dan2100

So you can go to places other than where the Earth is going.

I have yet to read Jeff's whole post here or think about it. Why? I almost laughed up my meal considering that Phil teaches this stuff and not only doesn't know the difference but appears to think it shouldn't matter. (No offense, Phil. And, hopefully, you've changed your mind since. I freely admit to often being ignorant and not seeing why a particular ignorance might blind me to something important. So, I'm not so much laughing at you as laughing at this particular type of insouciance so many of us suffer from.) By the way, as an aside, regarding the sonnets of one particular poet, I highly recommend Helen Vendler's The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets. It looks to me like Vendler has OCD, but the rest of us can reap the reward of this. (She's also got a book coming out this fall that goes over many of Dickinson in September. I recall enjoying her "Emily Dickinson Thinking" in Parnassus. I'd like to see her also do Berryman in detail, especially his The Dream Songs. She already covered him in an earlier work, but I'd like to see her over a good chunk of The Dream Songs -- of course, including my favorites.) Vendler does believe the structure of Shakespeare's sonnets does reveal much about their meaning. She spends about four or five pages on each poem -- almost like a mini-essay per sonnet.

Let us see. Fast vehicle we have ever launched goes fifty thousand miles an hour. Humans live about seventy five years (give or take). How many hours in seventy five years? Multiply by fifty thousand and you have it. I am sure the technology will improve somewhat, but not much. Ba'al Chatzaf The fastest "man-rated" vehicle is much slower, of course. By the way, I believe the fastest spacecraft actually topped out at over 100,000 mph back in the 1970s: the US space probe Mariner 10. If you use the right tricks, you can get up to pretty high speeds. Of course, the spacecraft in question was going to the inner solar system and was not heading out from there.

That seems a truism.

The late EM (on Old Atlantis) was a very interesting case. She had read a lot of Rand and was, I believe, writing a book or monograph about Rand's theory of knowledge, but she had the oddest interpretations I've ever seen. In support of her views, she would sometimes quote passages from ITOE that didn't support her interpretation at all, indeed, that sometimes said the exact opposite. EM didn't strike me as an unintelligent person, but how she arrived at her eccentric interpretations of Rand, based on having actually read her first hand, still mystifies me. True, I've seen unusual interpretations of Rand from other people, but those were usually limited to one or two points. With EM it was different; many of her interpretations were odd -- not odd in a manner unflattering to Rand, but odd in a way that you would never expect. It was as if EM had books written by a Bizarro version of Rand, or copies of Rand's books that had passed through another dimension before reaching her. I sometimes wonder if EM's brain was hard-wired differently than "normal" people. Ghs My problem with EM, though, was not her odd interpretations. After all, odd interpretations are often interesting -- even if they're, perhaps just as often, wrong. It was her intellectual dishonesty that bothered me. An example of this that I recall was her definition of "Man." She wouldn't admit that Rand's definition was "rational animal" -- even though Rand explicitly stated this and others and myself provided textual support for this.

In my opinion, the Soviet Union would have fallen much faster if the US government had no supported it over the years, especially in its early years. Your other comments here strike as of the sort that if someone is against the US government or its policies, then she or he must be for the putative targets of those policies. This is like saying that people who don't want the US government to ban smoking want everyone and his sister to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day. One can be both against the US government or its policies and things like terrorism and other crimes with victims. Nowhere did I say, or did Rand say, that all positions taken by the U.S. government in its foreign relations, have been appropriate. Rand was was very critical of some aspects of U.S. foreiegn policy. My point about being against both sides in a conflict was not so much about what Rand said or wrote, but about one being against both the Soviet Union and the US government. One can validly take that position. E.g., one can admit that the Soviets were bad and, at the same time, believe that US action against the Soviets was bad. I agree, but this won't lead to the conclusion you want. Yes, if you're going to make that accusation -- that someone here is making a claim you find "totally unjustified and outrageous" -- then I believe you should be willing to back it up. And the same applies, in my view, to all governments and criminal organizations. I'm not sure where you're going with this... Has anyone here claiming to be an Objectivist or follow Objectivist principles told us that she or he also agrees "philosophically agree" with Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, or pick-some-other-religion?

