Derick

By subjective you can mean three things. 1. Subordinate to whatever you wish/believe it to be. 2. Varies from person to person / optional. 3. Primary to perception, cannot be proven or disproven through the means of logic or argument. The first definition is the one that Rand tended to use. Subjects which are or properly can be 2 or 3 don't justify treating them as 1, so Rand's universal condemnation of subjectivity is correct. Qualia (if it exists, I'm not implying a stance on that one way or the other) would be the third. That no one can debate it doesn't mean it's not one way or another. That would be a rationalistic standard of fact. If I'm alone in a room looking at something no one else can see, and I call someone to tell them what it is, I can still be right or wrong even though they can't disprove it. Economic demand would be either none of the above or the second, depending on what you mean. What economists refer to (and what Rand called the "socially objective" in economics) has to be an objective description of what these people want in reality, and the emergent consequences of that in reality (such as the supply/demand situation). A description of what people want is an objective fact. We can acknowledge the existence of beliefs or wants we consider incorrect. It's a fact that a crack addict wants crack, and that a Christian believes in God, and it would be the lowest level of equivocation and deception to pretend that means the person acknowledging these facts is engaging in subjectivity. But, if you're referring to those economic choices which may be optional values, then it's 2.

Mediocre = not especially special. It could also be called the principle of unprivilege. In the Newtonian-Keplarian gravitational model there is only one privileged point in the solar system: the barycenter or center of gravity around which all the planets and asteroids revolve. It was very important that people realized that the earth does not occupy a privileged position in the scheme of things. In the same way it is very important for a young person to learn that the world does not revolved about his head, regardless of appearances to the contrary. We all start out our lives thinking we are at the center of it all, but we must soon learn that it is not the case. Ba'al Chatzaf Equivocating metaphyics principles, physics principles, and a student's own source of self-importance is only going to confuse him.

"Our sun wasn't required to be where it is, with the luminosity it has — it just happens to be there, and our existence follows from this opportunity." This is a standard case of the analytic-synthetic dichotomy, written from the analytic (rationalist) side. It is there. Beyond that, what would it mean for it to have been "required" to? There's no authority to require it. The "rules" (laws of physics) that may require something are based on our observation of what is; what is isn't an implementation of rules, that can have "necessary" and "optional" parts, like the recipe for baking a cake. The sun being there wasn't "optional," nor would it mean anything for it to be.