Ayn Rand is (as well as many of her followers) are hypocrite since when she was broke and couldn't earn money she choose to live off of government and state substances instead of relying on her "own two hands" to prove for herself. As far as I know every philosophical thread that talked about her on any forum I've been on doesn't take her work seriously.

In a nutshell, Ayn Rand basically teaches that one must accept that "might makes right" if one has a lot of power and if they don't like to have play nice with others, they shouldn't have to. This would be sort of like Machiavellian type beliefs if she was willing to take into considerations the... nuances of using force and fear in order to do what needs to be done, but of course she doesn't. Instead she dismisses 'opposition' to those who have money and power as merely 'lazy','idiot', 'communists',etc.,etc.,etc. as it isn't possible for those with money and power to do wrong, or if they can cause problems with their actions than 'lesser people' should realize that whatever the elites/'chosen ones' do, it is impossible for it to be any worse than if less qualified nobodies get involved as it is a given that nobodies (ie. anyone that disagrees with elites) are all very stupid and throughout history have only made things worse with their constant meddling with the affairs of the elites.

Of course there are a few problems with this. For one it is only common sense that even elites don't always agree with each other (although they usually agree with exploiting the poor), as well as the actual 'HOW' to resolve disagreement. For example, Ayn Rand may believe it is 'ok' for one to use their money as leverage but she doesn't believe it is 'ok' for one to use violence and/or force as a means for one to use leverage which is COMPLETELY different than Machiavellian beliefs. For Machiavelli, violence/ wars /crime /etc. was merely just part of the human condition. For Ayn Rand 'violence' and certain social issues go beyond the scope of her thinking and since she believed the world should only revolved her and people who think as she does, she didn't completely think it through like Machiavelli to the point where she might have realized that while people who are not elite may not have money they can make up for that fact with NUMBERS if enough of them band/work together toward some end. Also her philosophy is quite a bit of "do as I say, not as I do' which only works for someone if the shoe is never on the other foot or go FUBAR (which means it only works if you are on top of the heap or imagine you are on the top of the heap).

Another way to categorize Ayn Rand's "Objectivism" is kind of like a mickey mouse form of Machiavellianism where one of Ayn Rand's objectivist should be able to use people as they see fit, but Ayn Rand and other objectivist believe it is "unfair" when others treat objectivist the same way that objectivist treat others.

BTW the game Bioshock which is about an underwater city built by Andrew Ryan is based ALOT on what it's creators thought it would be like if "Objectivism" was ever used as a social model for a society. In the game, in Rapture there is sort of a civil war between Andrew Ryan (the creator of Rapture) and Frank Fontaine/Atlas (a criminal mastermind, who is cunning enough to become almost as power as Andrew Ryan). Andrew Ryan sees Frank Fontaine as a communist (even though his rise to power was through often through the capitalistic means as Ryan, although augmented through violence/criminal means as well, since "socialism" is non-existent in Rapture) and Fontaine sees Ryan as just another rich idiot that doesn't understand how the 'real world' works, because they don't have to deal with it. Ryan does a "pre-emptive strike" (ie. resorts to brute violence without even any legal justification for doing so) in a manner which is pretty similar to how totalitarian regimes do things when they first start out. Although his organization is mostly destroyed, Fontaine survives. Soon afterword paranoia and violence takes over Rapture (or at least it become more widespread than before the attack on Fontaine), and more or less any people left in the city go mad and/or end up killing each other. I'm unsure EXACTLY why the civil war between Ryan and Fontaine end up causing everyone to kill each other, but my guess is that between the fighting between the two and with the OTHER tension among other groups and animosity among the people with each other; nearly everyone saw it as a moment to settle some scores and things just got out of hand.

