Ayn Rand's views on women

Okay, I'll assume your leaving the conversation, so bye-bye.

So you basically said that "you might have questions on how Atlas Shrugged doesn't reflect objectiivsm, but I won't answer them. Go find out on your own because I won't discuss it."

Okay, way to completely miss the point of a discussion but sure.

Also I don't buy that Atlas Shrugged was a batman gambit. Wait, if shes debunking "strawman" arguments, how is that useful? strawman is a fallacy. :V

edited 26th Jan '11 11:17:31 AM by saladofstones

Well he's talking about WWII when the Chinese bomb pearl harbor and they commuted suicide by running their planes into the ship.

You know, you're acting like he's in the wrong here, but you're the one attacking something you don't even claim to understand. It's not the job of your opponent to inform you about your own position in a debate.

Well she did a much better job with her essays and stuff at actually explaining objectivism but she was still rather unclear on a lot of the subject matter and specifics on how it worked. It's led to the people following in her wake to have developed all new sorts of objectivist branch-offs. Unfortunately, I haven't yet found someone who actually supports objectivism to really discuss it, so I mostly just get to preach to the choir on the material.

EDIT: If this were a discussion about intelligent design and evolution, the argument of a biologist would not be to say something along the lines of "Clearly you don't understand biology, therefore I feel no need to discuss anything with you." That's not how you defeat the concept of intelligent design. Similarly speaking, if I post supposedly poor points against objectivism, then it is very much the point of the opponent to refute them, not disregard them outright in a smug superior manner.

edited 26th Jan '11 11:24:44 AM by breadloaf

I'm not asking him to inform me, I'm asking him to tell me what it is if I got it wrong, except he won't tell me what I got wrong. :V

@bread: Objectivism seems to be a pretty badly made philosophy and I haven't seen it taken seriously outside of their own movement. Bioshock was a good deconstruction of it, regardless, and Bioshock managed to make it interesting. :V

I guess Mr. House counts too

edited 26th Jan '11 11:24:00 AM by saladofstones

Well he's talking about WWII when the Chinese bomb pearl harbor and they commuted suicide by running their planes into the ship.

You know the developers are pretty upset people think they were making a deconstruction of objectivism specifically and assaulting Ayn Rand's views. But I think what they did was seriously explore a society based totally on ration self-interest, with a big point on selfishness and their argument (from what I remember) was that "humans are flawed, therefore society will be flawed". However, I think they hit the nail on why objectivism simply wouldn't work in the first place. Classical economics with its concept of enlightened self-interest didn't delve into the social aspects specifically because it was attempting to use human flaw to its advantage in the one area where it was shown to work.

On the other hand, bioshock was basically saying "If everyone is a selfish bastard trying to get what they want, what would happen?" Well society would collapse because everyone is so busy screwing each other over it becomes chaos and war. They took it to a pretty extreme level though.

Then Ayn Rand will complain there wasn't enough bdsm in the game.

How was it a Batman Gambit? I didn't get that impression at all. You mean she anticipated her critics and added a comprehensive rebuttal, where she successfully defends John Galt's ridiculously amoral actions? Not the impression I got.

edited 26th Jan '11 2:33:26 PM by Ultrayellow

Except for 4/1/2011. That day lingers in my memory like...metaphor here...I should go.

The problem with Rapture was that it was founded by an enormous dickhead who thought he was superior to the rest of the human race because he rejected their quaint philosophies and morality.

You know things are going to be bad where he says that he founded a place "where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality."

I don't know if it's a deconstruction of Objectivism per se, but it certainly doesn't do it any favours.

So you've actually read the whole thing? Enlighten us.

I do know there's a scene where a train gets stuck in a tunnel and all the passengers die of the fumes because there's no adequate ventilation. Now, this would be okay: innocent people die because of one of the "head moochers" (or whatever the hell they're called) couldn't wait for anything to be fixed and there wasn't enough good people to stand up to him.

Except Rand goes on to explain why everyone on the train deserved to die:

The man in Bedroom A, Car No. 1, was a professor of sociology who taught that individual ability is of no consequence....

The woman in Bedroom D, Car No. 10, was a mother who had put her two children to sleep in the berth above her, carefully tucking them in, protecting them from drafts and jolts; a mother whose husband held a government job enforcing directives, which she defended by saying, "I don’t care, it’s only the rich that they hurt. After all, I must think of my children."

The man in Roomette 3, Car No. 11, was a sniveling little neurotic who wrote cheap little plays into which, as a social message, he inserted cowardly little obscenities....

there was not a [passenger] aboard the train that did not share one or more of their ideas.

Yeah, all those people deserved to die because they didn't share any of Ayn Rand's beliefs. I'm not surprised John Galt never gets called out on his genocide, they're all worthless moochers who should die so Galt, Taggart and their buddies can make more money and not pay taxes.

edited 26th Jan '11 2:57:56 PM by Medicus

It's not over. Not yet.

Not really, I had to skim. That said, I still caught more straw men than I had ever seen in a book before. In short, our heroes wander around looking for Galt, while complaining in long Objectivist rants against government stooges. Than they find him, and he puts his plan into place. Nowhere did I find adequate defense for Galt's actions. So yeah. As a work of entertainment, I found it completely lacking in interest. Unless you like Rand's writing, read one of her shorter works instead and save some time.

