Ayn Rand And The End Of Love


regi

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1 hour ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

He constantly offers value before asking for value.

This thought deserves a separate post because this marketing principle is really hard for people in our neck of the woods to get right.

The secret is to offer value to strangers to initially attract them, but a value that they want. I constantly see bad marketing by folks offering value that the offerer wants the prospect to have, but something the prospect is not interested in. And what are prospects interested in as offers from strangers? A solution to one of their problems does the trick. (Notice Biddibob's Helpful Links for Authors page. That is a great example of offering a solution--for free--to a problem many prospects have. It also helped in the credibility department and ramps up trust from prospects. But what does Biddibob really want to sell? His fiction books, of course. :) )

After you attract people, then you can start whetting their appetite for your stuff. Humans live in stages of different requirements, even throughout the day, so why not communicate and persuade in different stages? (Besides, a series of stages is precisely the way the human mind processes information.)

Marketers even have a classic acronym to format marketing messages in stages and it works: AIDA--that is, Attract attention by doing and saying things that get attention from human beings, Involve prospects by bonding with them and getting them to lower their default defenses to strangers, Deliver your message--especially in a manner that solves a problem or fulfills a noble mission, Ask for action or tell them what you want them to do (often referred to as a Call to Action). Each of these stages requires a different kind of message and focus, but Rand-oriented people want to use the same bland (or often snarky negative) message for everything.

In fact, Rand-oriented people go one step further (I've seen it several times) and quote Roark from The Fountainhead: "I don't intend to build in order to have clients; I intend to have clients in order to build."

From a life mission perspective, this is fine. It's good to have this level of certainty for your life's work, and especially to become an innovator in a vocation overrun by corruption. From a marketer's perspective, though, this is crap. Only spammers and scammers use this attitude successfully with any consistence as their primary marketing strategy.

It's sad but true. Rand-oriented people generally don't have much capacity to wear two different hats for two different situations. And this, I am certain, is one of the reasons behind the rampant underachievement in O-Land. 

They presume the market will serve them without them having to worry about how to communicate properly with strangers and persuade them. They think a rational argument is all they need. As a creator, it actually is all they need to produce great stuff. As a sales-person, though (to paraphrase one of my favorite inspirational marketers, Zig Ziglar), it is a prescription to have skinny kids.

:)

Learning competence at marketing is not adopting the worldview of Peter Keating. (And whoever doesn't get this has not properly understood Keating's worldview--all they have gotten from Rand's character is a weapon to bash others with when they feel bad and a rationalization to make them feel superior without doing anything.)

Learning competence at marketing is acquiring a human skill--a valuable human skill and one that is necessary for the market to work at all in a large high-tech society with countless sales outlets and intense competition.

Granted, you don't need much marketing skill in a small agricultural village running on horse...

Michael

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14 hours ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

Whoa, completely wrong. The "slicks" (Saturday Evening Post, Collier's) each sold a million copies a week, paid huge sums for short stories. That's how Fitzgerald made a living, certainly not from book royalties.

You are so right!

Both the slicks (literary mags) and pulps were how most writers began their careers and supported themselves. Royalties only came after they became established writers, if they did. Where does a developing writer sell his work today?

These are some writers who got their start in slicks and pulps:

Collier's (1888) Ray Bradbury, Willa Cather, Roald Dahl, Jack Finney, Erle Stanley Gardner, Zane Grey, Ring Lardner, Sinclair Lewis, D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut. (I don't know if Collier's ever published Fitzgerald.)

Saturday Evening Post (1897 discontinuous to present) Ray Bradbury, Agatha Christie, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, C. S. Forester, Robert A. Heinlein, Kurt Vonnegut, Louis L'Amour, John P. Marquand, Edgar Allan Poe, William Saroyan, John Steinbeck, Dorothy Parker, Jack London, and P. G. Wodehouse and Sinclair Lewis' serialized delicious novel, Free Air.

The Smart Set (1900 - 1930) H.L. Mencken, O. Henry, Theodore Dreiser, D. H. Lawrence, Joseph Conrad, William Butler Yeats, Ford Madox Ford, Sinclair Lewis, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Aldous Huxley, Benjamin De Casseres, Eugene O'Neill, Dashiell Hammett, the forgotten James Branch Cabell, and introduced F. Scott Fitzgerald, (with his short story "Babe in the Woods.")

