Considering that the people on this site are more or less exactly the kind of people with whom Rand surrounded herself, and anyone who fancies themselves at all creative or exceptional is likely to identify with the Roark or Galt characters (who are, nonetheless, only ever described from an external perspective) - and frankly, the more likely to so identify the less their achievements tally with their self-estimation - I'd say it's not at all surprising.
I'd also say it doesn't bode well for the future. From my perspective, being a Rand fan is a demonstration of an unfortunate lack of either insight or critical thinking. Maybe the ability to believe bullshit, so long as it's positive bullshit, is a strength in an entrepreneur. But being unable to distinguish harsh truth from desirable illusion is not a strength in someone who is truly creative, whether in thought or in anything else.
I like how you call Rand's work bullshit but don't provide a single example. In fact it wouldn't surprise me if you haven't read any of her work. Most of her critics haven't.
Also, it's interesting that you don't try to reconcile the fact that the Y Combinator is one of the most successful startup incubators ever, and that there is a large presence of Ayn Rand fans on here. Do ya think there might be a connection there? no of course not, it's just that entrepreneurs like to believe in bullshit.
In my experience it's very rare to meet a person who calls themselves an Objectivist who isn't way above average in intelligence and ambition. And don't tell me about the 14 yearolds you've talked to on various online forums - I don't think you'd want people to judge you by how you behaved when you were a kid. I'm talking about people 25+. All the guys I knew from university who were Objectivists are now either working at Google, some big time law firm, or have started their own company (I'm in the lattermost category.)
It flies in the face of economics - while many economists tend towards the libertarian side of things, the honest ones acknowledge things like externalities, merit goods, and other market 'abnormalities'. People live in communities and have for thousands of years, and there are aspects of that that you can't simply throw out the window in favor of The Individual. Her thinking strikes me as some sort of utopia that is about as relevant to the real world as Karl Marx, albeit in a direction that I personally find more appealing. However, I find the writings of people like Milton Friedman more compelling, because they discuss the real world, human frailties and all, and are less absolute/extreme.
I also find all the scenes involving female protagonists being more or less raped as weird and disturbing. But that's perhaps tangential to her philosophy.
All told, though... I'm just not interested in "philosophy" as this wishy washy thing, that's not my thinking style. I prefer things like economics, or at most, going one removed from that and talking about what a society wants to accomplish and how it wants to treat its citizens.
> In fact it wouldn't surprise me if you haven't read any of her work.
Try "all her novels and at least 4 books of essays". In fact, I seem to have read more Rand than many Objectivists. It was a while ago, though, and the books have long since left my possession.
Let me guess - your next argument will be "you didn't understand it then". If so, we're done here, for the same reason I don't argue with Christian fundamentalists who claim I don't understand Christianity.
edit: Sorry, some of your other assertions amuse me.
> Also, it's interesting that you don't try to reconcile the fact that the Y Combinator is one of the most successful startup incubators ever, and that there is a large presence of Ayn Rand fans on here.
I guess you found "maybe the ability to believe bullshit... is a strength" confusing. I chose the word "strength" for a reason, although "advantage" would fit well too.
I also covered that in another thread, where you were perfectly welcome to reply. Nobody did.
> Do ya think there might be a connection there?
Correlation? Not without better data. But even if there is a correlation, that is not causation; and I find it hard to take someone who would assert otherwise seriously as a thinker.
So here's one for you. What proportion of successful YC startups were founded by Objectivists? What proportion of failed or abandoned ones were?
> In my experience it's very rare to meet a person who calls themselves an Objectivist who isn't way above average in intelligence and ambition.
In my experience it's very rare to meet a person who ridicules Objectivism who isn't way above average in intelligence, perceptiveness and sensitivity.
Shall we get into a pissing match about whose experience is better, or shall we simply agree that personal experience is not a useful data point?
> All the guys I knew from university who were Objectivists are now either working at Google
What argument of yours should I respond to? then one where you assert without any evidence that her work is bullshit?
You think you can just dismiss an entire body of thought by throwing out ad hominems?
Look, I know that you're smart enough to know that I'm a pretty smart guy, so comparing me to a "Christian fundamentalist" just makes you look ridiculous. Offer a serious argument to support your claims (as I did to support mine, if you read the above posts) or just don't bother posting.
Edit (response to above "edit", since you didn't feel like writing a new post): This really isn't going anywhere, let's just leave it here. I'm sure you're a top notch programmer, but seriously man it's just not cool to go around name-calling people you disagree with. I replied to your posts with respect, so did everyone else on this site.
