James Randi and Objectivism

[The Norseman]

Ever hear of these poor saps?

Yes, I've heard of those poor saps. Care to elaborate on what that has to do with this thread?

 

[Dinwar]

This is the one that's always brought up but more appropriately you have to ask how a family unit survives the non-coercion tenet.

As a married Objectivist, I'd say it works perfectly fine. Many other married O'ists--including Dr. Diana Hsieh (Ph.D. from Boulder, CO)--strongly support the concept of marriage. Dr. Hsieh has spoken on at least one occasion about her reasons for this. While she is not The One True Authority on O'ism, she's certainly no slouch when it comes to the philosophy, either, and provides at least one justification that's perfectly in line with O'ism (it provides an objective means for saying "I'm not looking for anyone--I've found someone"). Marriage may change form in an O'ist society--polygamy, for example, wouldn't be outlawed provided no fraud occurred (children are unable to concent, as are animals, so don't bother with that stupidity)--but it would certainly continue to exist.

 

[joesixpack]

Yes, I've heard of those poor saps. Care to elaborate on what that has to do with this thread?

Did you follow that particular thread of conversation back to where it started?

I was pointing out that MichaelM's fairytale description of the "objectivist" beginnings of this country (which I must assume is the US, but hey, he really wasn't specific) diverges quite sharply from the historical record.

Was there no coercive interaction with the indigenous people around the founding of this country? I could also point out these poor saps as well. Maybe I'm mistaken, though.

So was this country truly founded on "objectivist principals"? Or did I misunderstand MichaelM?

 

[Darat]

Gord_in_Toronto,

The same way this country did when it was founded ...snip...

The USA was founded on the principles of liberalism with a surprising amount of pragmatism thrown in, I thought you were arguing for objectivism not liberalism?

 

[stilicho]

....

2) you also overlook the power of economic boycott and social shunning of those who do not act as you think they should or who endanger the populace with their products. Who is regulating which cell phone is better? How fast did the Blackberry disappear into the shadows of the iPhone? What government could have effected that regulation that fast?

....

The rational individual doesn't want to die in a plane crash caused by a smoker's careless cigarette left in the toilet wastebasket. Yet people have died in the past for this very reason. The Objectivist would state that the regulation is unnecessary because the rational individual has already assessed the risk.

We would expect that a number of airlines would voluntarily make their flights non-smoking to offer a competitive advantage but few if any actually did this.

In this case, the regulation kicked in much quicker than any decision made by the rational consumer or the rational producer. We could play tit-for-tat this way all day long.

 

[Darat]

Darat,

If you think I did not condemn the posts of this thread as being empty with my reason and by evidence, please list for me the tenets of Objectivism referenced before my first post that address and rebut them specifically. Happy hunting!

Why should I rebut a claim I did not make? On the other hand I look forward to you presenting the research you have done that showed the majority of respondents had not studied Rand's crap i.e supporting your claim.

 

[stilicho]

As a married Objectivist, I'd say it works perfectly fine. Many other married O'ists--including Dr. Diana Hsieh (Ph.D. from Boulder, CO)--strongly support the concept of marriage. Dr. Hsieh has spoken on at least one occasion about her reasons for this. While she is not The One True Authority on O'ism, she's certainly no slouch when it comes to the philosophy, either, and provides at least one justification that's perfectly in line with O'ism (it provides an objective means for saying "I'm not looking for anyone--I've found someone"). Marriage may change form in an O'ist society--polygamy, for example, wouldn't be outlawed provided no fraud occurred (children are unable to concent, as are animals, so don't bother with that stupidity)--but it would certainly continue to exist.

It's more the family I see when we get together over the holidays. For what reason do we associate with these individuals who presumably ought to have something more productive to do with their time?

Children are capable of rational thought. Of course they are. Animals are not able to do this.

 

[Dinwar]

We could play tit-for-tat this way all day long.

Yup. That's why O'ism has a trump card: Property rights. If you don't own the plane, you don't get to say how it's used. If you don't own it, you can't say "You're not allowed to allow smokers on board", period. You can say "If you allow smokers on board, I'll boycot", because that's you using your own property; you can even say "If you allow smokers on board I'll send letters to the editor of X newspaper calling for a general boycot". That's all how you use your property, and that's fine. But when you say "You're going to do what I want with your property, and the government is going to make sure you do", you've crossed the line and are now threatening force, which is not allowed. Sure, it's slower to convince people than to threaten them with fines, imprisonment, or worse--but it's also wrong to tell people how to use their property. And in O'ism, property rights trump your desire for a little temporary security.

