Laure

Similarity is an equivalence relation produced by the operation of our nervous system. Similarity is In Here. Similarity is a judgment call, not a fact. If there were no sentients in the cosmos there would be no similarity. Ba'al Chatzaf Hm, Ba'al, I predict that you also think that "if a tree falls in the forest, and nobody's there to hear it, it doesn't make a sound". In my view, similarity is "out there". Some similarities are more relevant to us as humans, and those are the ones we notice, but our noticing something doesn't cause its existence.

Not a bad thing at all! We all might learn something, anyway.

Phil, I hope you do create a test. I'd like to take it. Maybe you could do it semi-privately so that we don't get into long public debates about it. Of course it shouldn't just be something you're doing for us, though. I think one of the benefits for you would be to gather some data that shows you where common deficiencies in understanding are, which might give you some ideas for essays to write. P.S. Don't think that you don't have any influence!

That's a good idea; I'd like to take such a test as well. I think I understand Objectivism quite well, and I don't think it requires years and years of intense study ... but maybe I'm mistaken. (only problem is, we may not agree on the correct answers to the questions - the test could end up testing the degree of our agreement with Phil! )

James, I agree totally with your post. In my mind, you belong in the small category of "genuinely nice Objectivists." I like to think I'm a member as well! I think the members of this category should post wherever the heck they want to. In terms of all the squabbles that go on, I think I've settled on the approach of just "going on record" as to my position (not that many people would care anyway), and then moving on.

Jim Taggart? Philip Seymour Hoffman.

I wonder if an older Rearden might actually be better. I mean, it might be more plausible that Dagny would leave him for Galt if Rearden were much older than Dagny -- it'd be more of a temporary relationship. Plus, I always envisioned Lillian as being pretty old. (Harrison Ford's my pick, although I do think he's a little past his peak.)

Mark: No, I didn't get my info from Zillow, I got it from the assessor's online database at data.visionappraisal.com. If you create an account, you can look up records by name of owner. It shows 13 Southeast Trail having a current assessed value of $68,110. While I don't know your mill rate, they give an example calculation that uses 20.87, which comes out to $1421.46 a year. Is your mill rate actually ten times that? I would think there would be a lot of psychos trying to bump off the tax collector at that rate! A $500,000 house would have to pay over $100,000 a year in tax. I have a hard time believing that.

I did a little research, and I find it hard to believe that you are paying $15,000 a year property tax. Based on information at the New Milford tax assessor website, I would figure your tax would be more like $1,500 a year - minus $960 if you are over 65 and your combined income is less than $35,300. Your assessed value did not look unreasonable to me. It doesn't look like you are being persecuted. If you've racked up such a huge balance due to not paying your tax for decades, you really can't turn that around and say that those mean old tax collectors are out to get you. By the way, you've done some great work on that house. I can see what a big job it is.

Wow, that was a good post. Mark, listen to Matus1976, he's got some good ideas. Goals, priorities, values. Take an objective look at them and rearrange as needed.

OK, here goes another attempt. I think at some level you want to hear these things, or you wouldn't be posting here. You are obviously an intelligent man, you're not psychotic, but you have unhealthy mental patterns that need to be broken. Mark, you are a tax cheat. Everybody else is paying their taxes. Why are you so special that you don't have to? It's too bad that there are property taxes, but that's the way it is. If you can't afford to pay the taxes, sell your property and rent an apartment. Dammit, my family paid $50,000 federal income tax last year on top of our little $3200 property tax bill. And here you are whining about the unfairness of it all. You said you haven't paid income taxes in decades. It's probably safe to assume that you haven't been paying self-employment tax either. Hey, maybe that's why you're ineligible for social security now. It was put into place for irresponsible people like you, but if you are so irresponsible that you won't even pay taxes, the system will not be there for you. You have had an unfair advantage all these years over those of us who have paid our taxes. Don't make yourself out to be some patriotic defender of property rights. I cannot believe that the tax assessor's office won't reassess your property if you ask them to. They want the tax owed to be proportional to the value of the property. Don't give me this "oh I can't have anyone look at the property because of these mysterious environmental problems that aren't really problems but if anyone finds out I'll be persecuted..." Face reality, man. You have probably exhausted any goodwill you once had with any government officials, so I would advise having your wife handle these matters, but HANDLE them. If you die in a Waco-style showdown, you're not going to be remembered as a hero, you're going to be remembered as a damn fool. It doesn't have to be that way. Once again we hear you are "too old" and "too set in your ways" to change course. You won't sell the house because of all the blood, sweat, and tears that have gone into it. Not even "too many happy memories", "I love that house"... no, it's clear you hate the place and it's causing you pain, and yet you hang onto it. Are you familiar with the concept of "sunk cost"? Google it. Here are three epiphanies for you: 1) Face reality. 2) Let someone help you. 3) If you keep doing what you're doing, you'll keep getting what you're getting. It's too bad you are lacking in social skills and creativity. But guess what, I don't have any social skills or creativity to speak of either, and yet I manage to hold down a six-figure job. And Judith is right, you can work on these skills. Your whole tale of woe can be summarized "I must change my life, but I cannot change myself." Well, think about it this way: Changing yourself is a whole lot easier than changing the entire rest of the world. My father was the most honest person I ever met, a loving father, faithful spouse, but he had an abrasive personality and did not "play well with others" at work. Despite this, he managed to support his wife and three children, hold a series of steady jobs until retirement, pay his taxes and his debts, and even build us a house in a good neighborhood, with his own two hands. He had subcontractors do the really difficult stuff, but he did almost all the work himself. I remember watching him lay the bricks and nail down the floorboards when I was four years old. And he did this evenings and weekends, while holding down a full-time job - and it wasn't a "fulfilling" job in his eyes, either. And you know what else - he didn't inherit a house, or even a dime, from his parents when they died. He grew up in Milwaukee, in a house without running water or electricity, during the Depression. He once made himself a pair of gloves out of old newspaper. What's the difference between him and you? He didn't whine about how unfair life is, he just got on with it and did the best he could.

