New Developments re Harriman Induction book

[Robert Campbell]

Ah, well...

Comrade Sonia has awakened.

Starbuckle's satirical interview with Peikoff has now been deleted from last Wednesday's open comment thread, along with a favorable response to it from another commenter.

Robert Campbell

[9thdoctor]

Comrade Sonia has awakened.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIX_0nMlIBU

[Brant Gaede]

It's all quite sad that she's not someone to tolerate or make room for something like that. It's a kind of inverse ad hominem: Say something good and your argument is good (about ARI and its LP). In fact the orthodoxy is all ad hominem at its base as it animadverts upon this bitch and that bastard at least in the sense of ridding one's consciousness of all moral considerations not negative. The attempt to forcefully recreate in real life and time the morally sterile world of Galt's Gulch only means sterility in one's own life and advocacy and it does not travel.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

It's all quite sad that she's not someone to tolerate or make room for something like that. It's a kind of inverse ad hominem: Say something good and your argument is good (about ARI and its LP). In fact the orthodoxy is all ad hominem at its base as it animadverts upon this bitch and that bastard at least in the sense of ridding one's consciousness of all moral considerations not negative. The attempt to forcefully recreate in real life and time the morally sterile world of Galt's Gulch only means sterility in one's own life and advocacy and it does not travel.

--Brant

What is morally sterile about Galt's Gulch. While it would not be a fun place to live for most people, I do not see anything morally sterile about it. I am sure it is possible to wander about Galt's Gulch without first locking one's door.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[PDS]

Too bad. The Starbuckle interview was rather hilarious.

[Brant Gaede]

It's all quite sad that she's not someone to tolerate or make room for something like that. It's a kind of inverse ad hominem: Say something good and your argument is good (about ARI and its LP). In fact the orthodoxy is all ad hominem at its base as it animadverts upon this bitch and that bastard at least in the sense of ridding one's consciousness of all moral considerations not negative. The attempt to forcefully recreate in real life and time the morally sterile world of Galt's Gulch only means sterility in one's own life and advocacy and it does not travel.

--Brant

What is morally sterile about Galt's Gulch. While it would not be a fun place to live for most people, I do not see anything morally sterile about it. I am sure it is possible to wander about Galt's Gulch without first locking one's door.

Ba'al Chatzaf

You insist on standing outside the barn asking me what's inside instead of going in and seeing for yourself. The barn door is in your head and knowledge is inside, if you think about what's in there, that is. You should come up with more than not having to lock your doors.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

You insist on standing outside the barn asking me what's inside instead of going in and seeing for yourself. The barn door is in your head and knowledge is inside, if you think about what's in there, that is. You should come up with more than not having to lock your doors.

--Brant

You did not answer the question I put. What is morally sterile about Galt's Gulch?

Ba'al Chatzaf

[dsaum]

The best thing that could happen is if ARI shrinks its intellectual pursuits even further and explicitly becomes what it always was: a fan club and marketing engine for Rand's books. They should cease and desist all interpretive works, all letters to the editor, all attempts to get Objectivists into universities. Objectivism qua movement needs to die, as indeed it has been trying to do for many decades.

Shayne,

I agree with you.

There is no need for an Objectivist movement today, and attempts to build or keep one pose too many liabilities.

This why any expectation on Yaron Brook's part of absorbing the vanquished remnants of TAS is nutty and hubristic.

And why Will Thomas's dream of uniting the Objectivist movement behind TAS was no less so.

Robert Campbell

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-QKSNCFuC0&feature=related

At 4:27 Deep Throat utters the timeless wisdom "Just follow the money", and that injunction is just as important for understanding the fate of the Objectivist movement today as it is for unraveling political conspiracies.

ARI brings in at least $6M per year, and its president Yaron Brook made $348,398 in 2009, and even the secretary pulled down $123,684 according to public records.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.charitynavigator.org/__asset__/_etc_/CN_CEO_Compensation_Study_2009_Final.pdf

Even after those generous salaries, there is plenty of trickle down remaining to keep the insiders in line. And to keep a lot of folks on the outside salivating.

Until the money flow stops, it is unrealistic to expect negative events like the McCaskey purge to slow ARI down.

Edit: Here are some more recent ARI financials that show Yaron got a raise to $420,162 and income is up to $6.6M. Admin is $422k and fundraising is $594k.

http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=8345

Edited October 7, 2010 by Krell

[PDS]

The best thing that could happen is if ARI shrinks its intellectual pursuits even further and explicitly becomes what it always was: a fan club and marketing engine for Rand's books. They should cease and desist all interpretive works, all letters to the editor, all attempts to get Objectivists into universities. Objectivism qua movement needs to die, as indeed it has been trying to do for many decades.