Just joined this forum. I am a student of Objectivism. Everyone here seems to hate Ayn Rand. Makes me wonder if I should leave or stay and fight--just kidding. Hopefully, I have found an outlet for practicing the development of my style and my ability to provide reasonable arguments. Besides just being honest about the the fact that AR is the most important intellectual influence on my thinking, my purpose for being here shouldn't require the need to specifically mention AR; I'm not one the cultist types. Essentially, my interest is in eventually developing a formal structure of Objectivism. AR, who was primarily a novelist, laid down the foundation to develop a formal systematization if Objectivism. In her booklet "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology" she apologized for not getting around to presenting a formal philosophical treatise. But, she says, in this book she deals with the a discussion of the central problem of philosophy, the problem of "universals". As she sees it, the core problem with all post Aristotelian philosophies is that they contain some version of invalidating the efficacy of man's mind. Through a proper theory of concept formation, she shows the way of connecting the mind to reality. I think people hate her because she presented her ideas in a confrontational, exoteric style. But, so did Socrates who went after the Sophists. They had him convicted in court and put to death.

I agree, a lot of people don't care much for objectivism. Fair or not, a lot of that has to do with Ayn Rand's life and personal characteristics. She was pretty creepy.

Along with that, "Atlas Shrugged," is badly written science fiction. It's hard to take her ideas seriously when her writing is so bad. I read a lot of science fiction in the 1960s. Back then, SF was written by adolescents to appeal to other adolescents. It's was all about meeting the emotional needs of male teenage geeks, nerds, and feebs, of which I was one. No one, other than Rand and L. Ron Hubbard, thought it meant any more than that.

So, anyway. You seem like good guy. Maybe you are the one to educate WfPM, me, and the rest of us about what Ms. Rand was trying to say.

"“[The Native Americans] didn’t have any rights to the land and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using… "

What an odd line of thought! Did she think that rights only belong to those who properly conceive them? If we were to make that into general policy, imagine the consequences! No rights for the unintelligent. No rights for children. No rights for the elderly who have lost their faculties. Of course no rights for animals. And so on. Only people with the right philosophy would have rights. And how would that be justified?

Or what about the "which they ... were not using" part? If you have a guitar but never use it and I am a musician without a guitar and would make better use of it, does that give me a right to take it from you? You weren't using it, after all! I don't think this idea is consistent with some of her other thinking. Basic property rights seem pretty important to her.

It seems to me that, if we were to accept the imperative she seems to assert here, some sort of argument based on it could be made for socialism's redistribution of property. It could be argued that the wealthy aren't making proper use of their resources and that better use of them might be made if the community takes them and spreads them around. After all, a wealthy person might be hoarding the best musical instruments in a vault while many talented musicians might lack instruments altogether! Maybe "civilization" in some way depends on musicians having access to the means of realizing their potential! If civilization itself is the purpose here, it might be that redistributing wealth would best serve that end.

How are we to determine what proper use amounts to?

Suppose a wealthy man is using his money simply to stack bricks as high as possible as a symbol of the importance he ascribes to himself, so that all can take notice of his superiority and accomplishment, in a display of his high status and superior abilities. And suppose human beings all around this man are starving to death. Surely, they could make better use of his resources! But that depends on the values. One set of values might say that human life has intrinsic worth and that many human lives are far more valuable than an obscene monument to this guy's ego, something with no function for society other than to serve his sense of superiority and make others feel small, or perhaps to inspire them.

Another set of values might consider these people worthless, or even to have negative value, by virtue of their very inability to feed themselves. Such people are perhaps an offense to the sacred potential of humankind! Some might see a kind of nobility in such architectural gestures, in the greatness of spirit displayed by the man who can master the world around him and build such noble monuments, which announce the presence of a superior human type, some great end-in-himself who justifies all the means that support and stand beneath his exalted existence. Such a man and his grand gestures might justify all the universe! Some might see this as having greater value than the scum moochers who would unjustly take a piece of what he has amassed through the application of his intelligence, strength of character, and sheer will! It all depends on where we put the value.

Personally, I find such disregard of wider human life, this selfishness, to be quite ugly, not a beautiful or high gesture at all.

