Off to Vegas for Free Minds 09 & Freedom Fest

[Philip Coates]

> Phil has blown off everybody it seems because the "BEST MINDS" he wants to address don't really exist [brant]

Of course they do. They have throughout history.

> Lots of lemons out there. Make some goddam lemonade. [ginny]

What do you think I'm doing by making an 'end run' around the lemons - and trying to address a different audience? Did you miss that part???

> I get a sense of an awful lot of anger and blaming.

Anger and blaming are objective and appropriate evaluations and human emotions. I'm sorry if that's all you got out of my long and rather detailed 'personal history'.

[ginny]

Mr. Coates, I apologize for getting snippy with a complete stranger. I hate doing that. The subject is clearly painful to you. You did post, and all I wanted to do was indicate how much of "everyone's been mean" came through for me.

The world can be mean. I sincerely wish you the best. I believe Michael has suggested a great opportunity. Perhaps you'll consider it.

[Philip Coates]

> I believe Michael has suggested a great opportunity. Perhaps you'll consider it.

Thanks, ginny.

As I said, and for all the reasons I gave, I think my -best- opportunity is to concentrate my time and efforts pretty single-mindedly on producing a book and articles aimed at a wider non-Objectivist audience.

[James Heaps-Nelson]

The best minds are out there. Take Antonio Damasio, he simply reads Spinoza instead of Rand. Many, like Jack Wheeler has mentioned, find the Rand tone tough to take.

I think they (many of those who are familiar with Rand) also compare what they do when they come up with their best insights and it doesn't feel very much to them like Rand's rationality. I like Phil's idea of a taxonomy of causality, maybe a taxonomy of genius is also called for :-).

I've spent a couple of days driving across the country (in Ohio now) listening to the Eagles Greatest Hits. It looks just like it did before Obama got elected, much better than Washington D.C. :-).

Jim

[Philip Coates]

> I've spent a couple of days driving across the country (in Ohio now) listening to the Eagles Greatest Hits.

Sounds idyllic.

Each time I've slowed down and taken a week or two weeks to drive or take a train across the country, and watch the land slowly change, I've been reminded again what a breathtakingly beautiful country we live in. (Plus good music on the car radio. Nothing beats it.)

There's a verse from a Robert Service poem that applies, especially when you get off the main road to where the scenery is (he was talking about Alaska and the Yukon):

"It's the great, big, broad land 'way up yonder'

It's the forest where silence has lease

It's the beauty which fills me with wonder

It's the silence that fills me with peace."

[Barbara Branden]

Phil, it sounds to me as if you are painting yourself into a corner, facing the possibility of never putting your ideas out into the world. You don't want to go with Objectivist venues. Do you realize how terribly difficult it is to break into philosophical journals and into mainstream publications? It isn't only Will Thomas who is concerned with credentials and degrees.

You wrote: "Robert, that's why the single best venue is the non-fiction book. It's appeal is to those in all different intellectual niches. If it's written in a broad 'public intellectual, non-specialized, non-niche style." Yes, that is the single best venue. Have you made any moves in that direction? From observing your writing, I conclude that that's the style that is most natural for you, and I hope that's the style in which you've been formulating your theories. Have you made any contacts in the world of mainstream publishing? Do you have or are you looking for an agent? To break into that world with a book on philosophy will be extremely difficult; there, too, you will find a concern with credentials, and, most particularly, with prior publications and past successes.

You say that "It's crucial to me not just to see my words in print and be read by a dozen or so academics, but to REACH THE BEST MINDS. And have a good (and professional) feedback mechanism for interaction. Not just smoke and mirrors and cranky old men." Of course that's what you want; it's what every writer wants. But you can't start there. You have to be like the storytellers of old, going from campfire to campfire spinning your tales -- in your case, your ideas -- to whomever willl iisten.

Therefore, I return to the blog idea. You may start with a very small audience, but if you're really good, that audience will grow; there are examples of that happening all over the Internet. If your audience grows, that could eventually be your doorway into mainstream publishing, But you have start somewhere. In conjunction with a blog, I would recommend as well that you publish whenever you can, wherever you can. Many small audiences add up to a single large and impressive audience.

Phil, you have people right here on OL who would like to help, myself among them. Don't lump us in with the people who have disappointed you. Take advantage of offers to help. Perhaps some of us will disappoint you; but perhaps some of us won't.

Barbara

[Philip Coates]

Barbara, as usual, you make many thoughtful and perceptive (and mature ;) ) points.

Let me mull your post over a bit more, so I can give as much thought to replying as you did to writing.

[Jonathan]

Here's my story:

Part 1.

When I was in kindergarten, I figured out how to square the circle, double the cube, and trisect any angle with a compass and straightedge. Pretty easy stuff, really...

More to come in Part 2.

