New Developments re Harriman Induction book

[william.scherk]

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.

I very much enjoyed reading Phil and hope he returns at some juncture -- he has put forth a few great nuggets of value (as do you on occasion), but also has a hard time absorbing and using critical reactions -- almost always in 'teaching mode,' less often in 'learning mode.' He is, I dare say, prone to telling others how to behave while exempting himself from similar reforms. I gave him critiques and encouragements backstage, usually pointing out to him that he might try a different tactic or two to get his points across. I liked him; I thought his heart was in the right place and his aims to often be aims that I shared. That he found himself frustrated, angry and misunderstood was a real shame, because I believe with a bit more effort he will find his marks with less wear and tear on his emotions.

In other words, I miss Phil, consider him a nice man, an intelligent man, and a man without a nasty urge. I wish he would learn to tailor his remarks to his audience and get back in the game.

Your frustrations with discourse are similar but not identical to Phil's, I find.

Your comments can sometimes be nasty, personal, ill-tempered, quick off the draw, and swollen with rectitude. You tend to counter cogent and impersonal criticism with belligerence -- because of these bellicose reactions, you often lose the good regard of folks who might otherwise be your allies.

Ask yourself how many times you have leaped down the throat of an interlocutor, how many times you have lost your self-control, how many times you have left a discussion in a rage, how many times you have been banned, moderated, spanked, dismissed as a nutcase or otherwise been frustrated in your goals. You might decide that all of these occasions have been the fault of the morally-depraved nitwits who hound you. But I should think these occasions might better offer you a chance to reflect on your own style and your own internal demons.

I meant to point out to you in a trenchant way that your irrelevant comment was ill-considered.

If you don't like to receive blunt reactions to your ill-wrought Miss Grundyish comments, don't post ill-wrought Miss Grundyish comments.

Get a grip on your own behaviour and stop lecturing others on theirs. It will help you get what you want, brother.

[sjw]

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.

Thanks for the pointer. Was too busy to read OL for a few years.

Shayne

[sjw]

Scherk, I have no interest in reading your analysis of your betters, though I'm sure there may be some of your ilk who find it of some interest. On the other hand, it has nothing to do with this thread, so perhaps you could post your "nuggets" somewhere else, particularly when MSK is not here to clean up the mess you are now in the act of trying to create.

Shayne

[Selene]

Scherk, I have no interest in reading your analysis of your betters, though I'm sure there may be some of your ilk who find it of some interest. On the other hand, it has nothing to do with this thread, so perhaps you could post your "nuggets" somewhere else, particularly when MSK is not here to clean up the mess you are now in the act of trying to create.

Shayne

Shane:

Do me a personal favor, read William's post. It may have a bite, but it is well written and we can all learn something from it.

Adam

[sjw]

Shane:

Do me a personal favor, read William's post. It may have a bite, but it is well written and we can all learn something from it.

Adam

It wasn't meant for me. It was meant for himself and the other deranged nitwits, as therapy for their well-justified inferiority complexes. I won't examine the other connections to this principle here, but I'm certain intelligent people will know precisely what I am referring to.

Shayne

[Selene]

Shane:

Do me a personal favor, read William's post. It may have a bite, but it is well written and we can all learn something from it.

Adam

It wasn't meant for me. It was meant for himself and the other deranged nitwits, as therapy for their well-justified inferiority complexes. I won't examine the other connections to this principle here, but I'm certain intelligent people will know precisely what I am referring to.

Shayne

Shayne:

Either you read it and "It wasn't meant for..." you, or, you somehow have the clairvoyant ability to, by osmosis, glean the meaning of a post that you did not read?

Which horn of the dilemma are you choosing to "skewer" yourself with?

What possible benefit is your statement above to civil discourse? As I suggested, his post has some bite, but it also makes significant points which it would serve you to at least consider.

Adam

[Robert Campbell]

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

Shayne,

We have a whole thread here at OL about the rewriting of Ayn Rand's spoken answers.

The entire original quotation from Rand is there, along with Mayhew's entire bowdlerized version:

http://www.objectivi...indpost&p=87193

After Penguin complained about full quotations from Mayhew's book, I excerpted some of them and took others down entirely. However, the 1972 answer is such an important statement, and Mayhew's version is such a blatant rewrite, that I kept his full text for this one.

Robert Campbell

PS. ARI's involvement in having Rand's unpublished works rewritten by Peikoff's junior disciples is sufficient reason not to support that organization financially—or to trust any public statements made in its name.