Harper's (1850) Published hundreds of authors including: Horatio Alger, Theodore Dreiser, William Dean Howells, Henry James, Herman Melville, Joyce Carol Oates, J. D. Salinger, John Steinbeck, Hunter S. Thompson, Mark Twain, John Updike, Kurt Vonnegut, and Tom Wolfe.

The Atlantic (1857) Ralph Waldo Emerson; Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; Harriet Beecher Stowe; John Greenleaf Whittier; and James Russell Lowell, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain and many later authors.

Esquire (1930) Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Andre Gide, Julian Huxley, and many later writers.

The New Yorker (1925) Truman Capote, Roald Dahl, Vladimir Nabokov, John O'Hara, Dorothy Parker, Philip Roth, J. D. Salinger, James Thurber, John Updike, Stephen King, E. B. White and Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" which drew more mail than any other story in the magazine's history.

Playboy (1953) Saul Bellow, John Updike, James Dickey, John Cheever, Doris Lessing, Joyce Carol Oates, Vladimir Nabokov, Michael Crichton, Ray Bradbury, John le Carre, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Bernard Malamud, John Irving, and Kurt Vonnegut.

Pulps (1890s to 1950s) Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie, Arthur C. Clarke, Joseph Conrad, Stephen Crane, C. S. Forester, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dashiell Hammett, Robert A. Heinlein, O. Henry, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Upton Sinclair, Mark Twain, H. G. Wells, Tennessee Williams, and hundreds of other authors.

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22 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Tony,

Close, but no cigar.

(btw - What on earth is a "genuine emotion"? Is that the opposite of a fraudulent emotion? And who or what judges this stuff--an emotion bank or emotion cops? :) )

But here's a curve ball. Believe it or not, all our conversations about this stuff has a lot more to do with human memory than anything else. The human cortex provides us with the ability to project into the future. But it did not initiate our memory (which records the past). That started at the single cell level in evolution millions of years ago.

Notice that one big hole in Objectivism is a theory of memory. Rand (in ITOE) proclaimed that sensory input is not stored in memory and that's about that. She gave no indication of where she got that idea or what evidence she based it on. She decreed it and built out her theory of concepts from there. I inferred that percepts, to her, are the first instances of human memory, but she never said that explicitly. Here is her exact quote (ITOE, Chapter 1, already in the third paragraph): 

Then she held a newborn infant to an adult standard of awareness and proclaimed:

There is so much wrong with this, it's hard to know where to start. "As far as can be ascertained"? Ascertained by whom? Rand never says. But certainly not by the scientists who study newborns that I have read (even from her time). And on and on.

The most serious layman level problem with her claim comes when a newborn receives the first smack on it's bottom and cries out. That smack is it's first "born" conscious awareness experience of a sensation and in every example I have ever seen or heard of, that is not an "undifferentiated chaos." It hurts like hell and the baby lets everyone know very clearly that it's pissed about it. :) 

How's that for wedding cognitive identification of a sensation to emotion right from the beginning of "born" conscious awareness?

:) 

Seriously, you need to read more about emotions to understand this stuff correctly. (That sounds condescending, but that's not my intent.) Like I had been during so many years, you are in "deduce reality from principles mode" (in fact, just like Rand did in her quotes) when there is a ton of observable stuff to look at that does not behave the way you say (or the way she says, for that matter). And this observable stuff is understandable by lay people and repeatable. In other words, it is subject to the rigors of reason, not dogma.