In my opinion, the Soviet Union would have fallen much faster if the US government had no supported it over the years, especially in its early years. Your other comments here strike as of the sort that if someone is against the US government or its policies, then she or he must be for the putative targets of those policies. This is like saying that people who don't want the US government to ban smoking want everyone and his sister to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day. One can be both against the US government or its policies and things like terrorism and other crimes with victims.

My expectations for most people are very low, but I do tend to have high expectations for people who express an interest in ideas. This probably has a lot to do with my personal background. As I have mentioned before, my discovery of Rand during my high school years was a liberating experience for me. It broadened my interest in ideas, which had previously been confined to freethought literature, and started me on a philosophical quest. The great thing about Rand's concise exposition of philosophical views (most of which I agreed with) was that it worked as a philosophical compass in the wilderness of philosophy, guiding me to other philosophers who were in basic agreement with her. In UA philosophy courses, I often wrote papers that quoted or cited Rand, and, unlike many horror stories I have heard, I never had a problem with any of them. No professor ever upbraided me for citing Rand, because I always included her in the company of other, more respectable philosophers who were arguing the same point, and I never placed undue emphasis on Rand over those others. I treated her as one among many philosophers, not as some philosophic savior, and I never got anything less than an A on any paper I wrote that mentioned her. Not even so much as one negative comment, not even in graduate classes. Now flash forward to the early 1970s, while I was living in the same Hollywood apartment building (while writing ATCAG) as Roy Childs. Roy shared my attitude, and we spent countless hours in bookstores and libraries rummaging around for books on philosophy that presented ideas similar to Rand's. (I can't count the number of hours we spent in the Hoose Library at USC, one of the finest philosophy collections in the world. I vividly recall the time that Roy brought over a volume by Suarez, the 16th century Spanish Jesuit, and excitedly pointed to a passage that sounded like something Rand would say.) Roy and I were not Randroids looking to vindicate Rand at all costs; far from it. But we both used Rand as a gateway to the writings of other philosophers, mainly Aristotelians and Thomists, that we otherwise might know nothing about. Indeed, Roy had a decent collection of Thomistic writings, including some excellent volumes from the Stonyhurst Philosophical Series (early 20th century), and I purchased many of those books from Roy when he was cutting back for a move to New York. In other areas, I have done similar things with friends, such as the late Ken Gregg, so I tend to assume that this exploratory attitude is typical of people interested in ideas, including active posters on OL. For example, I will often begin a thread or argue a point into the ground because it stimulates my reading in a given area. I will almost never engage in a lengthy exchange on a substantial topic without doing a good deal of reading along the way. I have probably consulted 30 different books, for example, just for the debate on the Rand/Kant thread. I do this partly to avoid errors, but also because it gives me a motive (and an excuse) to reread parts of books that I haven't looked at in years. My practice in this regard may account for my impatience when I feel that another person is throwing ideas off the top of his her or head, without investing any real mental labor. And it is certainly a mistake, if a habitual one, for me to assume that everyone else on an O'ist list takes ideas as seriously as I do. Ghs But you do recall the many others you've run into online -- e.g., EM -- who seem to be interested in ideas, but this interest doesn't get in the way of remaining basically ignorant of those very same ideas, no? I think your last paragraph should perhaps reveal why many people don't seem to put much if any effort in here: the required investment of "real mental labor." Much easier to just spew an opinion off and be contrary without substance. For those with a bit more conscience, perhaps, there's the tiny amount of effort of quoting a favored point of view. (Recall a certain poster here who merely vomits up quotes on anarchism and other topics without any attempt at analysis.) Think of most areas of life. Almost everyone, it seems, wants the effect without the cause -- or the result without the work. Much easier to wear loose clothes than to work out at a gym and not skip dessert. What's perhaps more interesting is why such people would want to get into discussions with those who actual do the work (again, I make no claims to be among the latter). After all, if I know I can't play violin like a virtuoso -- and this is quite easy to determine, at my level of skill, I think -- I don't try to get on stage at Carnegie to make a fool out of myself. Then again, there have been many reports I've read about over the last decade that people who are incompetent are mostly blind to their incompetence. This is along the lines of people who think they're above average drivers, workers, golfers, and the like actually below average. I think the usual conclusion here is incompetents are not just bad at what they do, but bad at judging what they do. (This makes sense to me. If you actually were aware of the low quality of your ability at something, you might try to improve your skills.)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/7720461/USSR-planned-nuclear-attack-on-China-in-1969.html I heard about this last week and wondered if anyone else has read the story... Comments?

