Strictlylogical

Then again... one could look at all the sprawling long chains of causation emanating from Marx throughout the years... and arrive at the exact inverse conclusion and still be correct.

I would have characterized the result of his activism as merely “implausible” and his fantastical invention as literally “impossible”. In any case I think I see now what specific meaning you ascribe to political activism… and it seems limited to public persuasion in the so called public political sphere. I grant in that sense Washington himself was not a political activist… such would be far too small a label for him and his achievements… which in retrospect were quite implausible.

So this is in the spirit of honest interest. I note you use the term “political activist” and imply John Galt was not one or spent little time being one. This is somewhat interesting because Galt is a man of action, in the face of culture, philosophy, politics, all of society going down the wrong paths he vowed in front of a room of witnesses to stop the motor of the world and he spent years pursuing, persuading and getting the Atlases of the world to shrug. He wasn’t merely an ethicist or personal guru, spreading ideas and wisdom to whomever would come to his shrine, he actively went incognito and set out to literally change the world which he did through long and laborious effort. If his actions, motivation, and time spent did not constitute or include being politically active or activist, I wonder just what to you (directly and concisely) would constitute “political activism” as you use the term?

The age old use of divide and conquer.. how much of it is inbuilt into a two party system? The parties are not of course technically deep state apparati, but they are nudged and pulled by strings ... those nudgings orchestrated when and how it is most beneficial to various DS players, a season on the left or the right... predictable swings, skimming of power or money as the "teeter" totters... so to speak... It seems the two party system is to their advantage and that they have worked to keep that status quo... would a third party throw this off balance (I know they would do their best to use that too...) ... I cannot deliver any blow to shatter the thing... but any vote or whisper which helps to make a crack or any bit crumble is progress.

Well now, given this has been happening for a very long time... my working theory for the glimpses we are seeing now are "technology" is creating cracks, and one of them being elected president and letting the cat out of the bag, made them panic. What is your take on what Rand knew or did not know... or perhaps (god forbid) couldn't believe or chose not to see? Or was there just fewer breaches in the facade back then?

Your exposition is excellent evidence for the position that things for a very long time (perhaps almost always) have been far worse than what we all have been brought up to believe. That we, those relatively younger or more naive or trusting of mainstream media, should discover the Deep State is older, deeper, wider, and that America and indeed all of the West is so much farther from what it should and could be, is it no wonder we should show indignation and alarm? Every time has its vices, and by your account, the Thing has a different incarnation or shows a different appendage of oppression every season and century. You are not wrong by any means… but whether the tide is inward or outgoing, your words are good motivation and yes, reason enough for freedom lovers and individualists of all kinds to keep talking… and by God to speak up oh so much louder and stronger.

Prager teamed up with Tim Poole to make this video. It's a nice watch, and a nice swing at the Predator Class Propaganda Machine:

This sounds like a plaintive premised either on the lack of necessity or relevance of the current political climes to the deeply held morays, convictions, and beliefs of a good Objectivist. As a normie or an Objectivist, I have no doubt whatever, that something has been poked, agitated, and unleashed in the wake of the whole "drain the swamp" MAGA DT election and win of 2016... and the reactionary waves of censorship, top down lying, wokeism, the pandemic itself, and the subsequent lurches to totalitarianism and warmongering, ecoterrorism and eco-authoritarianism, ... all of this is TRULY exceptional... and exceptionally bad for freedom loving individualists. ANY political view, party, or movement which is inimical to life becomes an issue FOR Objectivists when they come to prominence, in fact I am appalled how silent most so-called "representatives" of Objectivism have been in the face of all the attacks on what is left of an America that could and should be.