And is something like this not basically what many wealthy people do with their resources? Don't they build monuments to their egos? Don't they display big status symbols? And don't they do this in the face of much human suffering that could be alleviated with even a portion of the resources they command? I understand that many do in fact invest their money in, and seek further profit from, projects that ultimately benefit everyone--the building of a network of railroads, for example--but if the end to which all this is a means, if what justifies it, is universal benefit, this certainly wouldn't be compatible with Rand's values. And if universal benefit is taken as the prime directive, systems other than capitalism might be argued for, and property rights might even be sacrificed if it would serve the greater good.

It seems that Randians are doing something problematic if they justify what she advocates by saying that it benefits everyone. They are justifying her system under the values of those her system openly opposes, and whose values she rejects. They are, it seems, measuring the worth of the system under a set of values incompatible with those involved in that system.

So what is it that justifies her way of doing things? Some idea of the value of greatness and power? It isn't exactly clear to me.

But who is to judge how a person chooses to use their property?

Conquest is a form of theft, plain and simple, as is all predation, even in the animal world. One agent, be it a nation or an organism, eating another is stealing what that other agent has labored to build. It is stealing what most belongs to that agent, its very self, its very existence, its very substance. But such theft might be justified under certain systems of value. We might, for example, consider human beings to be such a superior way of arranging matter that this justifies the killing of lower animals. Perhaps humans have more value than pigs. Thusly, we justify our theft of what a pig has labored to build in its very body. We might similarly justify a mighty civilization conquering weaker and less sophisticated peoples and taking their resources in order to raise the status of more material, to increase value. Regardless, I don't think theft is compatible with other regions of Rand's thinking, though I am no expert on her thought.

My guess is that she basically considered the Native Americans to be something less than human, and that's really what made it okay in her mind.

And did the Native Americans really not conceive of any rights? They may not have put their feelings into exactly the words of European enlightenment thinkers, but I'm pretty sure they had a sense of rights of some sort, and some basic sense of justice. I think all people feel that something unjust is happening when people with weapons invade their homes, kill them, take what they hold, and so on. Isn't some sense of rights intrinsic to this feeling of being wronged? Does it need to be written out in a formal declaration?

What does Ciceronianus say whenever Ayn Rand is mentioned?

"Ayn Rand is to philosophy what L. Ron Hubbard is to religion."

The landscape is easy: she dressed up basic amerikan kapitalist ideology in filosofikal garb in order to gain intellectual credibility. This is nothing more than putting lipstick on a pig.

If you want to know what a pathological cult her junk has become, simply go onto an objectivite site and see for yourself how they treat respectful disagreement. On most, even the stated rules of posting say, 'no criticism'. So why should these peeple be treated any better when thay attempt to go public?

(Y)


(Y)

It's "philosophy" for stupid selfish people who wish to justify their character failings and usually don't know anything about actual philosophy. She's basically irrelevant in academia.

It's "philosophy" for stupid selfish people who wish to justify their character failings and usually don't know anything about actual philosophy. She's basically irrelevant in academia. — Baden

Yes, but not to the Maverick! She's his favorite philosopher.



That's what happens when the dotcom bubble makes you a billionaire ;) - it becomes attributed to your skill, genius and superiority over others, the same as in Rand's books. You start deserving it.

Mark Cuban? Don't know much about him to be honest. Well done on the billionaire thing but reading list needs work.

Mark Cuban? Don't know much about him to be honest. Well done on the billionaire thing but reading list needs work. — Baden

Atlas Shrugged and the like are common as favorite books amongst American billionaires I think. I speculate that it must have something to do with a justification to oneself of their own success, such that the success can contribute to sustaining self-esteem. You can't really "feel good" about yourself if your success is largely a matter of luck, can you?

And the opposite would hold for the Academia. The academia largely rejects Rand because she makes them feel bad about themselves.

Not that I think she's a great philosopher, but just that belief systems that are rejected with such unanimity tend to speak more about those who reject it than about the rejected belief system. In Jewish law, if there is unanimity against someone in a court of law, they are let free by default, because unanimity is always suspicious.

