RobinReborn

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Everything posted by RobinReborn

  1. RobinReborn
    This is one of those areas where Rand contradicts herself. Remember the Temple of the Human Spirit? Remember the statue there?
  2. RobinReborn
    Joan Blumenthal? I recall reading about her in the Brandens' books but she was a minor character. How was her care for art manifest?
  3. RobinReborn
    Because she was Rand's personal secretary and the only one in that group who cared about Art? But let's be serious. Aesthetic Authority is almost a contradiction in terms. I appreciate the Romantic Manifesto as a book explaining Ayn Rand's esthetic values, I agree with much of what she had to say. But to interpret it literally would be like turning myself into a zombie.
  4. RobinReborn
    Yeah... a lot of people in the US claim descent from the Natives, it has a certain populist charm to it. But I started this thread to discuss Ted Cruz. I vaguely remember Yaron Brook saying something positive about him...
  5. RobinReborn
    She is not Native American: http://elizabethwarrenwiki.org/elizabeth-warren-native-american-cherokee-controversy/
  6. RobinReborn
    Not sure exactly what to make of Elizabeth Warren, but it's interesting to see how much of a mess Ted Cruz is. https://twitter.com/elizabethforma/status/722534798032506880/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
  7. RobinReborn
    I've met people with what seemed like inconsistent values... I've met people who have inherited money and feel that they don't deserve it. I have not met somebody who is like a copy of Ellsworth Toohey or James Taggart.
  8. RobinReborn
    Haha, my high school science teacher said he met Bill Nye and he told me that Bill Nye told him a 'dirty joke'.
  9. RobinReborn
    In my experience the AGW people are somewhat informed of actual scientific claims made by people who have PhDs. I don't doubt that there's a level of complexity to the research that they've done that I would have to work hard to understand. My skepticism is more due to this 'climate science' being a relatively new field of study.
  10. RobinReborn
    Why is he targeting climate change skeptics? Skepticism is a philosophy, it may be impractical to apply it to climate change but imprisoning skeptics isn't a tactic with a good track record. Why not imprison intelligent design advocates? They go beyond skepticism, not only are they skeptical of evolution they create nonsensical narratives which place religion above science.
  11. RobinReborn
    Yes, and who knows how far back woodworking goes? Obviously advances in metallurgy allowed for better woodworking tools, but you can make wood tools using stone tools. Obviously the wood is going to rot eventually, but the knowledge on how to make the tool can be passed between humans.
  12. RobinReborn
    I am wondering whether Mr. Binswanger provided a citation for that claim. To my understanding many experts would use different figures.
  13. RobinReborn
    I've read a decent amount critical of Myers Briggs. It's not to say that it's completely useless, but it's not clear to me that it makes useful predictions or is stable across a person's lifetime.
  14. RobinReborn
    It's an oversimplification. In practice, it's pretty unlikely that you'll ever be fully liberated, liberty is an ideal that we can strive for, but never actually reach. From some perspective, we only reach liberty when we die. Personally I'd rather compromise some of my liberties and die than risk death for (alleged, and probably temporary and imperfect) liberty.
  15. RobinReborn
    It's a lot easier to bequeath values if you are living than if you die. Peaceful areas can be the victims of violence, but usually it's the violent areas that become more violent. Fundamentally you cannot stop war with war, you have to find another solution. The 20th Century is full of such solutions.
  16. RobinReborn
    By guiltless I meant he felt no guilt, not that he didn't commit the murder.
  17. RobinReborn
    Thanks... now that I am thinking more about it a lot of it is music. I enjoy music a lot but when I look at the lives of most of the musicians I like I see lots of moral problems...
  18. RobinReborn
    You can give your life in battle if you value winning the battle more than your own life. But in this age why would you? Unless you live in a war ravaged area you should be able to find a more productive use of your life than in winning a battle. I'm not sure it's worth my time to try to reason with people who want to die in battle. Fundamentally it's an immature mentality, which is why there are so many child and teenaged soldiers in the world and not so many soldiers older than 30.
  19. RobinReborn
    Ever since Peikoff decided to publish Rand's journals, several publications have put our smear pieces on her. They're almost exclusively about her alleged worship of a guiltless murderer, William Hickman. Of course, the real story is more complicated than that, Rand intended to use Hickman's demeanor for a character who killed a malicious priest. I recall hearing Rand say in some documentary (don't remember which) that when she met Frank he had ideas for screenplays which she thought were unproducable. Could this story inspired by Hickman have been one of them?
  20. RobinReborn
    I like The Wire even though I disagree with the politics of its creator. There are a lot of other things that I can't think of right now. Perhaps that's a sign that I'm resolving issues relating to art that I'd previously though of as contradictory.
  21. RobinReborn
    Manipulation is a loaded term. Most human beings are full of contradictions. Thus you can work with them on pursuing some common goal, achieve it, then have them realize that the goal you achieved with them contradicted some principle they held. They'll probably say that you manipulated them, even if you weren't aware of all their principles.
  22. RobinReborn
    Not sure what happened to this thread but here's my take: 1) Asimov's rules assume that Robots have empathy and understand how and why all humans feel pain. Most humans have trouble with this. 2) One of human's first tools was fire, its purposes are many. The most benevolent was that it enabled humans to cook their food and thus develop smaller jaws and bigger brains. There are many negative effects of fire though.
  23. RobinReborn
    I would say a scientific law is an abstract principle which no known observations contradict.
  24. RobinReborn
    What do you do when you like art but you don't think you should like it?
  25. RobinReborn
    I have explicitly been told not to check out Asimov's three laws of robotics... please explain to me why I should check them out.