 

[Darat]

stilicho,

It is beyond bizarre to assert that a set of philosophical principles (politics) are inherently invalid because no one ever put them into effect. The actions of other men now or in history are not sufficient to invalidate any idea. The argument is about ideas. Step up to the plate!

No the argument is about reality and whether your models are an accurate model of humanity. The problem for your ideas is that the empirical evidence is rather against them having validity when applied to reality. That does not mean they are entirely without value of course, just of no value when we are deciding how we should organise ourselves to achieve our goals.

 

[MichaelM]

So you imagine that society is protected from your fallibility? Will further freedoms make us safer and safer from your failures? Who will protect you from your failures? I don't think people deserve to starve or live under a bridge dying of a treatable disease because they made mistakes in life (the most common mistake being the failure to be born to middle class parents in the developed world). Perhaps you do though.

But seriously on balance, don't you think you've derived more benefit from society than you've contributed?

You have inverted the purpose. The government seeks to the extent possible to protect men form the fallibility of others that they attempt to impose on us by force. The goal is to guarantee that individuals will only suffer the consequences of their own fallibility. And if their suffering is due to no cause of their own you and every other human on earth will be free to help them. You will only be prevented from pointing a gun at someone who has suffering of theirs and their own family to forsake them to help someone you want to help.

The entire history of capitalism is a record of the little guy getting more benefit from the most creative and productive while contributing less. And no matter how monumental the sums of money the producers earn, it can never equal the happiness that devolves from creating the values that move mankind forward. Doubt it at your own peril.

 

[Darat]

Humes_fork

It is a misrepresentation to say that Rand's society is unregulated. First of all the regulation against the use or threat of violence among men is infinitely more stringent than any you have ever known of.

...snip...

Which of course immediately demonstrates the incoherence of the silliness. What you are saying is that if I don't accept your tenets about coercive violence to others then you will use coercive violence against me - which is a contradiction.

Now if you accepted pragmatism into your world view that is not a problem but when you insist on an ideology being absolute such internal contradictions render the whole thing irrational, and of course if you accept pragmatism then you are no longer being an objectivist!

 

[Dinwar]

It's more the family I see when we get together over the holidays. For what reason do we associate with these individuals who presumably ought to have something more productive to do with their time?

Okay, so instead of one discussion of the topic Dr. Hsieh has numerous ones. To quote Rand: "...profit, ma'am, that depends on what you're after." If you want money, and only money, you'd have no reason to associate with anyone. If you want a value-rich life, it's likely that you'll associate with kin. After all, your kin know you best (or at least the longest), and are likely to provide some values others cannot.

Children are capable of rational thought. Of course they are. Animals are not able to do this.

To a certain extent, yes--and to that extent, they have rights. However, O'ism recognizes that children have not fully developed their rational faculties (a proven issue in psychology, as I understand it--they've shown that teenagers use Type 2 logic, but suck at it) and therefore are incapable of things like entering into certain contracts, such as marriages. My point was that because O'ism recognizes that children are not adults it doesn't treat them as if they were adults, and child marriages (which always come up when discussing anything other than one-man-one-woman Western steriotypical marriages) would not be allowed in an O'ist society. The contract wouldn't be recognized.

On the other hand I look forward to you presenting the research you have done that showed the majority of respondents had not studied Rand's crap i.e supporting your claim.

Yeah.....Are you an atheist? If you are, would you recognize the validity of a theist's demand that you prove there are no gods? The logic is the same as the claim you're making here. Anyway, the qoute I quoted in my first post amply illustrates the level of understanding of Rand most on this site have shown--they know a few talking points, they've heard someone say something, and they think that's what O'ism is. They then demand that O'ists say why we accept things which contradict Objectivism, or they say that Rand ignores things she specifically addresses in multiple essays. If you understand the philosophy, great--I look forward to discussing your objections to it. But the trend that I've seen (and I'll admit it's qualitative) is that most people here don't get the philosophy.

 

[joesixpack]

The entire history of capitalism is a record of the little guy getting more benefit from the most creative and productive while contributing less. And no matter how monumental the sums of money the producers earn, it can never equal the happiness that devolves from creating the values that move mankind forward. Doubt it at your own peril.

Something tells me that you're not actually familiar with the history of capitalism. The bulk of capitalism consists of a large number of people working to produce as great a profit as possible for a very small group. I'm sure that this is not what you advocate, but your uncritical reading of history over the past 200 years seems to gloss over slavery, colonialism, and the exploitation of the bulk of the working class. Again, the most substantial mistake that poor people make is their total failure to be born into the middle class of the developed world. How do you equate an accident of birth with personal failing?

Ideally, there would be no coercion and all people would have equal opportunity to create wealth for themselves. If you honestly think that this is presently the case, or that government regulation is the only thing which prevents this from being the case, then you are willfully ignorant of the real world.