In Jewish law, if there is unanimity against someone in a court of law, they are let free by default, because unanimity is always suspicious. — Agustino

Perhaps you should implement this as a rule for the mods in decision making >:)

Atlas Shrugged and the like are common as favorite books amongst American billionaires I think — Agustino

There are hundreds (thousands?) of billionaires out there. You've given one example. Give me ten more and the comment might be justified. But yes, being selfish and uncaring can be an advantage in terms of making money. That's hardly news.

The academia largely rejects Rand because she makes them feel bad about themselves. — Agustino

Not that I think she's a great philosopher, but just that belief systems that are rejected with such unanimity tend to speak more about those who reject it than about the rejected belief system. — Agustino

Academia would also unanimously reject Carrot Top as a great philosopher, so I guess he must be a genius.

In Jewish law, if there is unanimity against someone in a court of law, they are let free by default, because unanimity is always suspicious. — Agustino

Sounds like a recipe for bloody disaster. The more obvious you make your crime, the more likely you are to get away with it. :s

In Jewish law, if there is unanimity against someone in a court of law, they are let free by default, because unanimity is always suspicious. — Agustino

Geez, I didn't realise the mods had authority to conduct capital punishment. And, by the way, the sanhedrin' primary aim is to prove innocence so the person is not acquitted from the charges if there is a unanimous guilty verdict, but rather deferring it until there is a majority rule.

Perhaps you should implement this as a rule for the mods in decision making — Agustino

Request denied. :D

“[The Native Americans] didn’t have any rights to the land and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using… [W]hat was it that they were fighting for, if they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence. Their right to keep part of the earth untouched, unused, and not even as property, but just keep everybody out, so that you can live practically like an animal, or maybe a few caves above it…. Any white person who could bring the element of civilization had the right to take over this country.” — WISDOMfromPO-MO

This doesn't seem a very good example of something that needs interpretation by the way. There doesn't seem to be any ambiguity here.

And, by the way, the sanhedrin' primary aim is to prove innocence so the person is not acquitted from the charges if there is a unanimous guilty verdict, but rather deferring it until there is a majority rule. — TimeLine

It does result in acquittal of the defendant.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/02/08/the-paradox-of-unanimity/?utm_term=.d5aecbbbb1ae

Geez, I didn't realise the mods had authority to conduct capital punishment — TimeLine

Yes they do, it's called banning >:)

There are hundreds (thousands?) of billionaires out there. — Baden

Roughly 1000.

Give me ten more and the comment might be justified. — Baden

Okay.

Donald Trump.
Peter Thiel.
Steve Jobs.
Monroe Trout.
Elon Musk.
Ray Dalio.
Gina Rinehart.
Travis Kalanick.
Evan Spiegel.
Koch Brothers.

Now give me back 10 minutes of my time.

But yes, being selfish and uncaring can be an advantage in terms of making money. That's hardly news. — Baden

No, you've got causation the other way around.

Academia would also unanimously reject Carrot Top as a great philosopher, so I guess he must be a genius. — Baden

No, just that unanimity is inherently suspect.

Sounds like a recipe for bloody disaster. The more obvious you make your crime, the more likely you are to get away with it. :s — Baden

Of course, murderers will always see their victim as obviously guilty. You're just illustrating the very phenomenology of it.

What the fuzzball? No, the logic is that such unanimity purports something suspicious or a plot and it is their duty to ensure that they work at trying to prove innocence so as to prevent death, but acquittal isn't actually as simple as the article is making it out to be.