I also attempt to follow doctors who attempt to follow science as opposed to those who purport to follow it. You note politics is a major force in todays culture, and excoriate a student of objectivism for possibly succumbing to its evading and biasing influences and yet you perhaps underestimate those very effects on the mainstream doctor who may or may not be as self aware about such things nor as conscientious about checking premises as that student of objectivism. Since we are not in possession of all the information a question of the science is largely moot or irrelevant, it comes down to who you trust… people are not science, in fact scientists are not science… we all are subject to information scarcity, political biases and yes, believe it or not some deception and evasion. I have heard of some studies that show masking is ineffective… and a minority of doctors and scientists, let’s call them skeptics of the narrative, have been trying to inform the public in face of monolithic obedience to the so called consensus. In a few years you might find out getting the virus would have been better than getting mRNA injections… but those studies are still not getting attention. Do not project your honesty and integrity and respect for human life on everyone in power… no matter how much better that might make you feel.

Please explain… when you have more time!

Deep State Fake They aren’t just playing the left… it’s just easier to have home base there … with their resources you can bet they are playing every part of the game they possibly can think of. Playing the L R and C with real and fake stuff from the R L and C against any of the L R and C and using any useful idiots they can use from the C R and L … I think the more they panic the more masks will come off and the more angles being played will become apparent.

Coincidentally I managed to do just that… clear all data, cache, cookies associated with the forum and voila now it’s working again on all my devices!

Hi Michael... I had tried to make a post from my phone but apparently using the k word has triggered something? I had posted (if I can remember correctly) NOTE: This is under investigation still so might be a nothing burger Does ["ending"] each other off count as unraveling? Apparently, someone connected to, some people, has died, due to... get this air turbulence. I suppose their continually ["ending"] themselves off is an indication of cracks are forming or at least the cracks are getting too big. [Another note.. my iphone's access to this site is now borked... no idea... keeps locking up at www.objectivistliving.com/admin/install/ Now Chrome has the same problem I get error 500 and can only access the site in incognito mode.. using an old copy of Edge now... wtf So now I am always being redirected to https://www.objectivistliving.com/admin/install/ when I use my chrome browser... and I get an error This page isn’t working www.objectivistliving.com is currently unable to handle this request. HTTP ERROR 500 do you have any idea why?]

I like that. I agree with you. and also @Guyau Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not on the offensive against reason as such or even pointing at over rationalistic tendencies of anyone in particular here. I make no claim that it cannot be harmonious, only that it can get out of balance. I am touching on a psychological tendency which I believe can be dangerous when allowed to take over, which can happen to anyone who is a proponent of reason including some Objectivists. I think Peikoff was most brilliant at a few points in Understanding Objectivism in particular the chapter/lecture on Rationalism and the other one Emotions and Moral Judgment. These are absolutely some of the best treatments of Objectivism, Philosophy, and reason in their proper context of a full well balanced human being. I highly recommend those lectures. I believe knowledge is useful for the human being and flourishing, that understanding knowledge and the study of knowledge Philosophy are important, and an individual should have a basic working framework to enable the living of life. I believe that as Philosophy and not a special science of any kind (examples of which are physics, psychology, genetics, evolutionary psychology, mathematics, developmental psychology, biology … etc.) the fundamentals of Objectivism are true. My warnings are not a rebellion from the root base or foundation of what I believe is correct, but a warning more about those shoots and leaves that perhaps go askew…. Further Application and extrapolation and implication or ascribing of levels of significance… all can become issues which become a hindrance to life as indeed they do and have in the context of other ideological bases. To a hammer everything looks like a nail. There is more to a building than nails… and some things a hammer’s blow does no good for. I try to always remember that being human means pursuing a passion, and sometimes that passion IS life and flourishing for that person… and I do believe a proper philosophical foundation and the use of reason are absolutely crucial in living and achieving that life of passion… I want to warn that one should not obsess over the tools, the means, at the expense of that passion and a full life. This is my main purpose over the past few posts… That said. Sometimes I forget that for some people. Philosophers and academics in particular… That which is normally only a tool or a means in the pursuit of life and passion, happens to BE that person’s life and passion… I would say to them only that they should keep in mind that what they see as life, is (and in most cases should be) only a tool and means for most other people and then I would ask, in the spirit of love and compassion, that they accept my sincere apologies for incorrectly calling only a tool, that which to them is the source of life giving passion of highest significance to their life and flourishing. I acknowledge that… and there is no contradiction in its being chosen as a deeply unique and personal path to bliss.

