RobinReborn

Fountainhead begins and ends with Roark laughing...

Ayn Rand cited some unknown Greek Philosopher she read at 16 who said "I will not die, it's the world that will end". Does anybody know who that philosopher was?

Has anybody read this? It seems like a reasonable take on morality (from an atheistic perspective) but it's different form Objectivism.

How do you find purpose in life?

My estimate is 100,000.

I'm not an expert but I've never been convinced that the articles of Confederation failed. They succeeded in defeating the British, then after about six years the Founding Fathers decided to draft the constitution. The period between might not have been ideal, but I don't think it was horrible.

Conventional wisdom suggests that it's a bad idea to lend friends money or to go into business with them. But sometimes mixing friendship and business can go well. What are your thoughts? Do you try to keep business and friendship separate or do you mix them?

A small part of reality.

I'm responding to the original post, not the argument that has since arisen. While you don't say so, it seems that you're describing software/intellectual property theft which is harder to condemn then theft of physical property First, while you say the risk is low it's not clear to me how you are taking into consideration all factors. If the risk is that low then why aren't Peter or Mark doing the selling themselves? How are you planning on selling these tickets? The risk increases if you're using any sort of official channel (craigslist, facebook etc) and if you're just selling by word of mouth to your friends you're going to have to do a reasonable amount of work just to sell a few tickets. Even if you don't get caught, ever single person you sell to (or try to sell to) knows that you're willing to sell unlicensed information for cheap. I wouldn't expect them to go into any sort of business with you, tell you any sort of secrets or personal information or even trust you very much. It's a lot of reputation loss for a little bit of money. I don't know you, but I would hope that you'd be able to find more productive ways of making money

Here is a good book about the origins of religion: http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Spell-Religion-Natural-Phenomenon/dp/0143038338

All of this depends on the tests being accurate. Given the rapidly changing career market and the fact that most people change careers at some point in their life I doubt these tests can be particularly accurate.

This doesn't seem that bad to me. There's no evidence that these products are harmful and there are definitely people who can greatly benefit from them.

A homosexual Randian hero? That is an interesting notion. To my understanding Joan Blumenthal associated with a lot of homosexuals and homosexuals are overrepresented in Objectivism. But the homosexuality wasn't central to the story of Turings triumph. The movie went into it in the storylines about Turing's childhood and after his triumph, but it was a minor point in the WWII story. I'm not sure how you'd reconcile his homosexuality with his relationship with Joan Clarke, perhaps it made him less sexist towards her.

Wage is just one factor in choosing a job. People won't necessarily switch jobs just because a similar job pays slightly more. I don't disagree with you on the theoretical economics. But we don't live in a theoretical economy, we live in an economy which is controlled by a congress with a certain ideology. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that that policy will lead to the minimum wage increasing every now and then. Astute businesspeople should be aware of this, even if they oppose it.

I'm not sure if that's a safe assumption. There are always political groups trying to raise the minimum wage and it's difficult to predict the behavior of congress (many companies might also be lobbying congress). So I'd say most people earning minimum wage are earning less than their free market value because their employers fear they'll have to raise the minimum wage in the future.

Seems more like a statement than a prediction. How can you determine whether the minimum wage is above the free market level or not?

Interesting movie, though as Francisco points out there's a lot of inaccuracies. As a movie it tells a good story and does portray Turing as a sort of Randian hero, misunderstood by those around him but determined to achieve his goals. My favorite quote was "Sometimes it's the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine"

