no ads); I'm simply offended by supposed libertarians taking the unearned, even more so when it's openly done in the name of promoting libertarianism.

So, what to do about it. I was planning to do a video about it, I have a lot of ideas about what it will contain, but I haven't found the time. All comments on the schmuck's channel are moderated, so there's no point debating him since he controls the conversation. But if you're so inclined, send him a message. And if you think he's in the right, by all means explain it to me.

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ND: Some pretty original stuff. First for me, in Pt.2 she answers to those barely-credible apologists who always 'blame' her ethics and capitalism on her childhood in the USSR. "I am proud to say it didn't affect me..."

Atta girl! She would of worked it out anywhere in the world.

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