> then one where you assert without any evidence that her work is bullshit?
I didn't assert that, I implied that in the course of asserting something else.
> You think you can just dismiss an entire body of thought by throwing out ad hominems?
Yeah, actually I do, if it's a very small body and hasn't done much thinking.
> comparing me to a "Christian fundamentalist"
Again (and this is REALLY getting tedious), I didn't compare you to a Christian fundamentalist, I compared Objectivist arguments that I have heard before (and predicted that you would use, partly in order to ensure that you didn't) with those of Christian fundamentalists.
> I know that you're smart enough to know that I'm a pretty smart guy
Er, no - at the moment that is a conclusion I simply cannot draw. Your thinking displays evidence of being muddled and irrational, with little grasp of logic or ability to distinguish between claims made of the argument and claims made of the arguer.
I have no doubt that you think you're a pretty smart guy, and I bet you didn't have to work too hard at school to achieve results. But I also think that because of this, you tend to interpret criticism as a personal attack, and you are slow to recognise when someone really does have something to teach you, especially when you don't think that person is as bright as you think you are.
Someone else has come along and downmodded every single post I made in this thread. Result? Instant karma drop of 10%. By one person. Because I said something they didn't like.
pg, please delete or disable my account forthwith. I am not prepared to stay in a place where that's acceptable - and by allowing the behaviour, you make it acceptable. I would do it myself, but news.yc doesn't even allow me to change my fucking password. (I hope you're not storing them as plaintext.)
I like Roark, but I think Galt is overrated. He doesn't do much. Dagny is more appealing and more similar to Roark -- they both heroically pursue active goals against stiff opposition.
It's funny, everyone likes Roark more than Galt :)
Yeah, I thought there just wasn't enough characterization with Galt, compared to any of the other characters. He just kind of appears towards the end of the novel and you never really understand what is motivating him on an emotional level. Maybe I'm just not remembering it properly, it's been 6 or 7 years since I read Atlas Shrugged.
Personally I see Galt as something of a disproof-by-overextension of some of Rand's ideas. Galt was her "perfect man". For a character to be human, the author must be able to get inside their head. For even Ayn Rand herself to be unable to thus think like Galt indicates to me that she was unable to make her own thoughts follow her own ideals. As any Rand follower will agree, the quickest way to get your thoughts to stall and boggle is to try and deny a natural axiom, or push through a contradiction. (Similarly you get much the same stall-and-boggle leading to an authorial 3rd person stance, when other erroneous ideas are tried to destruction - compare most utopian fiction.) So that's a strong warning signal.
What could be the fault she ran into? I think she had a bit of the "chasing words" disease. The words for her were "rational", "mind", "self-interest" - and those are words that break down quite quickly and thoroughly when you look at the brain and the human organism in context. (In her defense, she was writing some 50 years before the science would become any good.)
That's one weakness of Objectivism which has become more apparent to me in the last few years. The philosophy seems to almost construct a platonic form of "rationality" and "self-interest" and never really reconnect with concretes, staying entirely in the abstract. So it ends up handling most cases pretty well, but a lot special cases get left behind.
Still, when I re-think through her reasoning again and again, I don't see how one could reach any different fundamental principles. Special cases are just that, and the best course seems to be to just deal with them as they arise.
Actually, her theory of "mind" is probably the worst flaw. All the modern psychological research indicates that the rule-following, conscious mind you use to do formal "reason" is a tiny, weak, singly threaded, monitoring rather than commanding subsystem in a brain that is mostly fast, parallel, unconscious, and NOT rational.
No, it's for the same reason that intelligent design isn't taught in biology classes, or that the timecube theory isn't taught in physics classes, or that homeopathy isn't taught in med school. Rand's output was pseudophilosophy.
On what grounds would you call Rand's work "pseudophilosophy", rather than philosophy proper? Just because you don't like something does not mean it is automatically disqualified from the class of philosophies.
I think that to qualify as a philosophy, something must be a system of thought that proposes a notion of metaphysics, epistemology, and a system of ethics. Rand's "output" obviously qualifies, whether you happen to agree with it or not.
Intelligent design and time cube theory ought not to be taught because they can be objectively verified as false. Such a test plainly does not apply to philosophy -- and even if it did, it would disqualify plenty of philosophers who are taught, such as the pre-Socratic philosopher Thales.