Mark, if any of us knew a way to obtain hundreds of thousands of dollars quickly, we would do it ourselves - we wouldn't give the idea away to you! Forget making a lot of money quickly; it is not going to happen. You're hoping for an epiphany that's going to save you. I don't think there is one. The most solid advice you're going to get is to sell off your assets (yes, let go of your toys that you haven't really earned and can't afford to keep!), get out of the house, get a subsidized apartment, get a job - any job. Your response of "no, no, I could never do that" is not getting you anywhere. I think you need a social worker. I know you are not the type who will listen to a social worker's advice and do what you are told, but I think it may be your only hope. The one big question mark about your whole story is, why does the county think your property is worth so much (as indicated by the high taxes) and yet you think it is worthless? Work on getting this reconciled, and either you can get your taxes reduced to near-nothing, or you can sell your property for a substantial sum of money. You mention legal concerns regarding environmental issues. Well, whatever it is, you need to face up to it. Face reality; confront your problem head-on; accept the consequences. Whining about it not being fair is not helpful.

Michael, to be fair, they only want to declare the chimp a 'legal person', not a human being. After all, corporations are 'legal persons' too.

Mark, you need to stop accruing more property tax bills. Do whatever you need to do to make that happen. Sell the property if you can, or let it be foreclosed/condemned/whatever if you can't. Every day you stay in that house, you are racking up more taxes. Get out. Maybe you can subdivide the land and sell parts of it. I believe you've implied before that you could never be happy living in an apartment, without all your stereo/electronics equipment. The question is, are you happy now? I think you need to scale way back. Maybe declare bankruptcy, move to an apartment in a city where you can find a job in your field. It will be very difficult for you to freelance without any prior paid experience under your belt. You have the ability, your best bet is to try to find a job in your field, at whatever pay you can find, and work faithfully at it for a few years at least. Your wife is supporting you. Make it easier on her. The house is too big a burden; walk away from it. You are probably not going to make a lot of money. Money isn't everything; find a way to be happy without it. You've got a nice family at least.

Nice quote, but it's truth depends on any individual. For me, the hardest thing (in this context) is doing what I need to do (long term) as opposed to what I might want NOW, if there's a conflict. Taken literally, the statement is, of course, false. Try doing anything you don't want to do, like kicking your dog. Won't work. You won't get to first base. You won't even seriously consider it and complain that I suggested such a bad and stupid thing. Now, kicking your mother-in-law ... I don't know who you're quoting, Rand, Peikoff, Branden--? But it's only Objectivist rhetoric of no value except to make you think, which it does. Speaking of Peikoff, he said, "To save the world is the simplest thing in the world. All one has to do is think." A statement that could hardly be less true in its incompleteness or more dubious in its premises. --Brant Brant, you're absolutely right. If the Peikoff quote were true, Mensa members would have saved the world by now. Thought without action gets you nowhere. As to the first quote, I think the hardest thing in the world might be to know what you want. At least, that's my problem.