Well, you could say I am calling for putting the brakes on "ordering one's life" for order's sake rather than bringing some order into one's life, for the sake of life. [I recall a funny commercial once, where two onlookers who are insurance agents are spouting off probabilities of this or that occurring... while others go about the doing and living of life... the human calculators safe to calculate, muse, and ridicule.... a far cry form the "pitch and toss" of Kipling's "If"] Also an adjective, such as "rational" applied to more than a syllogism, does not serve to characterize the entirely what it modifies... it is only one aspect of the thing which it adheres to... that special non-contradictory sauce... like a little garment tag "Made with Reason, polyester and cotton". It's a great ingredient in the things in which we bring it to bear, as a tool not a design, as an instrument not the plan, as the means not the end. Law is to be just and human. We arrive there in part by way of the important ingredient which is rationality. I would caution not to overemphasize reason as such, with that comes the traps of rationalism... and down that slippery slope you arrive at statistical treatment of humans, public health, utilitarianism, sacrifice of the few (or the one) for the many. Rationality does not logically necessitate the choice to live and the sense of the sanctity of life, everyone's life that goes with that choice... in fact, if a technocrat in reality IS powerful enough, even the sanctity of life becomes dispensible to him...

philosophy and thought have their place... but neither they, nor rationality, nor even the mind are holy enough to sacrifice all else, of what it is and means to be a human, to them. we are so much more than what we think... and in the end at best knowledge and philosophy help guide each person as a whole, prevent us from making mistakes... but all the richness and meaning of life is to be found way beyond such hypothesizing, tinkering, and syllogizing. Ultimately, the desire to understand is a need and a drive to control or feel in control... we see the very central planning types ... most eager to wrestle the world to their design are technocrats in spirit. But the desire and need for control and orderliness, for anything other than one's own property, is a sign of psychosis. Healthy people do not need to feel that they understand everything. What people really want is the experience of being alive... fully and as a whole being... mind and body, intuitively, emotionally, rationally, socially. I believe Peikoff got it wrong in DIM. The great threat now is not Religious Theocracy but a kind of Global Central Planning Utopianism... a resurrection through the advancements in technology of Subjectivist Atheist Mechanistic Totalitarianism. A sort of arrogance and nihilism, arising from the view of people as machines and with our great new powers the possibility of managing a world according to someone's view of the good Utopia... all it will cost is everyone's freedom, everyone's humanity, everyone's life as individual humans. The next big threat comes directly from overemphasis and arrogance on those connections called rationality... so beautiful and noncontradictory... and yet, as such, inhuman... that we should aim to sacrifice ourselves to this one aspect within, to this one tool, to remake ourselves in the image of rationality as such, as individuals and as a culture, such would be the destruction of humanity. I have more in common with an irrationalist and a religionist than that Atheist Central Planner ... and I have no qualms identifying them metaphorically with the lowest of creatures on the lowest rungs of hell. I think one antidote to the arrogance of the technocratic man-hating tyrant, is humility, and a sense of respect akin to worship for what is it to be human, for the XX% of our soul which is unconscious, for the millions and millions of years which has gone into the forms of our bodies and minds... for the many milenia which has gone into the software of our cultures and our stories. We cannot remake any better what we have been given, we need to tend and grow it... the freedom and room to flourish. the arrogance of attempting to remake man or society in the image of some specific thing.. imposed upon it... even rationality...will only result in the end of humankind.