(Dogma, to me, is a set of principles running hogwild over reason. :) )

This is one of the things I mean by getting out of the bubble. You have to look and identify, then evaluate, not do it in the reverse direction.

btw - In addition to the book on emotions I recommended, here is a wonderful book on memory and it is quite practical: Impossible to Ignore: Creating Memorable Content to Influence Decisions by Carmen Simon. Since you like to start with principles rather than observe instances (this is not a criticism--I used to be like that for years, it's a downside of a principle-heavy philosophy like Objectivism, although this habit is not limited to Objectivism), you will probably like Carmen Simon's approach. Besides, she's pretty. :) 

Here is principle number one from her: "People act on what they remember, not on what they forget." In other words, you cannot influence anyone with a message unless you can get them to remember it. People are not influenced by messages they forget. :) 

For starting from a principle, that's a pretty good one. We can at least observe that in our own behavior our entire lives. It's kinda "duh" level, but you will not find it taught by Rand or Objectivist intellectuals. They simply don't have much to say about memory, yet memory is the foundation of learning, experience and projecting into the future, i.e., the foundation of ALL chosen values. And chosen values are the core of rational ethics in Objectivism. That's quite a foundational hole to skip over...

Back to emotions. They are totally intertwined with memory and, as such, they are the actual building blocks of concepts. (I'm not denigrating Rand's algebra component, though. That, to me, is a genius level insight about higher abstractions.)

Here's something for you to chew on. Did you know that your gut stores and operates memory? Yup. That's right where poop is processed and expelled. There are neural pathways from there straight to the brain, too. But wait! There's more! Did you know that your gut generates emotion? Yup. Emotion. And fundamental components of a whole slew of emotions. There is a reason for the term "gut feeling."

I could go on and on... Seriously, take a look at the things I am talking about. I'm not trying to persuade you. I'm just trying to get you to look... to look at something you don't even imagine exists right now--not exists in a form that is easily observable by you and everyone, otherwise I believe you would look. The reason I say this is you keep going back to Rand-like principles and ignoring the rest when I bring it up.

Once you see the science and this other stuff for real and I don't have to keep hammering the subtext that this stuff exists, then we will probably have some very good substantive discussions. I am not at all interested in overthrowing Rand and I feel you will be a great ally in framing her observations and claims to fit the science as much as possible. I believe there is great value to doing this, especially since Rand's frameworks are easily learned by lay people. If you want to influence people, that's a really good thing. Besides, I'm a glass half-full kind of guy so I want to extract all the value from Rand possible and not let people dismiss her good stuff because of something where she's wrong.

Michael

Michael, by "genuine", I mean an emotion - unlike curiosity - which as you've heard is the fundamental drive "to know". :) Who "judges" - naturally oneself, for one's knowledge and good.  

There is the philosophy which nearly always is "meta-science", antecedent to the science, and this is a case in point. Because, there is not any mutual incompatibility between the brain science of emotions and Rand's theory. They are inclusive theories.

To Rand, by the cause of our conscious (or subconscious, if permitted) system of values and disvalues - we self-program *which* (automated)emotions we will consequently have to what situations arise in future. And a flow of chemicals in the brain is the physical manifestation - and strong, mental, final effect of - those values: An emotion. Mind -> endorphins. That's the marvel of it, our minds (reason, thinking and values - or irrationality and sub-values) directly influence our bodies. 

An example (of so many situations I've forgotten most). I recall clearly several times we taking the dogs out, and sitting at a pavement cafe. They would be held on a short leash, behaving themselves and laying quietly. Down the pavement would come a youngster who'd go straight to the dogs with a welcoming smile, chatting to them and wanting to stroke them. A little later, along comes another young person who freezes, turns pale and shows her fear of the dogs by nervously skirting far around them.

Same circumstance, different responses. Why? One can deduce with certainty that the first kid had been habituated to dogs/animals (dogs at home, taught by parents or friends that dogs are benign and friendly) and had never once perceived them as a threat. The other, had either been taught that all dogs are a danger to run from, or had possibly once been bitten by one, or similar.

Corresponding with the brain chemical theory, for one child, there's observable fear - when adrenalin (etc.) kicks in; while the other clearly shows only pleasure in the sight of dogs, as she experiences the effects of her personal cocktail of chemicals, oxytocin, seratonin etc.

But crucially - each distinct endorphin cocktail is a faithful, automated response to the personal ~value/disvalue-judgment~ that each child had previously experienced, thought about, and/or been psychologically implanted and conditioned to. There can't be another explanation for such individual reactions to the exact same situation. Different values. That's irrefutable when one considers how often it is another person can respond with plainly different emotions to oneself.