Well, some in the antiwar crowd warned that wasting resources on these wars would actually weaken defense... But who will listen? And why expect anyone to listen now when they never listened in the past? Nietzsche's remark always relevant: "How good bad music and bad reasons sound when we march against an enemy."

I understand your point. But one of Xray's favorite topics is the supposed inadequacy of Rand's approach to values. Xray's profile indicates that she has subscribed to OL for over a year, so I assume she has been voicing her objections to Rand's theory of value for most of that time. Now, if I were to join a website devoted to Proust, I would make a point of educating myself about his writings and ideas. I certainly wouldn't spend a year harping on a single point about Proust without first making damned sure that I knew what I'm talking about. Yes, that's you. That's not many other people. Many other people I've run into will make it a point to hold an opinion and argue about it without ever having done even a minimal search through source material -- much less the scholarly literature and other background material. This goes, too, for people who might subscribe to a site or group for years. One example here -- aside from one you're surprised about comes to mind. Think of someone, who won't be named, who seems to believe he knows all there is to know about anarchism and yet won't even bother -- in fact, seems adamantly against! -- reading actual works on anarchism by anarchists, such as Rothbard. You have very high expectations for the rest of your species. Also, this particular case you mention (I mean the subscriber here on this site) is notable for spewing basically ignorant remarks. Why do you expect this to change? If someone already starts out holding very strong opinions yet reveals an dogged ignorance of the topic at hand and has been resistant, over the course of months, why do you expect that person to suddenly change? Recall the passage from Revelation: "He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still..." I believe it applies here.

George, after years on the Internet and interacting with people via email, snailmail, and face-to-face regarding Rand and Objectivism, I'm frankly not surprised when someone is unfamiliar with some fairly or even extremely obvious aspect of Rand's thought or of Objectivism. I'm also frankly not surprised when people don't read her works or other important works by Objectivists -- not to mention journal articles and more obscure tracts. It's seems the nature of most people -- and I'm not excluding myself here -- to hold strong opinions without doing the required reading or other research. (In fact, online, the usual tack critics of Rand and Objectivism take is that they were in some online forum with someone claiming to be an Objectivist. This is akin to claiming to be a Proust expert not because you actually read and studied Proust's work and some of the relevant scholarship around him, but because you got into a mud-slinging match with someone online who claimed to have read some Proust back in college.)

I visited the hole in the ground where the WTC used to be. That told me what I needed to know. Ba'al Chatzaf This is the same as an Ancient Roman visiting Masada and saying, about Ancient Hebrews, "That told me what I needed to know." Again, be sure to stay back five meters from me.

It is not my "belief" that my house number is such and such. Calling it "belief" (adding "justified" does not help) is what makes the discussion bizarre. Yeah, that sure is bizarre. American Heritage Dictionary: Belief: "2. Mental acceptance of and conviction in the truth, actuality, or validity of something: "3. Something believed or accepted as true, especially a particular tenet or a body of tenets accepted by a group of persons." Here are some other definitions, pulled more or less at random from Internet dictionaries: "any cognitive content held as true" "Belief is the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true." "Mental acceptance of a claim as truth" "conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence" I could go on, but what's the point? You already have your mind made up about everything under the sun, reasonable arguments to the contrary notwithstanding. Stop wasting my time. Ghs The definitions of belief don't help to differentiate propositions claiming knowledge from propositions uttering belief. For there IS of course a difference between stating "I believe X is the case" and "I know X is the case". But it seemed to me that George was stating that if he stated he knew something, then you can safely assume he also believes that same something.

