RobinReborn

@Brant I've never been convinced that the Aztecs practiced human sacrifice on a grand scale. The Europeans burned witches, yet somehow this is not considered human sacrifice.

Kyrel, are you eastern european? If so, why should we take anything you say on race seriously? Your people have offered little resistance to communism and nazis, your women are whores and your men are drunks and you have the stupidest religions possible. Nothing original has come from that region. It's the asshole of the Eurasian continent. You wish your people had achieved things that the British, French etc had but you haven't, your skin color may be the same as their but other than that you're completely different If this seems wrong to you, then I'd reconsider your collectivist views. Otherwise, I'd ask you whether your insults to Africans come from a deeply rooted insecurity or inability to understand Western Culture.

Funny how people often say it's not worth arguing with someone right after they have done exactly that. ;) It wasn't an argument, it was an insult. Usually I stay away from those in arguments.

OK... been dealing with personal issues and arguing about this thing throughout the internet. My patience has worn thin and I did not expect to see sympathy for the killer on this forum. I did read the killer's manifesto and was reassured at how retarded and wrong he was... after all he was a high school drop out whose 'education' came from various white supremacists (who place race above reason). I believe what Kyrel said was completely wrong and in my experience, it's not worth arguing with people that are that wrong.

No it wasn't. That's almost six standard deviations away from average, only one out of 2 billion people have that and I'm calling BS on your father being the smartest person in the world before WWII

This guy is the perfect example of a stupid white person who is irrational enough to believe he is superior to black people yet unable to provide a rational argument and thus resorts to violence... There have been too many of those in history and it is great to finally see one of them get the sort of condemnation he deserves (except from people who will either realize their stupidity or cling to racism rather than face reality).

Please, the introduction of cotton allowed Europeans to have changes of clothes, not live in lice infested wool and live an extra 20 years. You are a pathetic collectivist piece of shit who lacks the self awareness to realize how much your achievements are dependent on slavery and racism.

Didn't know about that... I think that's because at that time, violence was much more directed towards indigenous Africans... and because people (including the ANC) don't want to give the APLP any more attention. I saw a play they put on, fairly basic and oversimplistic narrative about what caused people to rebel against Apartheid yet be unable to come up with a much better solution.

I've heard people complain about Objectivism being for Autistic people... not sure if that's a stereotype worth preserving.

I can build websites and am good at listening to and critiquing business ideas. PM me if you want.

Greg...the solipsism comment was partly in jest. As for being able to convince people, I don't claim any magical ability to do so but I have had some successes (more failures though). There's no use in trying to undermine the foundations of someone's philosophy, but if you grow to understand them and their values well enough, you should be able to change their mind about issues they don't have strong opinions on. Believe it or not you've changed my mind on some things. Not sure if it's worth telling you exactly what they are.

Greg, I think this is your philosophy (based on your claim that people don't change their views from arguments): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism

Simple. Each individual has their own experience. You know when you have your own experience, don't you? If you don't possess the self awareness to know for yourself, there is no human being on earth who can help you. Yes. That's the curse of intellectualism... to confuse a theoretical fantasy for the reality of experience. Living on that low level is nothing short of a disaster, for reality will be constantly reminding the intellect worshiper that they're bowing at the wrong altar. And what is reality's reminder? Pain. When the fragile wooden ship of subjective intellectual fantasy inevitably crashes on the cold hard unyielding boulders of objective reality. Greg @Greg... I am beginning to understand why you have the reputation you have, rather than trying to come to a conclusion in a debate you seem to exacerbate differences... I have my own experiences, but my experiences inevitably effect other people. In many cases, my cognitive reaction to my experience is largely based on how the experience could or would effect other people in my life. If your reaction to experience is different, it may indicate you have a great deal of difficulty empathizing with others. There is no curse of intellectualism, Objectivism is an intellectual philosophy (Christianity is not). If you can't store some of your experiences and communicate them, you're no better than an animal living off instinct.

Obviously not under Mao, I'm talking about modern day China... Was there even significant industry to pollute under Mao? How did he create it? Can you explain why I'm wrong rather than asking me questions?

@Selene to my understanding China does have corporations. I don't understand the inner workings of the USSR but I would suspect that the polluters acted much like state owned corporations. @Brant I don't think anybody is, that's why I'm so confused about what Selene is trying to say with this thread.

