Interesting film about Rand, Greenspan and Clinton

[theeater]

I recently saw this film about Objectivism, Greenspan and the Clinton administration. What are your thoughts on it?

https://thoughtmaybe.com/all-watched-over-by-machines-of-loving-grace/

 

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, theeater said:

I recently saw this film about Objectivism, Greenspan and the Clinton administration. What are your thoughts on it?

https://thoughtmaybe.com/all-watched-over-by-machines-of-loving-grace/

TE,

Welcome to OL.

I saw that years ago, but I would have to refresh my memory to say something intelligent about it. That means, to me, that it did not make much of an impact.

Barbara Branden, back in 2011, had something to say about it (the full thread is here).

On 5/25/2011 at 5:08 AM, Barbara Branden said:

Good grief! I've rarely heard such gibberish. The whole thing is almost completely unintelligible. It sounds as if the present recession -- and the abysmal state of the world in general -- was caused by Ayn's disastrously mistaken view of computers, by her insistence that they would make government and government regulations unnecessary and would turn us all into "Randian heroes." This is, or course, utter nonsense.. Ayn had no such view of computers. In fact , she had no view of computers at all. She died before they had begun to be a part of our daily lives. I doubt if she ever saw a computer, much less used one or philosophized about their effects.

The same poster who opened that thread here also did so on another O-Land forum: All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace.

They discussed this a little more over there.

What's tingling in my memory, after reading through these threads, is that this docu-series was from the early days of Silicon Valley and Rand was very popular with the nerds and geeks back then, especially ones who later became Masters of the Universe.  I also remember some left wing poet who had a good way with words ("machines of loving grace").

But I also remember that the arc of coherence used in constructing the arguments was guilt by free association.

Michael