[Jonathan]

Part 2.

...When I showed my solutions to my kindergarten teacher, she didn't understand what I had accomplished. She didn't praise me for my brilliance, and that hurt my feelings.

I haven't gotten over it, so I'm not going to share my solutions with the world, unless a respected scholarly publication run by the best minds begs me to let them publish my work. But then I might turn them down to see if they'll beg me some more. I'm not sure yet, but I think that I'll probably only allow my solutions to be published by organizations which have standards that I and my work don't meet...

To be continued in Part 3.

[Dragonfly]

Here's my story:

Part 1.

When I was in kindergarten, I figured out how to square the circle, double the cube, and trisect any angle with a compass and straightedge. Pretty easy stuff, really...

More to come in Part 2.

[Selene]

Oh I can see this is going to be a real good mud wrestling match.

[algernonsidney]

When I was in kindergarten, I figured out how to square the circle, double the cube, and trisect any angle with a compass and straightedge. Pretty easy stuff, really.

I don't believe that the angle trisection problem has ever been solved.

Blame your mom and dad for sending you to the god-forsaken place. I will never send my kids to a school if I can help it.

Perhaps someone should award an X-Prize for it.

Edited July 16, 2009 by Chris Baker

[Jonathan]

Part 3.

I've also solved the problem of perpetual motion, and I've invented several different perpetual motion machines. I considered showing them to Yaron Brook, but then I thought that I'd first test him with one of my lesser inventions to see if he'd recognized its greatness and therefore demonstrate that he'd be worthy of seeing what I can really do. Well, he snubbed me.

I don't know if I can continue with my story. If people beg me to go on, I might in Part 4, if I'm feeling up to it.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Subject: Michael Does It Again

> My observation is that you have not shown any skills at generating and maintaining an audience.

Not ANY skills??? None whatsoever?

That's your personal hostility talking. Otherwise you would have qualified it.

You simply are not qualified to make an assessment of that kind, not having seen all of my work given to a wide range of audiences.

Phil,

Gimme a friggen break!

I did qualify that, you big hurting dumbass!

I said "my observation." Need a translation? That means what I have observed. Me. My. You know, pronouns?...

And it's true. I have not observed any audience skills in you. The closest I ever heard of was your work with Betsy Speicher in setting up Objectivist clubs years ago. I have heard nothing more on that score, so I presume you are no longer generating audiences with her. I also watched you give a lecture once at a seminar. There was no way to gauge at that time what came from you and what came from seminar attendees. I suspect that the audience would have been the same irrespective of who gave the talk in that setting.

Maybe you are not familiar with my writing, but I have no problem being very clear when I am hostile. You don't have to fish for it like you keep doing. Believe me, you'll know if that is what I want. Do not confuse frankness with hostility. I am of the opinion that you need to identify a problem before you can fix it. I am getting impatient with vanity issues as I grow older, so I opt for frankness.

Here. You want some more frankness? (I know you don't, but here it comes anyway. )

Do you know when you generate audience on public discussion forums? (And I am not even speaking of OL, but it has happened here.) Your audience does not normally come in a small surge like the present one. That will end shortly and probably never come back. It is when people bait you and you finger-wag. The audience shows up to see the circus with you in the role of the clown.

Is that what you want? Is that the image you long to project? Because that is what is out there. It is the only thing I have seen that works in terms of your audience generating skills. And I know for a fact you can do better than that.

Maybe you do other stuff elsewhere, but I have yet to see it.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Phil, I agree with Barbara.

--Brant

[Jonathan]

Part 4.

To test Yaron Brook's worthiness of seeing my solutions to perpetual motion, I sent him blueprints for a lesser invention of mine called "The Beverage Conveyor Belt," which is a conveyor belt system that you install in your house, and it brings your choice of beverage to wherever you are in the house. It's pure genius, and the perfect test to see how Brook would respond to my brilliance.

Well, the blueprints were returned with a note warning me not to send any more unsolicited material. I was both enraged and devastated (and now I hear rumors that Brook is working on a "Domestic Interior Snack Delivery System").

I don't think that I'll finish my story. No one has expressed the appreciation and respect that I was expecting. I guess you'll just have to wait and see if I post my conclusion.

[ginny]

Jonathan and Dragonfly, I don't think I've seen anyone sink lower on this forum than you two. Making fun of someone who may be having problems, but who's accomplished something? Jee, kind of makes one think of a certain character in Atlas Shrugged who couldn't stand his sister's abilities.

Grow up.

[Jonathan]

Conclusion.