Rand deserves a grand hat-tip, she didn't know or have to know "the science" to be able to introspect this discovery, which neuroscientists and some psychologists are only catching up on lately: Our minds cause our actions - and our emotions - and there is no duality between biology and consciousness. (And 'neural pathways' and so on, bear her out)

(of course this goes also for internal "threats", when the body is hurting or in dis-ease, appropriate endorphins signal the physical distress to us, that we call a negative emotion.

"...that which is *for* him or *against* him -- lightning calculators giving him the sum of his profit or loss...".

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18 hours ago, regi said:

It's the unfortuante way I was brought up. I was taught it was impolite to ignore others. I was simpy trying to acknowledge your interest. It's the only reason for this reply as well.

Randy

OMG, why are you obsessed with me? You're so bothered and disturbed by my comments! You shouldn't let others' opinions matter that much to you! Start living your own life, and gain the courage to not be concerned with what other people think. 

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7 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Wolf,

It's probably the marketing since your stuff is good.

I suggest you study what Robert Bidinotto does re market. He makes it as a self-published author by doing all the right things. For instance, he networks like crazy. He keeps up several web presences and makes efforts to get traffic to them. He constantly offers value before asking for value. He keeps up on industry news and takes advantage of new promotion opportunities. He has a strong notion of who his target audience is and he formats most of his messages to the values and habits of that persona. And so on.

He does all this so well, he even manages to hold and preach some rather obnoxious and not well-reasoned prejudices about sundry things and is still quite successful. (To be fair, I agree with about 80% of his positions, which he presents brilliantly.)

On his blog he has a page called Helpful Links for Authors. It's quite a helpful list. Stuff like that makes people want to show up. (In some marketing quarters, this is called a traffic magnet.) When you set one up, you make sure information about your own works are easily within reach and Robert does this correctly.

In other words, if you ever decide to reverse engineer the market processes of a successful fiction writer from our neck of the woods, he is a good example to look at. Make a list of the things I mentioned above (and other things you find on the Helpful Links for Authors page) and ask yourself as you go along, how is Robert doing this? What is he doing? Am I looking at a weak example of this item or a strong example? What results is he getting from this item? And so on. It's uncomfortable to do this at first, but like all new skills, it gets easier with time as competence grows.

Michael

Good advice, but, unfortunately, "Wolf" is not one to listen to feedback.

There's some talent there, in the rough, but the fantasy impedes fulfillment of the potential. "Wolf" leaves the stone uncut, unpolished, and is then at a loss as to why no shops will display it, and no ladies dream to wear it. He hand-paints "Glamour Rock 4 Sale" using leftover wall paint on a scrap of filthy cardboard, staples it to a stick, and drives the stick into the ground at the end of his driveway. And he waits. He speaks, to anyone who will listen, of Piaget, Cartier and Buccellati as peers, colleagues, equals.

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5 hours ago, anthony said:

Michael, by "genuine", I mean an emotion - unlike curiosity...

Tony,

You already lost me.

But I won't belabor it.

A friendly word of advice. It will sound snarky and I don't mean it to, but what the hell...

When you talk to someone who knows about neurochemicals, even a little bit (as I consider my own knowledge so far), if I were you, I would avoid talking about endorphins until I learned a little bit about them. :) Seriously. You managed to mangle the crap out of them. :) 

Just so you know, endorphins exist to numb your perception of pain in an emergency. The survival value is to allow you to get away from a threat without being paralyzed by pain. For example, people who get shot generally don't perceive the pain immediately and often express surprise about it. (That is until the endorphins wear off and it hurts like hell. :) ) Animals who get mauled in a fight and survive (including humans) don't feel much pain until later. This is due to endorphins and it gives them an emergency anesthetic so they can get the hell out of there. For instance, if you get a leg chewed off, you can still make do with your other members to escape. When endorphins are released, it's like nature is saying do the important stuff like survive--there's plenty of time for suffering later.

Part of the pain-killing properties of endorphins is a narcotic-like light pleasure. If you have ever experienced a second wind, that is your endorphins kicking in. Notice that the pain in your side not only goes away, you get what is called a "runner's high." You can also get endorphins artificially by eating chocolate (and some other forms). In this case, you don't need pain to experience the pleasant part of the effect.

