Strictlylogical

OMG! OMG!! As someone with degrees in Physics, I have no idea what to say but ... what a complete and utter farce. There never was a paradox, Merlin admitted as much when he said in the OP he had a solution he would "give" later. [Did he ever really give one that was any better than what anyone else offered?] As mentioned multiple times, there literally is nothing to "resolve", only bad thinking or intuition. The real problem is simply this: How does one address a fictional problem in a bad thinker's mind? and how do you evaluate WHO WINS the prize for that sort of thing by any kind of rational standard? The so called problem was dismissed successfully multiple times in many ways. Those who argued tooth and nail to deny the obvious revealed themselves with stark clarity. As someone who embraces Objectivism, all I can say is, credit to those here who were right, but you should all be MORE selfish given our finitude... one life 72 PAGES???? Unless you personally LOVE going through the explanations of rotation, rolling, translation etc, love making diagrams and VIDEOS... OMG MAKING VIDEOS!! in an attempt to show something to a select few who cannot or will not understand something??? Life is too short, BE MORE SELFISH and DON'T WASTE TIME ARGUING POINTLESS ARGUMENTS. Gotta give this one to jts, THE FIRST REPLY, even though only a sketch, it is true, and enough to dispell the idea (in a rational mind) that anything paradoxical is happening.

This is unfortunate, but not unique. But you are defined more by what you DO, than what you have done, and in a sense what you attempt to do even if you fail. With repeated effort, you become a person you can love more (with time).. if not the most. "Evil" certainly constitutes evidence citable to justify hate. The more one loves oneself, and loves one's life, loves family and friends, and all the values one has and pursues, all the more hatred one could have or justify having toward the evil that exists and threatens all that which one loves. We all know (including Michael) that meditating incessantly or obsessively on Evil and one's justified hatred of it, is not conducive to flourishing. BUT wholly evading evil or suppressing the momentary experience of the appropriate emotional response is not useful either. You speak of wasting hate on yourself (or your life), best we all try not to waste life on hate, no more than appropriate in any case.

For peace one must be prepared for war.

BTW that was me.

There should be a word for properly peaceful, but that would have to have evolved in a society which discovered morality and the non-initiation of force. Technically "pacifist" is not the correct word to convey the meaning meant.

I think Michael is being ironic. 1. He's extending a "wish" as an Objectivist who knows such things to be irrational and ineffectual. 2. He is doing so despite the absence of reciprocation, which is contrary to justice and self-interest which is immoral to an Objectivist. So he is saying something untrue... but what he says is also VERY true... On an emotional level, he likely does "wish" Ms Johnson a full recovery (because he is decent), while at the same time observing the likely truth that she is not a decent person, and would celebrate his passing. This seems quite reasonable given Michael's political views, and her views of what persons who have those views are like and what they "deserve". I get nothing of the "deserves to be shot" in there. Objectivists are pacifists who never initiate or "wish" for the initiation of harm, we also believe in justice, in freedom of speech and freedom of thought, so you should not have any worries about what Michael means. Ms. Johnson would be perfectly safe in Michael's world and would be equally safe in a world full of Michaels so to speak, while the converse, however, most likely would NOT be true.

I cannot speak from experience (to your disappointment I am sure), but there is a certain consistency with those who are consumed with a hatred for everything on earth including themselves to be eminently satisfied, in fact proudly self-martyred (so to speak) with that kind of self-hatred. How else can a culture of small envious people who vilify the rich or successful arise without a hatred of the good for being good... and hence at least partly... the archetype of that small wrinkled hating thing hating those good parts of the psyche within. The Canadian Liberal and the NDP might be already be worse than the Marxist-leftist wing of the US Democratic party, but darn it of those Yanks aren't doin' their dangdest to out Marx them Socialist Canucks. Any neighbor who would say "please", "sorry", and "thank you" to your face, but would have no quandry robbing you blind in your sleep to keep their party's corrupt politicians in power, squashing your right to free speech, or forcing you to risk your life with mediocre state run healthcare or at least trying to guilt you into not "jumping the queue" (as if one exists) by seeking healthcare in a freer country.. The little tyrant next door, might smile at you in the street, but would grin at the chance to have you shackled and cowed by her leftist strong men. I need not list them, they are legion. I do not know you personally, but perhaps You might have seen that tyrant in the mirror, if you ever had the secret wish to force others against their will, not because they violated anyone else's rights but because you wanted to see them suffer, because you wanted to equalize their success with other's failures, you wanted to violate the rights of those innocent not because of their incompetence and disability but because of their competence and ability, because you wanted to knock them down a notch or two, for being successful... because you wanted to eat the rich, and strike out at the good for being the good, because you wanted to lash out in your own shame... or perhaps you no longer see that tyrant in the mirror, or indeed, perhaps in fact, you are one of the lucky few who never saw it. Trust me, as a person raised in a mixed economy, semi-socialist state, rife with a culture of altruism, and dominated by progressive education over the last 5 decades, I indeed was one of those tyrants in the mirror and next door. Now I know better. I see what you did there with the politeness.... quite funny. I observe that the statement I have heard: "Canadians are polite, but Americans are friendly", as an aphorism is quite true, very much, most of the time. Not all Canadian politicians are as I allude to above, THIS guy can actually be quite impressive from time to time:

Watching a bunch of self-satisfied and self-hating meddling polite do-gooder tyrants with a case of "big-brother-US envy" enslave themselves into a backwater of insipid virtue-signaled mediocrity... is simultaneously absolutely beyond belief AND dull and tedious.

My wife went through a phase, when she was about 23-24 during which she had an intense and visceral urge to have a baby... was drawn almost with a kind of yearning.. to every baby she saw... we finally had a baby close to 10 years later. Those could have been voluntary chosen rational urges... or she may have temporarily and involuntarily transformed into an animal of sorts... like a Weremother or something.

You should send this to philosophy and/or science of mind journals. Get it published and peer reviewed. You'll be famous, and win a Nobel prize.

You have it backwards and your fabrications, straw men, mischaracterizations, and intellectual dishonesty are so blatantly on display that it beggars comprehension. On occasion I would confuse your evasions and twisting of other’s words as honest mistake, but now, I just don’t buy that anymore, but it perplexes me. Do you think it’s impressing anyone? Do you think you are learning, growing, or refining your learning by faking to hash it out with discussions? Do you think you are winning some kind of competition, earning golden stars in some universal ledger by fake debating people? Why pretend to try to have a conversation you are not actually willing to have? I have no illusions that you would deign to answer anything close to honestly, and be willing to listen, think, and fully engage with intellectual objectivity. Know that I had hoped to have and would have valued having a real conversation with the person you could have and should have been. Your concept of man is an overblown cardboard cutout, that you would openly admit to ignoring essential and universal characteristics because they are “lower” than others shows clearly how polluted your process of thought by your subjectivity. I suggest you reconsider, elsewise you will never fully understand what you are, and accordingly never know what you should do. Good luck.

I agree. I would go on to imagine the following. By the time birds are adults they are quite familiar with things they pick up or manipulate with their beaks, insects, nuts, pebbles, leaves, straw, sticks, grass etc... they’ve seen piles of them, perhaps seen others making piles... and perhaps having never had the urge to do so previously, one spring a bird sees a particularly interesting crook between a branch and a tree trunk... it’s dark and empty and enticing... irresistibly so. An urging to perch there... multiple times reinforces itself and then another urge is born... to fill it, yes with... with.. sticks, and straw and grass after finding straw, grass and bits of string the urge to fill that place.... make a space in the middle... all play out as an incremental process of contextual reproductive urging and discovery. Who here would claim in a sort of Blue Lagoon scenario, that in a completely different way but quite analogously, two completely innocent and ignorant adolescents having no knowledge about how certain things work would not end up discovering it, in a similar incremental contextually urged human process.

I didn’t say humans have bird instincts, I merely note that your so called logic you use to refute any and all instinct in humans is premised on an assumption that instincts we observe in animals should be experienced in a certain way when you have no idea how instinct is experienced by the animals you accept have them. What basis could you possibly have to posit that humans should experience, something you claim we absolutely do not experience, namely instinct, in a particular manner, namely, as knowledge instead of an urge, feeling, or impulse? In any case, my comment regarding the paucity of your concept of man, as in incomplete rather than in low esteem, still stands, and does so irrespective of whether man has instincts or not.