[sjw]

Shayne:

Either you read it and "It wasn't meant for..." you, or, you somehow have the clairvoyant ability to, by osmosis, glean the meaning of a post that you did not read?

If you had been paying attention you'd be able to tell that I'd already glanced at it, enough to know that it was trash. If that counts as "reading" for you then that might explain some things.

<blah blah blah blah>

Adam

So what aspect of "not interested in pandering to your inferiority complex" do you not quite grasp?

You know, if it were me, and I had been the one who viciously attacked someone whose only intention was to get a private email edited out (that I was ignorant about whether it was public or not is beside the point), I would start doing some introspection. I might ask myself: "Why do I find myself so obsessed with Shayne? Why does my obsession drive me to derail any thread at the slightest little provocation? Why is it that I care far more about Shayne than about ideas? Might my issues concerning Shayne relate to my behavior in other areas? Am I really interested in Objectivism, or do I just like the schismology? At heart, am I really just a gossipy old woman?"

Shayne

[Selene]

OK.

Have a safe day Shayne.

Adam

[Robert Campbell]

Scherk, I have no interest in reading your analysis of your betters, though I'm sure there may be some of your ilk who find it of some interest. On the other hand, it has nothing to do with this thread, so perhaps you could post your "nuggets" somewhere else, particularly when MSK is not here to clean up the mess you are now in the act of trying to create.

Shayne,

Running down WSS in this manner will bring you no sympathy here.

And invoking MSK is imprudent, unless you are 100% sure that his take on your exchanges with WSS will be the same as yours.

Robert Campbell

[sjw]

Scherk, I have no interest in reading your analysis of your betters, though I'm sure there may be some of your ilk who find it of some interest. On the other hand, it has nothing to do with this thread, so perhaps you could post your "nuggets" somewhere else, particularly when MSK is not here to clean up the mess you are now in the act of trying to create.

Shayne,

Running down WSS in this manner will bring you no sympathy here.

And invoking MSK is imprudent, unless you are 100% sure that his take on your exchanges with WSS will be the same as yours.

Robert Campbell

Oh, poor crybaby Scherk, does he have his little nursemaids to take care of him? Why don't all the nitwits just come out of the woodwork now and defend his behavior above, let's just make things really crystal clear here what counts as appropriate behavior to you. Just spell it all out for me so I can look back on this thread and see you clearly for who you all are.

I am 100% sure that MSK does not like this bullshit. And I suspect that he and others would prefer threads to stay roughly on topic, instead of the topic being shifted to Shayne by incompetent neurotic nitwits whenever I say anything even remotely even smelling slightly like an insult (and what I said above -- I don't think it was an insult, I merely stated a mild objection -- but evidently that's enough to bring the crybaby house down).

But no, I don't pretend to speak for MSK, nor did I appear to. I won't analyze why you tried to make it appear otherwise.

Shayne

[sjw]

I don't think anyone would take kindly to the kind of public psychoanalysis that I am routinely made subject of by these nitwits with inferiority complexes.

Would they claim everyone is perfect? Of course they wouldn't. So they should run a little experiment. They should pick one of their own for their vicious, creepy psycho-babble, and see how kindly their own takes to it. Or pick on MSK and see where that gets them.

Selene: "Have a safe day"? What is that supposed to mean?

Shayne

[Brant Gaede]

WSS called sjw a pinhead for pointing out that it might not be cool to post someone's email address in the body of a post and followed up with an analysis of his past behavior instead of simply apologizing. Then sjw threw more coal upon the fire taking no prisoners, etc. Shayne has considerably toned down his poor social posting techniques at obvious great effort, but William, knowingly or not, let the cat out of the cage and everyone gets mauled because they didn't properly reference what started it all, and Shayne didn't reference it either. In the context of this nonsense William's post was the most egregious, but Shayne over-reacted as he doesn't know how to use a rapier.

--Brant

Shayne was right and William was wrong then Shayne went nasty bad

Edited October 8, 2010 by Brant Gaede

[Xray]

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

One could call Galt's Gulch the "Pleasantville" of Objectivsm, whith all the happy people in that "Eu"topia sharing the same type of morality.

In its own way, Galt's Gulch is as much a closed system as Objectivism itself is. Dissenting moral views would certainly not not be allowed in GG. Dissenting moral views can't be allowed since the premises is that their morality is "right". Since refuting the premises of the morality equals refuting the rightness of the morality, no closed philosophical/ideological system will allow dissenters to go there.