Shayne,

I agree with you.

There is no need for an Objectivist movement today, and attempts to build or keep one pose too many liabilities.

This why any expectation on Yaron Brook's part of absorbing the vanquished remnants of TAS is nutty and hubristic.

And why Will Thomas's dream of uniting the Objectivist movement behind TAS was no less so.

Robert Campbell

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-QKSNCFuC0&feature=related

At 4:27 Deep Throat utters the timeless wisdom "Just follow the money", and that injunction is just as important for understanding the fate of the Objectivist movement today as it is for unraveling political conspiracies.

ARI brings in at least $6M per year, and its president Yaron Brook made $$348,398 in 2009, and even the secretary pulled down $123,684 according to public records.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.charitynavigator.org/__asset__/_etc_/CN_CEO_Compensation_Study_2009_Final.pdf

Even after those generous salaries, there is plenty of trickle down remaining to keep the insiders in line. And to keep a lot of folks on the outside salivating.

Until the money flow stops, it is unrealistic to expect negative events like the McCaskey purge to slow ARI down.

I'm not buying this argument. After taxes and tithes, there's not much money left over with those figures...

[Ellen Stuttle]

Along with Krell's remarks (post #383) about the ARI financial realities, see comments by Kenny on SOLO about the political realities - #91957 on the thread "Does a Leonard Ever Change Its Spots."

Ellen

[Brant Gaede]

You insist on standing outside the barn asking me what's inside instead of going in and seeing for yourself. The barn door is in your head and knowledge is inside, if you think about what's in there, that is. You should come up with more than not having to lock your doors.

--Brant

You did not answer the question I put. What is morally sterile about Galt's Gulch?

That is correct.

--Brant

Edited October 7, 2010 by Brant Gaede

[Brant Gaede]

The best thing that could happen is if ARI shrinks its intellectual pursuits even further and explicitly becomes what it always was: a fan club and marketing engine for Rand's books. They should cease and desist all interpretive works, all letters to the editor, all attempts to get Objectivists into universities. Objectivism qua movement needs to die, as indeed it has been trying to do for many decades.

Shayne,

I agree with you.

There is no need for an Objectivist movement today, and attempts to build or keep one pose too many liabilities.

This why any expectation on Yaron Brook's part of absorbing the vanquished remnants of TAS is nutty and hubristic.

And why Will Thomas's dream of uniting the Objectivist movement behind TAS was no less so.

Robert Campbell

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-QKSNCFuC0&feature=related

At 4:27 Deep Throat utters the timeless wisdom "Just follow the money", and that injunction is just as important for understanding the fate of the Objectivist movement today as it is for unraveling political conspiracies.

ARI brings in at least $6M per year, and its president Yaron Brook made $348,398 in 2009, and even the secretary pulled down $123,684 according to public records.

https://docs.google...._2009_Final.pdf

Even after those generous salaries, there is plenty of trickle down remaining to keep the insiders in line. And to keep a lot of folks on the outside salivating.

Until the money flow stops, it is unrealistic to expect negative events like the McCaskey purge to slow ARI down.

Edit: Here are some more recent ARI financials that show Yaron got a raise to $420,162 and income is up to $6.6M. Admin is $422k and fundraising is $594k.

http://www.charityna...mary&orgid=8345

While the secretary is overpaid by a third or even a half, if it's Brook bringing in the money his pay is justified, so are the fund-raising expenses assuming they work too.

--Brant

[Starbuckle]

What is morally sterile about Galt's Gulch?

[william.scherk]

Discussion proceeds on the Peikoff/McCaskey kerfuffle in a variety of places, some behind an iron-curtain of orthodoxy, some relatively open to sunlight. One such dappled glade (much akin to the Chip Joyce Facebook wall discussion before Joyce began to systematically prune dissent) is Bob Gifford's Facebook 'reminder' "An Apparently Forgotten or Ignored Element of Who Dr. Leonard Peikoff Is."

Here stark differences between otherwise orthodox personages is open to view at the moment. There is some outright blasphemy -- for example, several commentators comparing Peikoff's infallible dicta to that of the Pope -- and some rather telling ironies.