And speaking of pleasant, here's a real pleasant thought. If you ever get eaten by a giant shark, you probably won't have enough time to feel pain before you die. Doesn't that make you feel better? :) 

Since you keep ignoring my book recommendations, try looking into Dr. Loretta Graziano Breuning. She wrote some fantastic books for lay readers, but I have something even easier for you to get an introduction--and a very light introduction at that. Here she is giving a presentation presumably for an audience of young people. And she is having a ball doing it (in a school play kind of way). She certainly doesn't act like a PhD in this video. :) 

I interact with her once in while on Facebook and she has shown up here on OL under a pseudonym. (She still probably thinks I don't know. :) ) But it's been a while since she has posted.

At least with this video you will not be bored and will get correct information. So you can start to build on that.

At least you can watch a short video before going back to deducing reality from principles, right?

:) 

Michael

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Here's a little useless information on magazine distribution for anyone who might be interested.

Many magazines (including slicks) and pulps tanked in the 1950's because of real estate deals involving American Distribution, which at the time, used trains to deliver magazines all over America to its warehouses in the middle of many American cities.

After WWII, the land value in cities appreciated so much, some smart Wall Street people bought American Distribution (a public traded corporation at the time), closed it down, fired everyone, and sold the warehouse land for a killing. The new owners destroyed the warehouses and erected other developments like skyscrapers and stores.

Since American Distribution owned about half the market share for the entire country, in one fell swoop, the American magazine and pulp publishing industry became crippled for a time.

There's a lesson in this tale. If you are a producer, never take the critical structures between you and your customers for granted. Many authors, editors, etc., did take distribution for granted back then, they didn't even think about it, and they lost their livelihoods when American Distribution was abolished.

Michael

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10 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I suggest you study what Robert Bidinotto does

I'm aware of him, 300+ reviews on Amazon, master salesman, shitty author (personal opinion). Last night I was distraught and couldn't sleep, perfectly aware of my situation, zero sales, I mean absolutely zero on a dozen titles. Amazon has everything backwards, the book I promoted most vigorously buried on page 2. Spent serious money for IngramSpark distribution and a PW review, got totally shafted on Portrait of Valor. However. Today was another day of writing, as all of my days are. That's the only way to write a book, and I'm an extremely slow writer. About 2 pm today something good happened. This is what I posted on FB a few minutes ago:

Quote

Wrote the scene where Peachy tells Monica that she traced the adoptive parents and knows where her firstborn is, a baby that Monica gave up for adoption 20 years ago. What a powerful page, burst into tears, couldn't go on, quit for the day. When that happens, I know it's a keeper.

 

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Wiki. Emotions:

Cognitive theories[edit]

With the two-factor theory now incorporating cognition, several theories began to argue that cognitive activity in the form of judgments, evaluations, or thoughts were entirely necessary for an emotion to occur. One of the main proponents of this view was Richard Lazarus who argued that emotions must have some cognitive intentionality. The cognitive activity involved in the interpretation of an emotional context may be conscious or unconscious and may or may not take the form of conceptual processing.

Lazarus' theory is very influential; emotion is a disturbance that occurs in the following order:

  1. Cognitive appraisal—The individual assesses the event cognitively, which cues the emotion.
  2. Physiological changes—The cognitive reaction starts biological changes such as increased heart rate or pituitary adrenal response.
  3. Action—The individual feels the emotion and chooses how to react.

For example: Jenny sees a snake.

  1. Jenny cognitively assesses the snake in her presence. Cognition allows her to understand it as a danger.
  2. Her brain activates adrenaline gland which pumps adrenaline through her blood stream resulting in increased heartbeat.
  3. Jenny screams and runs away.

Lazarus stressed that the quality and intensity of emotions are controlled through cognitive processes. These processes underline coping strategies that form the emotional reaction by altering the relationship between the person and the environment.