> On what grounds would you call Rand's work "pseudophilosophy", rather than philosophy proper?
Well, for a start, there was the fact that she reviewed, and dismissed on "philosophical" grounds, a book of Immanuel Kant's after she read the back cover. Sure, that's an example, but by no means an atypical one. She dismissed nearly everything after Aristotle, usually on superficial grounds. Such wholesale dismissal of the established field, such grandiosity of claims (especially in the face of such shallow thinking) has direct parallels with pseudoscience.
> I would personally say that to qualify as a philosophy, something must be a system of thought that proposes a notion of metaphysics, epistemology, and a system of ethics. Rand's "output" obviously qualifies
...for a definition of "philosophy" you have pretty much quoted verbatim from her work, but without admitting that or even acknowledging the existence of alternative perspectives? You do see the problem with that, don't you...?
> Intelligent design and time cube theory ought not to be taught because they can be objectively verified as false.
No. They can't. That's the whole point of pseudoscience - if their claims were verifiable but wrong, it would just be forgotten. But pseudoscientists make unverifiable claims precisely in order to claim that because their claims have not been disproven, they should be given parity.
As for teaching Thales, how does one teach that Socrates was an advance if one does not teach what he was advancing from? Similarly, the Rutherford model of the atom is still mentioned in science classes - by your logic it should be forgotten as pseudoscience, but it wasn't. One cannot teach science without teaching that models are superseded by better models as they are created - that is the very nature of the scientific process. And the reason science and philosophy were commingled until a couple of centuries ago is that it's at the heart of the philosophical process too. One rejects models because one can demonstrate that an alternative model better fits the observable reality; one doesn't superficially reject them without bothering to understand them first because one finds their implications in disagreement with the conclusions one is seeking to prove!
> Well, for a start, there was the fact that she reviewed, and dismissed on "philosophical" grounds, a book of Immanuel Kant's after she read the back cover.
This is utterly irrelevant to the point in question. Rand's attitude toward other philosophers was pretty uninformed, I agree, but it is evidence of Rand herself being silly, superficial, etc., The point is that those are properties of Rand, not of her philosophy. To equate her (many) imperfections as an individual with inherent properties of her philosophy is essentially an ad hominem argument -- and it's even more debatable that merely dismissing the alternatives to one's theory automatically makes your own theory "pseudophilosophy".
As for my definition of philosophy, sure, it is also Rand's view, but I think it is fairly reasonable. Surely a philosophy must include some claims about 1. the nature of reality 2. our ability to understand that reality, if any 3. how we ought to act within that reality. If you think it's such a flawed definition, what definition would you prefer, and how does Rand's "output" not qualify?
As for ID/etc. being provably false, I agree with you, I mispoke. But I still don't see how you've proven, or even really supported, your argument that Rand is somehow "pseudophilosophy", and other systems of thought are "real" philosophy. That just sounds like superficial bigotry to me -- actually the same sort of thing you accuse Rand of, with respect to Kant.
1. You claim that she dismissed a book by Kant after reading the back cover.
Please provide a reference.
2. You don't like his definition of philsophy.
What definition do you like?
3. You claim pseudophilosophy should not be taught in philosophy classes.
Anyone and everyone agrees with that point. You still leave open the issue of whether Rand's work is in fact pseudophilosophy. Please support your claims.
See above. The books in which I could have located a reference are long gone; but it's in one of her short essays (if pushed, I'd suggest that it might be found in For the New Intellectual... but wouldn't want to be held to that).
> What definition do you like?
From wikipedia: "Different philosophers have had varied ideas about the nature of reason, and there is also disagreement about the subject matter of philosophy." If not even the people who do it professionally can agree on a definition, it would be presumptuous of me to try.
Nonetheless, you misread my objection. I am objecting to the assertion that Rand's work is without question philosophy, using the definition of philosophy by which Rand identified herself as one. It's tautological; it begs the question.
Likewise, my criticism of Rand is not that her conclusions are not reasonable conclusions (although I have my own opinions on that). It is that the methods by which she reached those conclusions are not those of a serious philosophical investigation. Rand's entire "philosophy" was carefully contrived to justify the conclusions she wanted justified, and that makes it worthless as philosophy - and inherently dishonest, to boot.
> You still leave open the issue of whether Rand's work is in fact pseudophilosophy.