Edited October 8, 2010 by Xray

[Brant Gaede]

There is no dissent because dissent would be irrational as demonstrated by the novel. If there is a conflict you get together and reason it out until the wrong party--Rand is always going to be right--sees the light or is told to get re-educated or get lost.

--Brant

[George H. Smith]

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

One could call Galt's Gulch the "Pleasantville" of Objectivsm, whith all the happy people in that "Eu"topia sharing the same type of morality.

In its own way, Galt's Gulch is as much a closed system as Objectivism itself is. Dissenting moral views would certainly not not be allowed in GG. Dissenting moral views can't be allowed since the premises is that their morality is "right". Since refuting the premises of the morality equals refuting the rightness of the morality, no closed philosophical/ideological system will allow dissenters to go there.

Atlas Shrugged would have been far more politically correct if Galt's Gulch had instituted a moral diversity policy -- a kind of affirmative action program for statists. That way, Wesley Mouch, Floyd Ferris, James Taggart, and Robert Stadler and others with "morally dissenting views" could have joined the community and rubbed shoulders with John Galt. Of course, this would have made nonsense out of the entire plot of AS, but at least Xray would be happy.

As for the keen observation that the Gulchers believed that their morality is "right," I suppose they should have embraced a morality that they regarded as "wrong." The latter is what everyone else does, is it not? I know that I only hold moral principles that I believe to be wrong. I wouldn't want to be dogmatic, after all.

Sigh.....

Ghs

[Selene]

Excellent George:

A picture of Ms. Xray taken secretly after your commentary about her remarks!

[Brant Gaede]

It's the uniformity of what is "right" in that place, George, that's wrong, private estate or what-have-you. Simply consider Francisco just rolling over and letting John Galt have Dagny. Back in the real world Hank slaps Francisco, but that's not going to happen in Galt's Gulch. There nobody's got an alligator brain. If you are wrong it's just ignorance. I'm not suggesting that Rand should have written the novel differently, btw, only she shouldn't have decided to live in her creation. Life is not a doll house.

--Brant

[william.scherk]

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, both your points about 'the consequences' of Speicher's peekaboo stance are worth pondering.

On the one hand, she is true to her mini-Kremlin 'keep it in the family' policies with regard to the personalities of McCaskey and Peikoff. Her FORUM is fairly free and easy for a rigidly conformist Objectivist gated community: what is ultimately allowed to be uttered there is public, and she has allowed a lengthy discussion of the book itself.

On the other hand, she seems to need to let her voice ring out freely elsewhere. In the past she has opined on topics hither and yon -- on Noodlefood, on OO.net, on HBL -- while stomping out discussion of the very same topics in her own garden. In other words, her own private Ministry of Truth rules forbid her to say what is on her mind in her own office, so she leaves her mini-Kremlin to visit other competing mini-Kremlins.

In the past weeks she has also used and encouraged the use of non-Kremlin forums for folks to say what is really on their minds, such as Facebook. Of course, she can't speak on Rob Joyce's pages, since he is allied with Diana, who has been self-banned from the FORUM, but she can speak in the Facebook garden of Bob Gifford . . .

So, in the end she has decided to write her thoughts in invisible ink and put her note in a bottle that can only be passed hand to hand to her trusted comrades, who no doubt have to promise to pop a cyanide chiclet should they allow her thoughts egress . . .

Although this sort of scuttling whispered 'I can't say what I think openly because then people will not be NICE' is thoroughly understandable in the context of a bygone day of secret policing and disappearances and purges and denunciations, it is screamingly absurd in the context of an 'intellectual movement.'

It just reeks of paranoia and cult kookiness.

One final bit of 'somebody said something about later not saying something,' Lindsay Perigo, undoubtably the most also of the also-rans, has uttered an aside on SOLO that "I'm also told ARI is going to be explaining its stance to its supporters in about a month."

This murky reporting by the head of the smallest Objectivish Kremlin on Earth is confirmed in a following note (emphasis added):

I'm also told ARI is going to be explaining its stance

to its supporters in about a month. A month??!!

Yes, Debi Ghate has indicated that a month from now the

OAC will be providing "guidance" to its students (via

teleconference) as to why this is a "private matter."

As for the delay, I can't say I blame them. Personally,

if I had to explain to someone that this was a "private

matter" and keep a straight face, I would need a lot

longer than a month to prepare. I would need to empty

the contents of my brain, fill it with scrambled eggs

and copulate with an amoeba. That could take a while.