What makes you think instinct has anything to do with knowledge or thought? Speaking of projection... you project onto animals and the instinct guiding them with your unique human capacity of rational thought. There is no reason to think any human or animal experiences instinct as knowledge or thought. As for distaste... you think some aspects about the nature of humans are not high enough to include in your concept of human... making it impossible for you to make decisions about what a man should do if it has anything to do with his lower nature... but man is man... and what he should do is contingent on the entirety of the reality of his nature.

You seem to be fighting against the idea instinct is the primary guide to action or its final arbiter, but I don’t think anyone is making that claim. I think you tend to deny the significant impact of instinct on human function and experience, on our minds and bodies, even our feelings and thoughts, because you find certain things about what a human is, to be distasteful. You ignore those things about the nature of man which you find distasteful... at your peril. For to think about what man is and what he should do you cannot use a concept of man which fails to accept the reality of his entire nature, not if you wish to know or to live.

Why is consideration of a digestive system relevant in determining what a man should do?

??? So... does the fact that he has a particular kind of digestive system and metabolism come into consideration or not?

Don't get hung up worrying about the pertinence... it's a simple question you can think about and answer straightforwardly and honestly. As an alternative how about: When determining whether a man "should" eat fast food (say greasy burgers), for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, every day of the week, or in fact should not do so, does the fact that he has a particular kind of digestive system and metabolism (which happens to be specific and different from that of some other animals which are not rational) come into consideration, or does such determining whether he should do so only depend on the facts that he is rational and the general fact that he is also an animal?

Is there "the principle behind anthony"? Something about how a conversation just stops... when there is only silence in response to some question ... a something about the point at which there is no longer any reply? Perhaps... But I would rather that there were no such principle, and that we could continue having a conversation.

When determining how a man "should" descend a tree so as to avoid injury, does the fact that he has four limbs and no tail (as opposed to some other animals, which are not rational, who do), come into consideration, or does such a consideration only depend on the fact that he is rational?

Anthony, I had initially asked you what the purpose of abstraction was. This answer and the answer to my follow up question focus on what abstraction is. I'm still interested in talking about the purpose of abstraction. Why bother with the process of arriving at the concept? What use is a concept? "What for"? As an aside your answers imply abstraction involves a removal or ignorance of some universal characteristics, i.e. some particular "lesser" or "less significant" "non-relevant" characteristics. How do you pick and choose which universals to keep in the concept? Does your concept of "man" include that he is a kind of mammal with four limbs and no tail? Is that part of man's nature? When thinking about how man could or should climb down a tree, what abstraction do you use to take into account this fact about the nature of man?

What is a "lesser attribute" of an entity. What determines it's removal from a concept? For example, what about a particular apple, what "lesser attribute" is to be removed from the "one", all-embracing concept "apple"?

Anthony, what is the purpose of abstraction?

One possibly major difference between units of money which are themselves units of objective wealth/value and instruments/systems for store and exchange like Crypto, is that for the former you need only know of reality, specifically, human nature and the basic need and or use for the unit of wealth/value independent of any specific person, group of persons, or organization of persons, or systems etc., to know your units have objective value, but for the latter, you need to trust the people who set the system up, the group of people who agree to participate in that system, trust that the system works, both in the abstract/theory and in terms of actual implementation with operating infrastructure (hardware, software, electric grid etc) and will never fail. For the former you depend on your independent knowledge of reality, For the latter you are dependent upon everyone having to do with the currency system, the mechanical/computational system implementing it, and everything that the system itself would depend upon. Whether or not this difference is a big deal to you... I suppose will depend upon your sense of life. [Aside: Physical gold, although ridiculous to carry around, was and has been used at the worst times in history, to circumvent totalitarian rule, and preserve wealth even during the collapse of economies and the effective fallings of civilization itself... such a high benchmark might prove too high in today's world, but at least the alternative should be immune from the eletists/oligarchs, big tech, and big government... perhaps China is a good test-bed for how untouchable Crypto can be... is there a darkweb or an undernet there? I wonder what do they use there as currency on the blackmarket?]

Don't give up because one lawyer dissuaded you. Find another, maybe one who will work on contingency, or another who is strongly interested in justice and/or does pro bono work. There are many free minded legal big hitters who would be interested to see justice in such a case. Do not give up. Reach out and find the others, work together.