Except for 4/1/2011. That day lingers in my memory like...metaphor here...I should go.

I had forgotten about that (I remember hearing about that scene, but somehow I had started remembering it as a scene where the heroine prevents a train accident using her secret Objectivist powers- which would be a whole lot better).

I also don't see how there can be a Batman Gambit by Rand. I'm not against Author Tract novels in themselves, but when you write a novel, you get to make it so that everything bears out your viewpoint. Winning in the novel doesn't necessarily translate to winning in reality.

Hodor

Hmm. There's a scene early in the book where Dagny's on a train that's held up by a signal. Since she's memorised the schedule she's able to deduce that the signal is faulty and orders the train to proceed. She's right.

Of course, this ignores the very real possibly that the trains are running late or there's some kind of emergency. But Dagny's just that good.

Yeah, the whole novel is predicated on Galt building a freaking perpetual motion machine, which is, y'know, impossible.

And Rand wouldn't want everyone following her philosophy.

Even in the Glorious Objectivist Utopia, the Ubermensch are still going to need people to clean their toilets.

I might read Anthem if I can find it.

It's not over. Not yet.

@breadloaf: I think you missed a major part of Bioshock.

The main criticism of Objectivism in Bioshock is not that Rapture collapsed; otherwise we wouldn't get told that within the first 15 minutes of the game.

The main criticism was that Fontaine took over Rapture using the exact same principles Ryan was trying to uphold, and in trying to keep his power Ryan betrayed those very same principles.

Which means, in a nutshell, that Objectivism put into practice kills itself; whenever a real John Galt comes along he must either be allowed to take over, and kill off the idea itself for his own profit, or resisted, and the idea sacrificed to that resistance.

(Also it means that no idea can be put into practice, not just Objectivism, but that's for another thread.)

I'm convinced that our modern day analogues to ancient scholars are comedians. -0dd1

Well the extreme end of the pure self-interest zero altruism is basically what you laid out and what I mean by "everyone busy trying to screw each other". Fontaine wanted to become as powerful as possible in the society, purely out of self-interest, and didn't care what method he used nor about any sort of morality. If others were hurt, that was their fault. Then Andrew Ryan, believing in his objectivist view, at first did nothing and then finding that doing nothing causes his society to be lost to Fontaine and his mob, tried to intervene which resulted in the civil war.

I suppose to put it into the perspective of the Atlas Shrugged novel, it would be an endless cycle of the intellectuals striking on society whenever it forms. It's problematic to justify genocide on the belief that a subset of people are better than the moochers because after one genocide, why not another? I think someone hit it on the nail when they said she didn't explain "rational self-interest" well enough.

...So when John Galt and his pals act in their own interest and don't care about what other people get hurt as a consequence, they're heroes, but this woman deserves to die for doing basically the exact same thing?

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Yeah, but her husband (she wasn't guilty of anything other than marrying him and having his children) was hurting the rich. Galt and his buddies were hurting the poor. And who gives a shit about the poor? Worthless moochers, if they had any sense they'd pull themselves up by their bootstraps and become titans of industry.

And I just love how she never covers the children. Apparently they all deserve to die as well. Yes, little Timmy and Alice deserve to be asphyxiated because their daddy works for the government.

edited 27th Jan '11 2:03:34 AM by Medicus

It's not over. Not yet.

As you read these excerpts, keep in mind the number of people who extol Atlas Shrugged at every opportunity. People who find it inspirational.

edited 27th Jan '11 1:36:26 AM by EnglishIvy

And sadly, many of those people are in key positions in society.

Like Wall Street.

edited 27th Jan '11 2:03:00 AM by Medicus

It's not over. Not yet.

And Congress.

Well, there are lots of people who wish selfishness were a virtue because they act selfishly and want their shameless self-promotion to be seen as a good thing.

Except we all know that it isn't. John Roll, the judge who was killed during the Arizona shooting, used his body to shield another man. When you read about things like this, you know that this is what heroism and virtue looks like.

Eh, no.

if everyone wanted to sacrifice their lives for others, there would be nobody left to sacrifice for. Altruism is good occasionally but I don't think you can call "acting as most people do 95% of the time" a bad thing.

I'm convinced that our modern day analogues to ancient scholars are comedians. -0dd1

That's why not everyone's a hero.

Everyone also isn't in life-threatening danger constantly.

I can give more ambiguous situations.

Let's say you're working at a corporation and in a meeting with superiors, you find that there are ways to improve the process. However, speaking up is dangerous and may cost you a chance at promotion if you ruffle the feathers of those above you. The market is in a major downturn and seems so for some time, so you can't move jobs because other corporations are just the same or not hiring at all.

Rational self-interest says you should do what? (ie. all actions, other than do nothing, will earn you less money in terms of salary)

edited 27th Jan '11 1:37:31 PM by breadloaf

If it's a reliable way to improve the process (which I assume would result in higher profits), it'd be best to recommend it. I'm not sure how proposing a way to make more money would be dangerous. The only thing I could think of would be if your manager had a stake in the status quo.

Fight smart, not fair.

@Deboss: Inevitably it will cost money to make the change, and the assumption that it will make money is just an assumption.

All ways to make more money are risks. If there was a way to make more money for free the company would've taken it a long time ago.

I'm convinced that our modern day analogues to ancient scholars are comedians. -0dd1