Man... this thread keeps drifting off topic. Though I think the on topic posts started off seeming to advocate a form of mysticism and have become slightly more rational. If we can't transfer experiences to others, how can we know that we actually had them? The idea of an experience is different from the experience itself, but those things can be unified together by memory. You probably can't generate the experience of eating chocolate unless you eat chocolate, but it's not hard to carry some remembrance of the experience and not have every time you eat chocolate be as surprising as the first. If you think hard enough about how you've stored your experience in your brain, you can begin to explain it to somebody else. Their understanding won't be perfect, but that doesn't really matter for most things.

I'm not sure what's going on with this but it seems like an international organization dedicated to a recreational activity which people spend billions on is bound to be corrupt. I remember a few world cups ago hearing about a referee from Sudan being charged with taking a bribe. My initial reaction was "oh, he's showing that Sudanese people have no integrity". Then I thought about how much money is bet on each game, how easy it is for a referee to change the outcome and how far a small amount of money can go in Sudan... Seemed like the ref was doing the right thing.

I don't get it. Racism exists, it's practiced by both individuals and corporations. Pollution exists, usually it's corporations dumping pollution in poorer areas. Certain races are poorer than others (on average)...

Not entirely sure where this thread is going but let me try to bring it back to my original point. Experiences are transferable, but any transfer will be imperfect. The clearest example of this for me is a baby crying, s/he is transferring their experience of pain to anybody nearby. Most parents will try several things to stop their baby from crying (give it a toy, give it food, try changing its diaper etc). As the baby grows its ability to communicate its experience to its parents will improve, but it will never reach perfection. In its teenage years it may transfer its experience by rebelling against its parents or even being violent. It may feel like nobody understands it and that experience can't be transferred at all... but that's completely wrong. If experience's couldn't be transferred then communication wouldn't be possible. As for experience after death, I assume that lack of ability to communicate implies lack of experience. I've read that after death some people experience a few minutes of brain activity but beyond that I think it's ridiculous to assume that there's any experience or consciousness (except in the minds of others).

Well said Michael... I'm not quite sure how this thread turned into a debate about Israel and Rand's contributions to it...

"Black mail" and Libel are generally within free speech. (I should note that as a legal term, black mail is the threat to do something illegal, not the threat to do something which is legal but could hurt somebody's reputation, most people's usage of black mail fits the latter definition.) As for video evidence being inadmissible in court, you raise an interesting point. But I'm not sure it matters that much. So long as the courts have more advanced technology than criminals.

Fascinating yet false. Read the Letters of Ayn Rand, she donated money to the Finnish cause during the Finnish-Soviet war. Apparently, you can provide the exact section. Provide it please. A... I can't give a direct link but if you go to : http://www.amazon.com/Letters-Ayn-Rand/dp/0452274044/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1433111124&sr=8-1&keywords=letters+of+ayn+rand click 'look inside' and search for 'finland' you'll find it on page 43... Now... can you provide me the evidence of Rand sending money to Israel? I'd like to know exactly when so I could place it within a historical context, if it was in 1948 there would be a good argument justifying it. If it was in 1967 or 1973 there would be a slightly worse argument. I wouldn't want to lose the historical context because it's pretty clear to me that while Israel may have been victimized by its neighbors in the past, now it is the aggressor.

Fascinating yet false. Read the Letters of Ayn Rand, she donated money to the Finnish cause during the Finnish-Soviet war.

Objectivism was founded by people who were brought up Jewish but were no longer observant. I don't think that's true. Rand was barely brought up Jewish, her family celebrated some of the holidays but they stopped when she expressed her disapproval of them. They were largely secular. I don't recall anything in Nathaniel or Barbara's books indicating they had bar mitzvah's or anything like that.

I need some citations for what you are saying, a simple google search reveals lots of evidence that Plato did go to Egypt. It's true that Imhotep lived long before Aristotle and Plato, but Aristotle and Plato lived long before you or I and we know about them... Imhotep wrote about more than medicine and architecture, he also wrote about Mathematics and Philosophy. It's also possible he wrote about even more which could have been destroyed between Aristotle and the present (see Library of Alexandria).