For my money, there won't be too many people on the

other end of that call who require instruction on this

question. The ones who do might be offered a job,

though.

I offer my hand in gay marriage to anyone who can dig up the actual content of Debi Ghate's astonishing offer of "guidance." But I expect no one has the several secret keys to the Innermost Inner Sanctum of Obedience.

Can this get any crazier?

Edited October 8, 2010 by william.scherk

[Starbuckle]

Since Betsy Speicher does not want her statement on Robert Tracinski's "Anthemgate" to be published or forwarded without her permission, I'll just paraphrase it, as closely as I can so that it can be subject to the public analysis and criticism that she was hoping to avoid in the name of promoting rational discourse.

In her first paragraph she says something on the order of how Robert Tracinski is an extraordinary journalist who always sticks to the facts and that his recently published controversial article is no exception.

Then she supplies the link to his article criticizing Piekoff: http://www.intellectualactivist.com/php-bin/news/showArticle.php?id=1234

Speicher then says that most of what Tracinski cites are matters she has known about for years. That what he has done, in making them public for the first time, is provide links to original sources and a context which makes them understandable. She urges concerned Objectivists to read Tracinski's article and the links he provides.

She says that while she agrees with the facts Tracinski presents, she seriously disagrees with some of the major conclusions he draws from them.

She says that her biggest disagreement is with the subtitle "The Objectivist Movement Commits Suicide." That although there have been recent controversies among Objectivists and some of them may be harmful, she doesn't think Objectivism as a philosophical movement or ARI as an institution has been fatally, or even seriously, wounded. And that it would not be a good thing if it were.

She says that while ARI and its activities are not the ONLY way to spread Objectivism, she believes that it is definitely a major and necessary institution. That it represents a gathering of money and talent that can accomplish worthy goals on a scale that individuals and small groups cannot possibly do. She asks whether anything less than ARI could spread Objectivism as effectively as ARI's essay contests, free books to teachers, OAC, media department, and its support of campus clubs and scholars.

She asks whether ARI stifles creativity and intellectual independence as Tracinski claims and answers that in a way, it does -- and that this is a "GOOD thing." [Oh dear.] She says that ARI's mission is -- or should be -- to preserve, teach, and promote Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. And that to preserve Ayn Rand's legacy, ARI has to LIMIT themselves to the philosophy and ideas she ACTUALLY supported and not teach or promote anything else or in addition to that, no matter how true, worthy, or consistent it is with Objectivism. [They should limit themselves to ads and photocopying?] She adds that if someone was inspired by Ayn Rand and, using methods that conformed to her epistemology, discovered a cure for cancer, that would be wonderful, but it should not be taught or promoted with ARI resources.

She says that those accepting ARI's support should conform to ARI's mission in the same way people working for a large corporation should support the company's goals as set out by upper management. [sigh.] She says that this is necessary and proper for the corporation -- or for ARI -- to do its job. That a young person just starting out may join a corporation to learn the business or he may become an OAC student to learn Objectivism. That both thereby acquire support, education, and guidance and that is very important in the beginning. That after a while, the young employee may seek new opportunities or want to work in a new direction incompatible with the corporation's goals, so he will leave the company to work elsewhere or to start his own business. In likewise manner, she concludes, an OAC student may eventually have an independent career in academia, do research and writing in areas of his personal interest, and/or expand or use Ayn Rand's ideas in ways that are outside the scope of ARI's concerns. And that this "is fine too."

She says she thinks ARI got into trouble when they DID NOT limit themselves to preserving, teaching, and promoting the philosophy of Ayn Rand and began teaching and promoting ideas that Ayn Rand did not advocate and never endorsed. That these include Peikoff's DIM Hypothesis and Peikoff's lectures and Harriman's book on induction. That these may be worthy and ground-breaking, but they are NOT Objectivism and should not be treated as such. [Me: what difference does it make whether they are "treated as Objectivism" or not? As long as the author doesn't claim "these are the thoughts that were in Ayn Rand's head, and I'm merely transcribing them" (as Peikoff did in his book on Objectivism)?] She asserts that if these new ideas should prove false or incompatible with Ayn Rand's, presenting them as "Objectivist" could harm the spread of Ayn Rand's actual ideas in the same way that the medieval Scholastics' co-opting and misrepresenting Aristotle harmed Aristotle's reputation. [Oh dear. If only we had means of communication and debate that were unavailable to the medievals.]