 

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James–Lange theory[edit]

Main article: James–Lange theory

In his 1884 article[43] William James argued that feelings and emotions were secondary to physiological phenomena. In his theory, James proposed that the perception of what he called an "exciting fact" directly led to a physiological response, known as "emotion."[44] To account for different types of emotional experiences, James proposed that stimuli trigger activity in the autonomic nervous system, which in turn produces an emotional experience in the brain. The Danish psychologist Carl Lange also proposed a similar theory at around the same time, and therefore this theory became known as the James–Lange theory. As James wrote, "the perception of bodily changes, as they occur, is the emotion." James further claims that "we feel sad because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and either we cry, strike, or tremble because we are sorry, angry, or fearful, as the case may be."[43]

An example of this theory in action would be as follows: An emotion-evoking stimulus (snake) triggers a pattern of physiological response (increased heart rate, faster breathing, etc.), which is interpreted as a particular emotion (fear). This theory is supported by experiments in which by manipulating the bodily state induces a desired emotional state.[45] Some people may believe that emotions give rise to emotion-specific actions, for example, "I'm crying because I'm sad," or "I ran away because I was scared." The issue with the James–Lange theory is that of causation (bodily states causing emotions and being a priori), not that of the bodily influences on emotional experience (which can be argued and is still quite prevalent today in biofeedback studies and embodiment theory)

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The Behaviorist versus the Cognitivist. 

William James: 'The perception of bodily changes, as they occur, *is* the emotion". 

"...we feel sad because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble..." Whaaat?

This - was the "Father of American psychology"...?! (And Pragmatist with Dewey and of influence on Rorty). How could his reversals of emotional cause and effect ever be taken seriously?

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1 hour ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

No, not necessarily

Wolf,

Of course necessarily.

I was talking about my point in my post. My own thinking is totally necessary for me.

My comment from the post you quoted was in response to a subtext of pretentious vanity in a comment to my post. 

My point in studying neurons on the hippocampus was not to airily dismiss humanity as "smutty"--as in the comment--as I burped and congratulated myself once more on upholding the lonely rigors of martyrdom against the mindless human cattle.

:)

Michael

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Jonathan’s last post is a nasty projection.  It makes me sick.

Bidinotto is a good essayist but judging from the free excerpts a crummy fiction writer.  Besides, I wouldn’t care for a novel with a CIA agent as a hero or heroine unless he or she was an innocent discovering corruption within the agency.  In Bidinotto’s case the race was not to the swift.

Mark

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2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Tony,

At least with this video you will not be bored and will get correct information. So you can start to build on that.

At least you can watch a short video before going back to deducing reality from principles, right?

:) 

Michael

1

Nope, I got bored. ;)

But I did deduce principles from reality - my dogs and the children, and many instances I've observed. Whichever way it goes, endorphins (I said, wrongly) or via "heart-rate and pituitary-adrenal glands", you have missed my point.

Value-judgments causally affect and determine emotions.

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Tony,

Another suggestion.

Give Wikipedia a rest. You are flopping all over the place trying to prove you know things you still need to learn about. Have you ever read or studied William James and the others mentioned in your copy/pasting from Wikipedia? Have you read anything by BF Skinner? Hell, have you read Rand's four Ayn Rand Letters on Skinner? (They are consolidated in one article called "The Stimulus and the Response" in Philosophy: Who Needs It.)

But this is just a suggestion. Of course, do as you please.

:)

Michael

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35 minutes ago, anthony said:

...you have missed my point...

Tony,

Of course I didn't miss your point.

I disagree with it because it is not based on the reality of the brain and neural biology. And I invited you to learn more about what you don't know (which I determined from the way you wrote about these things).

35 minutes ago, anthony said:

Value-judgments causally affect and determine emotions.

In lobsters, too?

Lobsters feel emotions, especially through serotonin during dominance rituals. Exactly the same serotonin as in humans and it produces exactly the same effect. And, as Jordan Peterson likes to point out, lobsters go back about 350 million years in evolution, before trees.

:)

Do lobsters--to you--make human-like value judgments?

:)

Michael

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6 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Tony,

Another suggestion.

Give Wikipedia a rest. You are flopping all over the place trying to prove you know things you still need to learn about. Have you ever read or studied William James and the others mentioned in your copy/pasting from Wikipedia? Have you read anything by BF Skinner? Hell, have you read Rand's four Ayn Rand Letters on Skinner? (They are consolidated in one article called "The Stimulus and the Response" in Philosophy: Who Needs It.)