Dodger, I think people are being too hard on you here. If you can't safely rant about religion among Objectivists, where can you rant about it?? I can completely relate to your frustration in dealing with religious people. There's this bumper sticker -- and I don't like bumper stickers because they always entail the assumption that the reader is in the "enemy camp" -- but this bumper sticker said, "If you don't want me to ridicule your beliefs, stop having such stupid beliefs." My college roommate was a born-again Christian. (She also happened to be a lot of fun to be around and I liked her very much.) We often argued to the point of my exposing a contradiction. I remember at one point she said to me that "with God, all things are possible, even contradictions." So, no matter what argument you use, it's never good enough. Robert Jones, you call yourself a Catholic but say that you reject "fundamentalist" beliefs. I don't really get why you call yourself a Catholic. If Catholicism is a type of Christianity, you must believe, (1) in the virgin birth of Jesus who was God Incarnate, (2) the physical resurrection of Jesus after crucifixion, and (3) the attainment of everlasting life by accepting Jesus' sacrifice on your behalf. If you don't literally believe these things, you're not a Christian, because these things define Christianity. I am puzzled as to why someone would begin to consider himself a Catholic just because he has decided he agrees with Catholics about abortion. Dodger, I think in discussions with religious people, you need to determine what your goal is, and keep it in mind. I don't think there's anything to be gained by just pissing off religious people. If you want to try to get them to think, it's better to take a laid-back approach (and believe me, I know how hard this can be, particularly when you're young -- I remember!). One fun thing to discuss might be the supposed discovery of Jesus' bones in an ossuary. Some Christians say these couldn't be Jesus' bones, because he was physically resurrected. I'd ask matter-of-factly, "so, you really believe that after death, Jesus' body physically floated up through the air, up to heaven? How could that be?" I just wonder how many people would answer "yes" to this kind of "you don't really believe that, do you?" question.

I can't believe James really likes that poem. Sure he's not kidding? By the way, what's "boon hardness"? I'm not much of a poetry lover; I only go as far as Robert Frost and A.A. Milne.

Well, it seems I'm Howard Roark. I would've thought I was Eddie Willers.

To what statement of mine are you referring? No particular statement; I had just gotten the impression somehow that you were in agreement with the other 2 regarding "analytic truths" being basically meaningless or illogical. If the shoe doesn't fit, feel free to cast it aside.

Brant, you're absolutely right. I have one thing to say to Bob Mac, Dragonfly, Daniel: A tautology is not a fallacy.

I wonder if there's anyone Kyrel doesn't count as an enemy! My God, even denouncing Rand for "maliciously and hatefully moralizing and psychologizing". The intolerant are enemies, the tolerant are enemies... Though I would class Osama bin Laden and Amadinijad as enemies, I don't think I have any personal enemies at all! I suppose that puts me on the list of evil tolerationists or something. Life's too short to spend it looking for excuses to denounce everyone as evil.

The volume of a 6-dimensional sphere with radius R embedded in a 7-dimensional Euclidean space equals pi^3*R^6/6. This is an analytical truth. To what in reality does this statement correspond?What is a 6-dimensional sphere? Darrell Darrell, check out Wikipedia's Hypersphere article; or think of pattern classification. If we only have two different measurements on an object, like height and weight, we can plot the heights/weights on a 2 dimensional graph, and draw circles around clusters of points. If we have three different measurements (height, weight, shoe size) we can draw it on a 3 dimensional graph and draw a sphere around a cluster of points. ... If we have 6 measurements ... 6 dimensional graph ... 6 dimensional sphere. Hard to draw on the blackboard, but nevertheless you can "picture it" in a way. I'm not sure about the "embedded in a 7-dimensional Euclidean space" part. I know that a 3 dimensional sphere is referred to as a 2-sphere; maybe he means a "6-sphere" in 7-D space, or maybe there's a concept I'm missing.

Also, you might want to lie down and put a bag over your head, a la Hitchhiker's Guide...

Daniel, just to clarify, my double-negative was intentional. I was asking you to draw a Venn diagram of Reasoning and Logic, and tell me if it's just one circle or if the Logic circle is inside the Reasoning circle. Just so that's clear. I don't have any comments on the rest of your post; I really am starting to wonder what your point is. You started out wanting to prove to everybody that Rand didn't solve the "is-ought" problem, thus convincing me even more firmly that she did solve it. That's about all that's been accomplished here.

Michael, that was a kick-ass post, for the most part (if you'll pardon the expression ) Remember the idea of the Stolen Concept? It seems Popper, and Daniel, are stealing the very concept of "concept"!