 

[MichaelM]

So was this country truly founded on "objectivist principals"? Or did I misunderstand MichaelM?

You misunderstood sort of by not sticking to the context of the present government founded in 1776-89. The founding you are referring to was a mish-mash of European laws/traditions and anarchy.

 

[MichaelM]

The USA was founded on the principles of liberalism with a surprising amount of pragmatism thrown in, I thought you were arguing for objectivism not liberalism?

Sometimes the results of pragmatism are right. Sometimes they are wrong. Pragmatism as a principle is invalid, because its only purpose is to stop the crises in progress and is unable to act for the long range, because it has no ethical principles to guide it.

Additionally, pragmatism becomes expediency at the flick of a wrist and is responsible for most of the tyrannies imposed in the world by the left and the right.

 

[joesixpack]

Yup. That's why O'ism has a trump card: Property rights. If you don't own the plane, you don't get to say how it's used. If you don't own it, you can't say "You're not allowed to allow smokers on board", period.

What if my main concern is that your plane will crash into my home? Don't I get a say in where you get to fly that plane? Let's say a lot of people are worried that you plane will crash into their home, can we deny you the airspace over our property? And since planes never simply drop straight down, can't we insist that there be a margin of safety around our houses so that your disabled smokers plane won't glide into our bedroom window?

Property rights is not such a clear cut issue. You live in a society, you should have some control over what your neighbors do with their property.

 

[Darat]

...snip...

Yeah.....Are you an atheist? If you are, would you recognize the validity of a theist's demand that you prove there are no gods? The logic is the same as the claim you're making here. Anyway, the qoute I quoted in my first post amply illustrates the level of understanding of Rand most on this site have shown--they know a few talking points, they've heard someone say something, and they think that's what O'ism is. They then demand that O'ists say why we accept things which contradict Objectivism, or they say that Rand ignores things she specifically addresses in multiple essays. If you understand the philosophy, great--I look forward to discussing your objections to it.

...snip...

Just repeating an assertion or extending it as you have done above is not the same as providing evidence for a claim.

But the trend that I've seen (and I'll admit it's qualitative) is that most people here don't get the philosophy.

Objectivism is one of the more simplistic ideologies to understand so I do rather doubt that people "don't get the philosophy", I suspect it is that they simple don't agree with it.

 

[joesixpack]

You misunderstood sort of by not sticking to the context of the present government founded in 1776-89. The founding you are referring to was a mish-mash of European laws/traditions and anarchy.

Oh I'm sticking to that government. Are you pretending that the ethnic cleansing of the west and slavery never happened?

Have you actually read a history book since gradeschool?

 

[stilicho]

Yup. That's why O'ism has a trump card: Property rights. If you don't own the plane, you don't get to say how it's used. If you don't own it, you can't say "You're not allowed to allow smokers on board", period. You can say "If you allow smokers on board, I'll boycot", because that's you using your own property; you can even say "If you allow smokers on board I'll send letters to the editor of X newspaper calling for a general boycot". That's all how you use your property, and that's fine. But when you say "You're going to do what I want with your property, and the government is going to make sure you do", you've crossed the line and are now threatening force, which is not allowed. Sure, it's slower to convince people than to threaten them with fines, imprisonment, or worse--but it's also wrong to tell people how to use their property. And in O'ism, property rights trump your desire for a little temporary security.

I agree that's how it works in the Objectivist world. It would take several more accidents before the property owner even admitted that the problem existed. There's no NTSB or FAA to investigate the accident and probably no CVRs or FDRs either.

Would one airline owner implement all these things? Possibly. Would all the others follow? Possibly. However, the historical record has indicated that the airline industry has never voluntarily reduced risk because these things cost money.

On the flip side, we'd need to do a technical analysis of RIM and Apple before deciding off-hand that there was no undue coercion or operational control in place that led to the decline of the Blackberry product line. I don't have the time or the inclination to do this but I think you can see that a simple declaration of BB v iPhone = Objectivist Victory should not be taken at face value.

 

[Darat]

As a married Objectivist, I'd say it works perfectly fine. Many other married O'ists--including Dr. Diana Hsieh (Ph.D. from Boulder, CO)--strongly support the concept of marriage. Dr. Hsieh has spoken on at least one occasion about her reasons for this. While she is not The One True Authority on O'ism, she's certainly no slouch when it comes to the philosophy, either, and provides at least one justification that's perfectly in line with O'ism
...snip...

Of course she does - most folk who say they follow any -ism or ideology seem to be able to find justification for whatever they want to do within that ideology, yet what they seem to end up doing is the exact same thing as the rest of their society and culture. You'd almost think they were a social animal!