For one example of the ironies, although Betsy Speicher has banned any open discussion of the Peikoff/McCaskey festivities within her own family crypt, here she is instructing the wider congregation on fine points of dogma. I wonder how long it will be before Speicher and Hsieh will unbar the door to discussion in their own dank cloisters . . .

Speicher:

John Kagebein wrote: "Nowhere does Dr. Peikoff

indicate that his theory of induction is part of the

content of The Philosophy of Objectivism."

Not true, Peikoff DOES say his theory of induction

is part of Objectivism.

On the Ayn Rand Book Store web site

(

http://tinyurl.com/2988p3q

), the description of

Peikoff's lectures on "Induction in Physics and

Philosophy" begins: "These historic lectures

present, for the first time, the solution to the

problem of induction ..."

Observe that on Peikoff's web site

(

http://tinyurl.com/2c96lye

), the description

begins: "These historic lectures present, for the

first time, the OBJECTIVIST solution to the problem

of induction ..." [Emphasis mine.]

Check it yourself.

Edited October 7, 2010 by william.scherk

[william.scherk]

I had written:

I wonder how long it will be before Speicher and Hsieh will unbar the door to discussion in their own dank cloisters . . .

That was unfair to Speicher. In her one previous announcement that there would be no discussion of the Peikoff/McCaskey/Harriman kerfuffle, she made clear her reasons. They had more to do with civility and niceness than with a desire to keep dissenting voices shut out. In her actual words: "Conflicts among Objectivists can and should be aired, but not here."

She has just published a note to her FORUM that further explains why her take on the Peikoff/McCaskey/Harriman/Tracinski kerfuffle will not appear on her FORUM. Here it is:

My promised statement on Rob Tracinski's

"Anthemgate" article is ready, but I have decided

not to post it publicly. The reactions even to the

best public postings have been full of speculation

and gossip leading to uninformed and unjust

judgments, hostility and attacks even on innocent

bystanders, wholesale de-friending, and worse.

Since I don't want to encourage that, I will make my

statement available privately to anyone who wishes

to know my opinion. Just e-mail me at

betsy@speicher.com and ask for my Anthemgate

statement.

I am on her PNG list, so I won't bother writing. Can someone several levels higher on the rungs of hell request a peek at the private review?

Edited October 7, 2010 by william.scherk

[Brant Gaede]

What is morally sterile about Galt's Gulch?

It's a perfect world full of perfect people who are perfectly rational and without conflict. In such an artificial and phoney Utopia, psychologically and philosophically, with everybody under the author's thumb, there is no room for actual moral issues--those have all been left behind. It's morally sterile because every human being in the place has been morally sterilized--they all have been deprived, as depicted, of natural human complexity and necessary free will.

Or: Everything.

--Brant

that's that--I hope

Edited October 8, 2010 by Brant Gaede

[Robert Campbell]

In a remark that Bob Mayhew bowdlerized

Q: Why is the lack of government in Galt's Gulch in Atlas Shrugged …

A: Denied to whom?

Q: Denied to a rational, a hypothetical, rational society.

A: Because Galt's Gulch is not a society; it's private estate. It is owned by one man who selects those who are admitted so carefully, and even then they have a judge as an arbiter if anything ever came up—only nothing came up among them because they were all men sharing the same philosophy. But in a general society, God help you! If you had a society which all shared one philosophy, that would be dreadful.

Galt's Gulch would cons, probably have consisted of—I never named the number—let's say, optimistically, a thousand people who represent the top genius of the world. Even then, they would agree on fundamentals, but they would never be totally identical. And the reason why they didn't need any government is because if they had disagreements, they were capable of resolving them rationally. (Ford Hall Forum, 1972, 32:32-37:29)

Robert Campbell

[sjw]

I am on her PNG list, so I won't bother writing. Can someone several levels higher on the rungs of hell request a peek at the private review?

Scherk, I find it not cool to be posting Betsy's email address such that it can be scavenged by SPAM bots.

Shayne

[sjw]

Galt's Gulch would cons, probably have consisted of—I never named the number—let's say, optimistically, a thousand people who represent the top genius of the world. Even then, they would agree on fundamentals, but they would never be totally identical. And the reason why they didn't need any government is because if they had disagreements, they were capable of resolving them rationally. (Ford Hall Forum, 1972, 32:32-37:29)

Wow, did she actually imply that only irrational people need government? So then, by implication, the standard by which governments should be constructed is the *irrational*? That explains a lot of ARI's views, e.g. their implicit support of gutting the Bill of Rights.