I haven't even presented a definition of pseudophilosophy, let alone one you have agreed upon, so it's hard to see how you can assert that I haven't proved my case. So:
: I define "pseudophilosophy" as "justification masquerading as philosophy" - or, to elaborate, "a contrived rationalisation of a priori conclusions, constructed primarily to justify those conclusions rather than to examine their validity".
: I claim that the evidence of Rand's flight to the US from revolutionary Russia, and the emotions expressed in her early fiction (primarily We the Living and Anthem, but even back as far as The Husband I Bought) demonstrate the a priori nature of her strident individualism and anti-collectivism. I do not criticise this; indeed, I have a lot of sympathy with it.
: I note that her philosophical oeuvre developed over the next few decades, from its clumsy emotive (and none the worse for that) beginnings in Anthem, through its 30-year gestation in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, to its expression in direct form in works such as For The New Intellectual and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.
: I therefore conclude that in this case, she contrived her philosophical justification to fit her a priori conclusions about the rightness of capitalism and the abhorrence of altruism.
Note that I remain in sympathy with the feelings that drove her; indeed, I would go so far as to say that I share them. But to look upon her rationalisation of those feelings as anything other than a rationalisation, the self-justification of a woman who could not allow herself to simply be, is something I find absurd.
> Rand's entire philosophy was carefully contrived to justify the conclusions she wanted justified, and that makes it worthless as philosophy
"Worthless" is far overstating the case: in general it is hard to prove very much about the true motivations of philosophers, particularly long-dead ones. For example, it is quite likely that the exact lines of reasoning in Descartes' Meditations was contrived to reach the conclusions he wanted to reach beforehand, but to say that makes the whole thing "worthless" is pretty silly. Many philosophers can be criticized as developing rational arguments for positions they hold intuitively.
Considering that one of his "results" is a philosophical proof of the existence of God, I'd say he might have gone up a bit of a garden path...
> Many philosophers can be criticized as developing rational arguments for positions they hold intuitively.
Indeed, but the key is doing so from a position of trying to prove your intuitively-held position wrong, and I'd suggest that this is what distinguishes philosophers. Some of them - for instance, Wittgenstein - even manage to do it.
Going back to the science analogy, new hypotheses are accepted not once supporting evidence is found - even UFOs have supporting evidence, after all! - but only for as long as attempts to produce confounding evidence fail.
You can't verify (prove) that ID is false, or that there is no God, or anything like that. It isn't an issue for scientific tests, and certainty is never possible anyway.
Two wrongs don't make a right. I'd say it's more important to stop teaching pseudoscience in science classes than to use it as a justification for teaching pseudophilosophy in philosophy classes. And in general, novels should be taught in literature classes, not philosophy classes - although the example of L'Etranger suggests that there is room for crossover.
(Anyway, the majority of Rand's work takes the form of non-fictional essays. Her novels made her name, but it's clear she saw them only as means to an end.)
Actually, there is a good reason TO teach pseudo-science in science classes: to expose the student to literature which is not science. One of the most critical features that defines a person as a "scientist" is his healthy skepticism. This is very often NOT taught in science classes.
Since most pseudo-scientists have a genuine concern over some problem, and they have obviously acquired what little scientific exposure they did from their schooling, then I claim that if more science classes covered pseudo-science, explaining why it is not true science, then I predict a distinct drop in pseudo-science will result.
How is the Acumen Fund funded? How was it initially funded?
Charity may not work, but there's plenty of evidence that charities do; they exist as organisations to convert money into exactly the kind of progress that you argue is necessary.
Perhaps, then, you should be applying to churches for funding? They have interests in common with you - in both "figuring out what God is up to" and the "wanting something for nothing".
Come to think of it, those ideas might themselves be directly related.
> "One very common thing is that often very brilliant children stop working because they're praised so often that it's what they want to live as--brilliant--not as someone who ever makes mistakes," she said.
Exactly my experience. I've been trying to figure out how to motivate myself to actually do anything for my whole adult life (and a good bit before), because in my formative years I basically got As for showing up - not only did I never have to figure out how to work at something, when I did find something difficult I instantly decided I was a failure at it and stopped trying.
Any suggestions on how I can break out of that cycle would be very gratefully received... but I'm scared that at 33, it's too late for me to learn how to learn - or how to fail.
I was always in the library, because I had no interest in what I was being taught, and (I didn't realise it then, but) I couldn't bear being in a roomful of people for lectures. I wish I'd done something like an Open University (is there a US equivalent to this organisation?) course instead.