If a car goes from point A to point B, does the car value going from point A to point B? If a hammer (wielded by a human) drives a nail, does the hammer value driving the nail? A computer is as stupid as a box of rocks. A computer merely does what it is told to do. The instructions are called a program. When a computer plays chess at Elo 3200 (highest human Elo ever: 2882), using instructions called Komodo or Stockfish, it is still as stupid as a box of rocks. It looks smart because the programmers who made Komodo or Stockfish are smart. Human values are often achieved with the aid of tools and usually the human is credited with the accomplishment, rather than the tool. But tools are growing increasingly complicated and the average human understands them less and less. As the tools become more and more powerful (assuming there's no a stop in their exponential growth or some sort of luddite revolution), they'll be more and more responsible for human achievements. You can attribute all of human accomplishment to the human mind, but the tools of earlier humans are critical to human survival. You can attribute intelligence to the programmers of Komodo or Stockfish, but they only look intelligent because they were able to leverage technologies (not all of which they developed themselves) to beat humans at a game which could be reduced to a set of problems which are relatively easy to analyze on a symbolic machine. Genetic Algorithms are a subset of Artificial Intelligence. If you can specify a problem and a satisfaction criteria (ie, explain how good or bad a potential solution is, basically specify a value the computer is trying to accomplish), you can use randomness to create approximate solutions which will incrementally improve. That's one form of Artificial Intelligence which can be said to have values and purpose.

Brant, you could say the same thing about most humans. Their values come from parents, society and their DNA. Surely you must feel that society exerts some pressure on you to accept certain values. Though computers are programmed by humans, they are sometimes programmed in complicated ways that lead to behavior which can't be predicted by humans. You can say they have no values, but if a computer beats a human at chess it's not much of a stretch to say that the computer values winning at chess.

Part of the limits of computers (current) rationality is that their values are simple. Watson beat humans at Jeopardy, but doing so was its only value. Same with Deep Blue, its only value was winning chess games. Humans have more complicated codes of values than computers, but that doesn't mean they'll achieve as much as computers. They may be able to do so, but to maximize their success they have to prioritize their values.

I'm not sure how useful the strong vs. weak AI dichotomy is. AI is fairly powerful now and is growing more powerful, we can point out its weaknesses if we want but we are growing increasingly dependent on it. I think the real question is, will we have rights when Artificial Intelligence is making most of our decisions for us?

And that would matter why? If you believe diversity is a virtue, ARI is doing a decent job with it.

The male:female ratio is fairly even. And there are two people who aren't clearly white. Not exactly 'diverse' but I think you'd be surprised at the number of organizations and businesses that are less diverse than this.

This is my understanding of Objectivism: "Rationality is man’s basic virtue, the source of all his other virtues" Ayn Rand (This motivated my post elsewhere on Artificial Intelligence and Objectivism... if you believe computers can be more rational than humans than they could also be more virtuous than humans... an interesting dilemma.) However, reminding me of the other vitures mentioned in the virtue of selfishness is useful, it's been a long time since I've read that book so perhaps a rereading is in order.

I believe in rationality, but I think there needs to be some basic premises that Objectivists agree upon or it's a string of arbitrary assertions connected by reason. There's nothing wrong with that, but that's basically the same as being a rationalist and not all rationalists are Objectivists. Here's a Rand quote (note she uses the word holds just as I did). "My Philosophy, Objectivsm, holds that: Reality exists as an objective absolute—facts are facts, independent of man’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears. Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses) is man’s only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival. Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life. The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. The government acts only as a policeman that protects man’s rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church" I'd assume that most Objectivists would agree with the first three, but not necessarily the last one. Yes, people do have different values, but not all values are consistent with Objectivism. You can choose between being a musician specializing in works of certain Romantic composers or a guitarist who expresses himself in "wild, primeval feelings, orgiastic joy." You can choose between being an industrialist or "the driver of a hotrod car" ("The Objectivist Ethics," The Virtue of Selfishness, 1964, pb 31). The best way to choose values in accordance with Objectivism is to read the words of Ayn Rand. Thanks! I think choosing values has a lot to do with who you are as an individual and reading Ayn Rand can only help so much. Google is your friend. I don't agree or disagree with your interpretation of Objectivism. I disregard it. If that stings, I suggest you check a premise or two about your own motivations. You will find no flock to be gathered here. Only independent minds who stand for their own thinking. We all just happen to like Rand's works, or were impacted by them, but there are a lot of different disagreements and applications. There is no "Objectivism holds (yada yada yada)." There is no preaching. That's one of the main reasons people come to OL. Michael I'm not trying to gather a flock or preach. I am asking a question based on my understanding of Objetivism.