"Unanimity of the judges was not required either to convict or to acquit. But the majority of one for Acquittal was deemed sufficient by all, while if the majority among the judges for conviction was no greater than one, new judges had to be added to the court until a result was reached; either a conviction by a greater majority than one or an Acquittal. In the highly improbable event of the court having come to no decision after being increased to its utmost limit, that is seventy-one, or for the rare cases triable before the great Sanhedrin (also of seventy-one judges), it was provided that upon a division of thirty-six for conviction and thirty-five for Acquittal, the judges should discuss the matter in secret session until one was brought over to the side of the defense. There is no doubt, however, that until judgment was rendered, any one of the judges was free to change his mind either way. If less than twenty-three judges gave an opinion one way or the other, that is, if one or more of the bench of judges said that they did not know which way to decide, it was the same as if the full number of twenty-three had not been empaneled, and there could not be an Acquittal any more than a conviction. New judges had to be added to the bench, two by two, till there were twenty-three ready to give their opinion one way or the other."

Maimonides writes: "If a Sanhedrin opens a capital case with a unanimous guilty verdict, he is exempt, until some merit is found to acquit him; then, those who convict will be in the majority, and then he will be put to death.”

What the fuzzball? — TimeLine

A common reaction to an @Agustino post. Fortunately, the verdict is not unanimous so it's much more likely to be justified. (Y)

Of course, murderers will always see their victim as obviously guilty. You're just illustrating the very phenomenology of it. — Agustino

What the fuzzball?

@Agustino There's a grain of sense in what you're saying but you're not going to be able to make a loaf out of it. Rand's more or less unanimous rejection by the philosophical community does not reflect well on her philosophical abilities any more than homeopathy's unanimous rejection by the scientific community (as anything other than a placebo) reflects well on its efficacy as a medical treatment. Or just consider a common sense example: Everyone at work agrees Joe is a lazy waster who is dragging the company down. Which is more likely, that Joe is a lazy waster who is dragging the company down? Or the opposite? And, no, it doesn't sound inherently suspect. It sounds like Joe should be fired.

I'm less adamant about getting you guys to understand the inherent suspiciousness of unanimity as much as I was to illustrate that there are communities of people who are not necessarily dumb who highly value Ayn Rand's thought. This isn't to say that Ayn Rand is a great philosopher, just that you cannot ignore her just by hand waving.

I, by the way, do not agree with Rand's philosophy at all for the most part (but I should specify that I have never studied it in great depth).

It always striked me as peculiar the amount of hatred Ayn Rand got on PF and TPF - it seems to be a peculiarity of this community for some reason, that all of us hate Rand.

And Sam Harris. Although to a lesser extent.

You sure about Elon Musk? That surprises me a bit. Got a source?

I will look for them later as I'm going to exercise now. One of them was an interview where Musk discussed books that influenced him, and I remember that Atlas Shrugged or Fountainhead was one of the titles. However from memory his biggest influence was Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He is well read, he read Nietzsche and Schopenhauer too.

The other source was a recent article saying that him and his girlfriend (ex?) Amber both share an interest in Ayn Rand.

I think Musk is much like one of my cousins. The type of guy who superficially knows a lot of things and is up to date with the latest trends in tech, etc.

From what I know about him, I think his character isn't very great. I always remember the scene with Peter Thiel when he crashed his new Mercedes car while trying to impress Thiel. This was back in the Paypal and X. com days. I've always looked at it as Thiel being the more level-headed one and detailed person, while Musk being the brash but more daring of the two.

And Sam Harris. — Baden

Yes, that's true. Although Sam Harris did have a few fans such as Emptyheady or right now praxis. I think he's the most open-minded out of the four big atheists - Hitchens, Dawkins and Dennett being the other three, who are much less open-minded than Harris.

Which is very weird because Harris is actually a philosopher by profession - so it's strange he's viewed as he is.

I think him and Rand may have such a reputation because they don't really engage with the philosophical tradition that much. Rand probably has no clue about much of it, but Harris, given he's a philosophy graduate, I would expect him to have read a few of the big names in philosophy.

Flannery O'Connor said of Ayn Rand, "I hope you don’t have friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky."

O'Connor was a Catholic southern writer (religion was important to her) whose reputation is based primarily on her very dry humor and pithy short stories. Awarded the National Book Award for Fiction. She died in 1964.

I've read one or two of Rand's novels--didn't make a big impression. I'd say there were "OK", but not great.