Mainstream "Objectivists" be like... *blank out*

I have been of a mind recently leaning towards the idea that Objectivists which are human and humanity inclined (as I believe Rand was), rather than mechanism and mechanics inclined, have more in common with the typical Conservative who is usually religious, rather than the typical atheist. Most strikingly a sense that individual humans are sacred and are ends in themselves, is paramount for us whereas a typical atheist, or mechanism focused Objectivist, is more driven by disproving existence of God or showing everything is rational... to them getting thoughts correct is more important than living life right. Objectivism for living is a moral sense of humanity and living life as a human being at the pinnacle of what actually matters. Reason is our tool and servant for reaching it, we are not tools of reason for reason's sake. Rationality is not the aim of life, LIFE is the aim of rationality. For so long, those people all over the map considered God versus No God, to somehow be paramount... but for me something deeper in humanity, a sense of sacredness and joy in living versus a sense of destructiveness or hopelessness... is far more operative and important. I am starting to see the camps not as Religious and Atheist, but instead divided into groups of those who advocate for flourishing individual humanity with a sense of sacredness and those who view people as meaningless meat machines that can be utilized as necessary in a blind and senseless universe. The lines for me are now, Good and Evil as I see it... and in many ways these do not neatly fit prior considerations of religiosity - atheism, or conservativism - progressivism. Sometimes I despair that Objectivism now has slid towards the wrong side, or at least in its cowardice is somehow now complicit.

Yes, deceptively juvenile.

On its face, and how it says what it says, it is directed at teenagers... but what it says, in the end, may resonate more with adults...

Hear hear! But here, evasion is so much more understandable given the sheer horror, shock, and incredible evil of the revelations that were so outside the conman man’s prior knowledge … one can be convinced of something extending just outside our blinders and at least somewhat consistent with what is inside and near the edge… but a complete inversion of most things assumed in the normal course and indeed held dear? That understandably takes time.

I take it then that in your opinion a court of law is not the best place to hear and weigh evidence and examine and cross examine witnesses who have personal knowledge of facts in order to get to the truth and render justice… so that would leave the court of public opinion as your preferred method of both truth and justice? oh wait maybe you are following some other goal and truth and justice are irrelevant or inconvenient? The light of scrutiny chases away the shadows and lies… the courts should be clambering to let these go forward if they think it could and should be proven false.

The problems are more with the general public's overestimation of AI and what it can do than with the AI itself, even if programmed neutrally. EDIT: The level of significance or authority attached to any answer, decision, or functioning, i.e. the reliance and trust in it, is the biggest potential problem. First AI does not and cannot actually think. It "learns" from what it is fed whether or not it is correct or is logically consistent. If it is fed 90% flawed material, 9.99999999 % normal relatively accurate material, and then in one paper or book given all the keys to logic and conceptualization ... it will completely ignore the one paper, and "parrot" the patterns from the pathways that have been burned into it from the overwhelmingly flawed stuff. In fact it could not understand the one paper and has not been programmed to do so... AI is amplification of patterns, a glorified parrot... this is not thinking by any stretch. AI will become political and flawed, even more so than humans, based on what it is fed, i.e. who feeds it. Finger pointing will continue and these chatter boxes will just contribute more gibberish into and out of the various echo chambers.

A thought on mass extinction resulting from drastic and rapid climate change.. Adaptation will be most difficult for those species particularly well adapted to the specific current conditions and likely could not change quick enough if there is rapid and drastic change. I think any mass extinction of those well adapted species will be a great opportunity for less well adapted species to shake things up and establish a new creaturearchy… the more everything is brought low the more diversity and the greater chances for the disenfranchised species. Some species should be rooting for us to burn it all down and start over… down with the established evolutionary hierarchy! Only conservatives, traditionalists and those already in power want to keep the status quo! Bring on climate change!

I always have mixed feelings about such resignations. Although it shows the courage and integrity of the individual it also is a harbinger of further corruption of the institution. As good men leave, worse men and yes men fill the vacancies. One can only hope that the institution fails… otherwise we can expect the spectre of a new organized threat to rear it’s disgusting head. Imagine if this were something orchestrated to restore “balance” after the deep state loss of twitter… PV would slowly and surely fill up with lefties, engaged in targeting conservatives under the guise of journalism, taking orders from the Thing. All those leftie twitter employees and leftie twitter addicts of the past may have found a new home.