I know it's hard for some people to believe, but I really have squared the circle, doubled the cube, trisected the angle, and discovered perpetual motion, and the reason that I'm not going to share my solutions is not that I fear that they'll get blown out of the water if I let people see them, but that I've tried very hard to share them in the past and no one wanted to listen to me or praise me (and by "no one," I mean my kindergarten teacher and Yaron Brook, even though I didn't really present my ideas to Brook, but just showed him my plans for the conveyor belt, so I guess that by "no one," I just mean my kindergarten teacher).

J

[Robert Campbell]

Part 3.

I've also solved the problem of perpetual motion, and I've invented several different perpetual motion machines. I considered showing them to Yaron Brook, but then I thought that I'd first test him with one of my lesser inventions to see if he'd recognized its greatness and therefore demonstrate that he'd be worthy of seeing what I can really do. Well, he snubbed me.

I don't know if I can continue with my story. If people beg me to go on, I might in Part 4, if I'm feeling up to it.

Jonathan,

Are you sure you haven't become the victim of an identity theft ring led by Pelagius160?

Robert Campbell

[Jonathan]

Making fun of someone who may be having problems, but who's accomplished something?

Oh, he's having problems alright. His primary one is that he's full of shit, and that he's doing what he always does -- hype the idea that he's got something really intelligent and important to say, try to get people to beg him to reveal his big secret insight, and then decline on the grounds that they didn't beg him quite earnestly and tenderly enough.

When Phil posts his proposed solution to the problem of induction, and it can withstand criticism, then I'll believe that he has accomplished something.

Jee, kind of makes one think of a certain character in Atlas Shrugged who couldn't stand his sister's abilities.

Ragnar? Thanks, but I didn't know he had a sister whose "abilities" were to alternate between being a schoolmarm and a huckster.

J

[ginny]

Ragnar!! Good lord, Jonathan, I didn't realize you were delusional as well as dumb. My mistake.

Ginny

[Michelle]

Ragnar!! Good lord, Jonathan, I didn't realize you were delusional as well as dumb. My mistake.

Ginny

I think he was joking.

[Brant Gaede]

The problem with induction is its unreality and contriveness and solving it will have no positive effect on human reasoning ability or scientific methodology. It's an implicit demand both for certainty and stagnation, the cessation of motion and change laterally across space and conceptually across time. Our brains evolved the way they have so uncertainty can be reduced and life sustaining actions can be possible, but not reduced so much that knowledge must be replaced by hubris and consequent bumping into walls we are made to know are there.

--Brant

Edited July 17, 2009 by Brant Gaede

[Philip Coates]

I just found out that I've now been invited to address the next summer seminar on the topic of my new Perpetual Motion Machine. David Kelley had not read my recent posts but deputized someone else to read them and had heard second hand that this was clearly my new discovery.

He deputized Will Thomas to hand-deliver the telegram. They had some trouble finding me, knowing only that I lived in either California or Florida. Will went door to door and asked everyone in Miami if they knew me, and then since I don't even live on the same coast as Miami took a bus to come find me.

He looked tired and hungry when he got here, so I offered him some green tea and stale bread. I'm informed that there are still a few details to be ironed out before I will be officially hired to speak. There is a claim outstanding from someone they have not heard of, a comedian named Jonathan, who claims that it was he who invented the Perpetual Motion Machine. And they would have to bribe him with free attendance at the seminar and a plum speaking position on the very popular Humorist and Elvis Impersonation conference track before he will sign a release allowing me to speak.

The other hurdle is that, since paternity of the idea is unclear, they will not offer me the usual all expenses plus free room and board package. The last several conferences at which I spoke I almost bankrupted IAS-TOW-TAZ since I went back repeatedly for multiple servings at lunch, cleaning out their food budget and causing their present financial difficulties and the multiple name changes to escape the creditors.

The deal is that they will not pay for lunch every day of the week for me anymore. Or for paying to fly in another important meal-time invention of mine, my usual "beer float". (As Will Thomas knows very well, it is beer + vanilla ice cream). Lunch will have to be paid for by Michael Stuart Kelly, who will also have to buss the dishes from my repeated trips to the buffet.

(I may have had one too many beer floats tonight. Maybe I just need to cut back on the ice cream. Or the caramel.)

[jeffrey smith]

there are politicians with zero integrity and educators who are moral giants, but, by and large, the mythology of the noble educator lifting the ignorant masses from the great swamp of ignorance is liberal heroic fantasy, and fits like a glove the leftist notion that the majority of people are stupid swine who are unable to manage their own affairs and need to be controlled.

I think Aristotle essentially had the right idea with his Golden Mean: all things in balance.

Except, ironically, that Aristotle's own political views, tended to the "majority of people are stupid swine who are unable to manage their own affairs and need to be controlled":

We should not think that each of the citizens belongs to himself, but that they all belong to the State. (Politics Book VIII) Not to mention his belief that some people--women, slaves, aliens--did not rate even as citizens, and that some people were "by nature" slaves.