Because we aren't allowed to drink alcohol? I never said what was in the glass. How about plain old grape juice or even water? And my remark still stands. Jews are very big on life. Extreme Muslims are not. Ba'al Chatzaf You also didn't say "Extreme Muslim" earlier and you haven't defined that. I'd also like to know how many Muslims you observed for your opinion here. I find it hard to make such generalizations -- maybe because, unlike you, I simply haven't met many of the supposedly hundreds of millions of them on the planet. I've only met a handful -- at least, self-identified ones. And the ones I've met seem to range all over the place, from people who are fun to be on down to people who are not -- like the many non-Muslims I've met. (The same applies to ten or twenty million Jews in the world. I've only met a handful of them -- again, self-indentified ones. Again, they seem to range all over the place.)

There is indeed the danger of the creation of a cargo cult science: humanities trying to emulate the success of the physical sciences by imitating the jargon, as if the mathematical jargon will make it real science. Stanislav Andreski's Social Sciences as Sorcery (an oldie, but a classic) gives many hilarious examples of this. A modern example is Dembski's attempt to make ID a respectable science by hiding it in a cloud of mathematical formulas that most people don't understand, illustrating once more the "garbage in, garbage out" rule. On the other hand some sciences (psychology is an example) can improve and are improving by adapting the methods of the exact sciences. Recall, too, the supposed Diderot-Euler thing -- where Euler allegedly presented a mathematical equation Diderot didn't understand as proof of God's existence. I think some people might be taken in by a mathematical approach to such a degree that they stop thinking critically.

Looking at mathematization in the field of economics should give pause here, don't you think? They build elaborate mathematical models and pump in loads of real world data and yet they didn't see the 2008 crash coming (not to mention almost all of the previous ones).

I always liked the one where Shostakovich supposedly said that Prokofiev had "the soul of a goose."

I think it's probably more important to note the limits of this. Mathematization of the humanities is not new. It's been tried many times before. Why do you think current efforts are any better?

That said, alone on an island, how does Robinson Crusoe survive without the approval of other people? I recall Branden discussing this in one of his books. He mentioned, I believe, the "Muttnik Principle." It wasn't so much a matter of surviving as of flourishing -- though my guess is those who flourish tend to survive longer. Also, how would Crusoe use money in a meaningful way?

Anne Wortham was at the seminar back in 1995. I don't know if she has ever returned since. She was interviewed in Full Context in 1994, but the interview doesn't seem to be online: http://www.fullcontext.org/people/wortham.htm

Happy Birthday!

Racism and such aside, what's meant by "divisive" here? What, also, is wrong with verbally abusing politicians? I actually think a good amount of disrespect for politicians is healthy. In fact, treating people who live by coercing the rest of society as if they were above reproach seems unjust. Will you next propose no one say anything mildly offensive about rapists and murderers? And what about those of us whose long-term goal or ideal is to get rid of government all together?

I'm not sure there's much if any evidence that humans "likely wiped out" "close intellectual relatives." It seems much more likely that humans won out simply because their "close intellectual relatives" lost habitat and humans were just lucky to be adapted to habitats that either expanded or weren't as minimized. Think of Neanderthals. They were likely adapted to the forest habitats of Europe and the Near East. As the last ice age progressed, these likely shrunk to the point where Neanderthals simply died out -- died out long and were not wiped out by others humans. Of course, sticking to this example, one could say there's not enough evidence to support this view, but I believe there's some evidence to support while the genocide view seems to be backed by no evidence -- no examples, for instance, of Neanderthals that have been killed by human weapons and almost no evidence that humans and Neanderthals even lived in the same places at the same time. There is some decent evidence, on the other hand, of humans fighting each other. War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage by Lawrence H. Keeley is probably the locus classicus for this. I want to amend this view in light of a recent report. There is some genetic evidence now for Human-Neanderthal interaction. However, still no evidence I've seen for Humans wiping out Neaderthals. The genetic evidence seems to be that there was some Human-Neaderthal interbreeding and this was likely localized to the Middle East. This is not enough, at this point, to determine why Neanderthals, on the whole, died out and there's no evidence, from my reading of interaction or interbreeding in Europe. The report is here http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/328/5979/710

http://mises.org/daily/4330 Comments? I imagine some here knew Hess...