Shayne

[Robert Campbell]

I am on her PNG list, so I won't bother writing. Can someone several levels higher on the rungs of hell request a peek at the private review?

WSS,

I'm sure I am also on La Speicher's PNG list.

In a sense, it doesn't matter. If her take on Peikoff vs. McCaskey can only be vouchsafed to a few persons whom La Speicher deems reliable, what effect can it have?

Robert Campbell

PS added October 8: I'm reminded that on the other side of the controversy, there is the contrast between Harry Binswanger's defense of the Harriman book on his closed list and his perfunctory two kiss-ass paragraphs on amazon. What Binswanger is willing to show the public is the two paragraphs.

What Speicher is willing to show the public is a little more consequential—she's willing to say she's caught Peikoff calling the HarriPei theory of induction "Objectivist"—but again she is not willing to go out front with the rest of her views.

[Robert Campbell]

Wow, did she actually imply that only irrational people need government? So then, by implication, the standard by which governments should be constructed is the *irrational*? That explains a lot of ARI's views, e.g. their implicit support of gutting the Bill of Rights.

Shayne,

The entire quotation is on The Rewrite Squad.

I don't take her to be saying that only irrational people need government.

I do take her to be saying that rational people need not and will not always share the same philosophy.

And that a society consisting only of those who share the same philosophy wouldn't be a good thing.

Robert Campbell

[sjw]

Wow, did she actually imply that only irrational people need government? So then, by implication, the standard by which governments should be constructed is the *irrational*? That explains a lot of ARI's views, e.g. their implicit support of gutting the Bill of Rights.

Shayne,

The entire quotation is on The Rewrite Squad.

Sorry, I don't understand your grammar -- you mean that this excerpt has probably been corrupted by them, right?

Of all the things that proves beyond any doubt the corrupt nature of ARI it is 1) editing Rand; 2) not permitting others to see Rand in the original. On that count alone, any Objectivist can make a decision about whether or not to support them. As far as I'm concerned, if Rand did not order her papers to be burned, then that is consent for them to be published as is, without editing of any kind. I think we can be certain she would not have wanted fourth-rate authoritarian liars to be editing her works.

Shayne

[william.scherk]

I am on her PNG list, so I won't bother writing. Can someone several levels higher on the rungs of hell request a peek at the private review?

Scherk, I find it not cool to be posting Betsy's email address such that it can be scavenged by SPAM bots.

Well, good for you, dude. I expect Betsy's email address -- as published openly on her forum in the post I quoted -- is already scraped and scavenged. I also expect her inbox has the basic spam filters that any email program since 1902 has incorporated. She is not an idiot. Her various webpages have her email address front and centre.

My email address is william.scherk@gmail.com, and you and any other tight-ass Miss Grundy is free to spam the absolute heck out of it.

Pinhead.

Edited October 8, 2010 by william.scherk

[sjw]

I am on her PNG list, so I won't bother writing. Can someone several levels higher on the rungs of hell request a peek at the private review?

Scherk, I find it not cool to be posting Betsy's email address such that it can be scavenged by SPAM bots.

Well, good for you, dude. I expect Betsy's email address -- as published openly on her forum in the post I quoted -- is already scraped and scavenged. I also expect her inbox has the basic spam filters that any email program since 1902 has incorporated. She is not an idiot. Her various webpages have her email address front and centre.

My email address is william.scherk@gmail.com, and you and any other tight-ass Miss Grundy is free to spam the absolute out of it.

Pinhead.

Well, I already observed your poor manners elsewhere, so I suppose I should have expected this -- regardless of whether or not Betsy was in the habit of posting her email address on the internet.

Now I suppose we'll have a little flamefest where the other idiots pile on as was common practice when Phil stood up for someone. We wouldn't want any kind of civilized behavior here, so if someone suggests something on that order, he must be skewered ASAP. So have at it, let the skewering begin.

Shayne

[9thdoctor]

The entire quotation is on The Rewrite Squad.

Sorry, I don't understand your grammar -- you mean that this excerpt has probably been corrupted by them, right?

It's a thread. The name is a rather clever reference to 1984. That is, the novel by George Orwell. I take it you weren't lurking before your reappearance in August.

Well, good for you, dude. I expect Betsy's email address -- as published openly on her forum in the post I quoted

How about a link?

http://forums.4aynrandfans.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=12337&view=findpost&p=108362

Yup, there it is, for all to see.

So have at it, let the skewering begin.

No thanks. Booooooooring!