But this is just a suggestion. Of course, do as you please.

:)

Michael

Michael: Basic Wikipedia background, which demonstrates how much behaviorism has caught on . (All those primacy of emotion "snowflakes" feeling sad because they cry...I understand better.) 

Are you maintaining that value-judgments do, or do not determine one's emotions?

I don't need to "prove" it, I know it.

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2 minutes ago, anthony said:

Are you maintaining that value-judgments do, or do not determine one's emotions?

Tony,

If you are talking about value judgments as Rand used the term for humans, no, they do not determine emotions. (Some do, but the reverse is also true for some--that is some emotions determine some value-judgments.)

As the saying goes, correlation is not necessarily causation.

If you are talking about plants seeking sunshine the way she did in The Virtue of Selfishness, these innate food and avoid predator behaviors determine some basic emotions once a nervous system evolves, but not all.

4 minutes ago, anthony said:

I don't need to "prove" it, I know it.

I don't argue matters of faith.

I have no wish it insult anyone's religion.

:evil:  :)

Michael

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33 minutes ago, Mark said:

Bidinotto is a good essayist but judging from the free excerpts a crummy fiction writer.

Mark,

I have the exact opposite impression. I find him a so-so essayist who prefers to preach to a choir rather than persuade or probe an idea. I don't ever expect compilations of his essays to be a thing.

I find his fiction writing very good for the vengeance stories he creates. I can easily see his Hunter character turning into a film or TV franchise like Paul Kersey (portrayed by Charles Bronson) did in the Death Wish series.

Michael

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1 hour ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

Effing brill, refreshingly original

Wolf,

I don't understand the hostility.

Vigilante porn :) is a target market. (And I don't mean sex...)

He serves it well.

I don't think his purpose is to be a literature innovator or highbrow stylist. I think it's to be a storyteller and entertain his market. He produces a good product for his market and he markets it well. His fans love it. He makes money honestly--he even eats his own intellectual dog food, so he's not being a sell-out.

Capitalism...

What's wrong with that?

I can think of some authors who are not good for real. For example, I recently read a thriller called Law and Disorder by Mike Papantonio. The plot points were OK but his characters were awful. It was like paint-by-the-number writing to promote a political agenda (progressivism in his case). I could almost see him with a checklist from Save the Cat (for the reader, this is a formulaic screenwriting book that is easy to abuse), then sighing and wondering when he would be done as he had to fill out each story beat with something that looked like fiction.

I read it because I've seen him speak on video and I wanted to get a feel for how a person puts those ideas into fiction. As I learned, as a thriller writer, Papantonio is a decent speaker on video. :) 

I also read The Circle by Dave Eggers. This guy has no notion about human nature, at least not in this book. His characters bounced between pure cardboard and suddenly doing stuff out of character to meet or explain a plot point. The saving grace was his world of social media gone terribly wrong. That got Eggers a movie with Tom Hanks in it.

There are others, but if I want to go real crazy with an example, I've tried to read Irene Iddesleigh by Amanda McKittrick Ros several times. I always start cracking up in the middle and can't continue. Someday, I will get through the whole thing. I swear I will... :)  

But that's for fun. You just can't beat passages like this from her: 

Quote

When on the eve of glory, whilst brooding over the prospects of a bright and happy future, whilst meditating upon the risky right of justice, there we remain, wanderers on the cloudy surface of mental woe, disappointment and danger, inhabitants of the grim sphere of anticipated imagery, partakers of the poisonous dregs of concocted injustice. Yet such is life.

Or like the following:

Quote

"Am I to foster the opinion that you treat me thus on account of not sharing so fully in your confidence as it may be, another?

"Or is it, can it be, imaginative that you have reluctantly shared, only shared, with me that which I have bought and paid for fully?

"Can it be that your attention has ever been, or is still, attracted by another, who, by some artifice or other, had the audacity to steal your desire for me and hide it beneath his pillaged pillow of poverty, there to conceal it until demanded with my ransom?

"Speak! Irene! Wife! Woman! Do not sit in silence and allow the blood that now boils in my veins to ooze through cavities of unrestrained passion and trickle down to drench me with its crimson hue!"

:) 

Michael

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