Speicher says that ARI's decision to include and support these new ideas along with Ayn Rand's was a mistake. [she says nothing about their dogmatic approach, its manifestations or genesis, and whether the "mistake" of fostering the development of non-Rand ideas would have been a mistake without the dogmatism.] She says that perhaps it was a mistake the board members were aware of, did not want to make, but did not have much choice about. She observes that Leonard Peikoff advanced and promoted these ideas and HE considered them part of Objectivism and refers to Peikoff's web site (http://tinyurl.com/2c96lye), where he writes that his lectures on "Induction in Physics and Philosophy" "present, for the first time, the OBJECTIVIST solution to the problem of induction..."

She writes that Leonard Peikoff's views cannot be ignored or dismissed. [No matter how loony or unintelligible they get, presumably.] That in addition to the respect he deserves based on his enormous contributions to Objectivism [only the Rand-approved portion of Peikoff?], HE CONTROLS THE ACCESS TO, AND USE OF, AYN RAND'S INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND THE USE OF HER NAME. [Emphasis mine. Gee, no wonder his views can't be ignored.] That ARI cannot even call itself the "Ayn Rand" Institute without Peikoff's permission. That, thus, when Peikoff reminded Arline Mann "I hope you still know who I am and what my intellectual status is in Objectivism," she doesn't regard it as simply an appeal to authority but as a reminder that without Peikoff's approval and consent, ARI could not function at all. [Golly, isn't it obviously BOTH?]

According to Speicher, if she were a board member faced with the choice to support Peikoff's ideas as a part of Objectivism or to accede to his demands, she might find it necessary to accommodate him even if she did not agree [intellectual honesty and independence having been demoted as virtues]. She might consider it one of those things, like complying with government regulations, that one has to do to stay in business and continue to do genuinely important and valuable things. [Peikoff as government bureaucrat whom one must obey. Because obeying his dictates "advances Objectivism," whatever THAT is. Okay.]

Speicher says that the bottom line is that the current controversy is not a good thing, but it is not fatal or suicidal. In her view, ARI, despite its support for ideas that she does not consider properly "Objectivist" [in the sense of being Ayn Rand's ideas or Ayn-Rand-approved ideas] offers too much of genuine value to her and to kindred Objectivists, to abandon it now. She expects that enough Objectivists will agree and continue to support the good work of ARI -- as well as the work of independent Objectivists, like Robert Tracinski, John McCaskey, and others, who may challenge or disagree with some of ARI's positions and actions. [so both the dependent, self-abnegating Objectivists and independent Objectivists can BOTH thrive! We can all get along! At least until the next undeconstructable loony Peikovian dictat! Woo hoo!] The end.

[There's a giant equivocation in all this. If BS thinks it would be good to have an organization that does nothing but publicize Rand's work, and if ARI can't do anything beyond that without becoming destructively dogmatic thanks to Peikoff's irrational rule, a view that has been argued on this board, fine. (I think it should just dissolve and hire a publicist to promote Rand's work given its irremediable dogmatism, but that it's certainly possible for an organization to foster discussion and application of rational-egoist-individualist work without the dogmatism. There are schools and journals and things. All one would have to do is steer clear of this notion that it's so important to equate the term "Objectivist" with "printout of what's in AR's mind" [she's dead, by the way], obey the stifling nonsensical dictats of authority figures like Peikoff, etc.) But BS is also arguing that ARI should be preserved and supported even though it has gone far beyond this mission and by her own admission requires "young" (and not-so-young) thinkers and scholars to subordinate their intellectual understanding and public statements to ARIan rule.

[Ergo, in her view, being dependent-minded and irrational is completely consistent with the values of promoting independent-mindedness and rationality (albeit perhaps not actually BEING independent-minded and rational). Is that the implication of a philosophy of rational individualism, let alone law-of-identity-ism? BS thinks the great danger is that the world will get the wrong view of Rand's ideas. Um, people have been getting the wrong view of philosophers' ideas since Thales argued that the basic stuff of reality is green cheese. Let's pray Rand doesn't go out of print and then comes back to the West via bin-Laden-approved Islamic mis-translation! No, the not-so-great and waning danger is that obsequious yes men in the name of a philosophy of rational individualism will be forever teaching other allegedly independent-minded rational men to be obsequious yes-men and touting this as consistent with the idea of being independent-minded and rational.

[i agree with BS that "ARI stifles creativity and intellectual independence." I don't agree that this is so swell when she says it's swell, though I agree with her that it's not-swell when she implies that it's not-swell. Well. I would add that BS, who makes a gigantic concession and then stifles the obvious conclusion, is a fellow stifler, and I suspect that her way of publishing but not-publishing her BS will not be a successful way of deluding the select recipients and those to whom they whisper confidential information into believing that acceding to the process of turning alleged champions of independent thought into regimented drones is acceptable, despite the problems with it, so long as the alleged "benefits" of being a hypocritical drone exceed the Rand-documented costs. Gee, it's stifling in here. Somebody open the window.]

Edited October 8, 2010 by Starbuckle

[kiaer.ts]

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.4aynra...ndpost&p=108362

Yup, there it is, for all to see.

So have at it, let the skewering begin.

No thanks. Booooooooring!

A link to the thread is sweet, but there are some 540 posts. Perhaps Robert or you could post a direct link?

[kiaer.ts]

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

You can read Mayhew's version here http://www.amazon.com/Ayn-Rand-Answers-Best-Her/dp/0451216652/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1286564798&sr=1-1 by using the serach function for the word "gulch" which will take you to page 75 of the Q&A text. Mayhew inserts the words which I have added within brackets: "If you had a society which all shared one philosophy, [but without a government] that would be dreadful." If those words are not in the original, it is incredibly dishonest.

[sjw]

You can read Mayhew's version here http://www.amazon.com/Ayn-Rand-Answers-Best-Her/dp/0451216652/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1286564798&sr=1-1 by using the serach function for the word "gulch" which will take you to page 75 of the Q&A text. Mayhew inserts the words which I have added within brackets: "If you had a society which all shared one philosophy, [but without a government] that would be dreadful." If those words are not in the original, it is incredibly dishonest.

If you look at her following remarks, I don't know if I would call it "incredibly dishonest", though I would not want to quibble about just how dishonest it is because it is dishonest and chooses a meaning for Rand that no one can say conclusively that she meant. We know for sure that she thinks society without government would be dreadful. But a society with a shared philosophy and no government? I don't think we know for certain (Galt's Gulch could be construed as a small society), though I would certainly lean to the conclusion that that is precisely what she meant because she hated anarchism and loved her philosophy. It is a reasonable *estimate* of what she meant, but it is certainly not good enough to use mere estimates--and from the likes of authoritarian ARIians--as a substitute for Rand.

I find there to be no excuse whatsoever for a *scholar* not to mark what words are actually hers and what words are actually his. And it drastically reduces the value, toward zero in fact, to have them taking total liberty regarding what to preserve and what to excise. Just utterly and completely obnoxious and beyond the pale.

Shayne

[BaalChatzaf]

I love this thread. It is a perfect example of Perfect Drift. Sort of like Brownian Motion. Should be called Randian Motion?

Maybe it will become a basis for the motion picture: The Perfect Drift.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited October 8, 2010 by BaalChatzaf

[Xray]

One could call Galt's Gulch the "Pleasantville" of Objectivsm, whith all the happy people in that "Eu"topia sharing the same type of morality.

In its own way, Galt's Gulch is as much a closed system as Objectivism itself is. Dissenting moral views would certainly not not be allowed in GG. Dissenting moral views can't be allowed since the premises is that their morality is "right". Since refuting the premises of the morality equals refuting the rightness of the morality, no closed philosophical/ideological system will allow dissenters to go there.

Atlas Shrugged would have been far more politically correct if Galt's Gulch had instituted a moral diversity policy -- a kind of affirmative action program for statists. That way, Wesley Mouch, Floyd Ferris, James Taggart, and Robert Stadler and others with "morally dissenting views" could have joined the community and rubbed shoulders with John Galt. Of course, this would have made nonsense out of the entire plot of AS, but at least Xray would be happy.

As for the keen observation that the Gulchers believed that their morality is "right," I suppose they should have embraced a morality that they regarded as "wrong." The latter is what everyone else does, is it not? I know that I only hold moral principles that I believe to be wrong. I wouldn't want to be dogmatic, after all.

Sigh.....

Ghs

George,

Please read Brants # 415 nd # 418 posts. He got it. And I don't have the slightest doubt that you will have to agree with what he wrote. Let me know if you think I'm in error about this and explain why.

Of course we all believe "our" morality is "right", but that is not the point. The point is whether we allow others to question the premises on which we base that morality.

More tomorrow.

Edited October 8, 2010 by Xray