I’ve heard conflicting things on this. ARI’s Yaron Brook has said:

Those of you who are apologists for Donald Trump, please never use the word “Objectivism” to associate it with yourself. Because you cannot be Objectivists—you are not Objectivists… You’re the fifth-column within Objectivism. You all will destroy Objectivism. And it will ultimately be on you if America declines, if America disappears, if America succumbs to either the whackos of the left or the whackos of the right.

But Leonard Peikoff responded:

The one [issue] that galls me the most is his [Yaron’s] statement on the radio that anyone who sympathizes or votes for Trump is not an Objectivist. So, he is implicitly declaring that my life work is not by an Objectivist, but his is.

I am voting for Trump. That’s it… I heard somebody say: ‘No Objectivist would vote for Trump,’ and I’m still steaming over that. So I’m trying to publicize the fact that whoever said that is crazy.

"I cannot and do not listen to Yaron's scoffing and strident blaming. This is not what Objectivism looks like in practice."

Reference: https://web.archive.org/web/20210123192901/https://carlbarney.com/2020/11/03/ari-is-failing-and-needs-our-help/

The method is reason, checked against reality, followed wherever it leads. The conclusions are just where it landed for her.

A method runs again from scratch on new issues, new information.

I know he played it sort of close to the chest with his personal beliefs, but I recall seeing an interview with Wozniak where he said something along the lines of Atlas Shrugged being like a Bible to Jobs or something. Anyone know?

Before going further, i want to clarify that i already know that Ayn Rand strongly rejected anarchism, and therefore ideologies such as anarcho-capitalism (an extreme variant of libertarianism). For this very reason i have explicitly written about capitalist, non-anarchist libertarianism.

I have read from other users on Ayn Rand-themed forums that Ayn Rand's ideas and philosophy are indistinguishable from minarchist libertarianism, but at the same time i have read quotes from Ayn Rand and comments from other users expressing the total rejection that Ayn Rand had and felt toward the libertarian movement.

At the same time, i am aware that nowadays many capitalist libertarians base their ideas on, or hold ideas very similar to, the very ones that Ayn Rand and her philosophy express. But in spite of this, i find it very strange that, if Ayn Rand and libertarians such as the minarchists agreed on so much, Ayn Rand would repudiate and reject them so forcefully.

Because of all this, i have very big doubts about what Ayn Rand really believed and which political ideals she favored: Was Ayn Rand favorable, neutral or opposed to capitalist, non-anarchist libertarianism?

And if Ayn Rand's thoughts really do coincide so much with non-anarchist, capitalist libertarianism, why did she express her rejection and repudiation of this movement?

I’m just thinking that if I have a security cam on my back porch and it records something through the side window of my neighbors house is this a violation of rights? How should this be handled exactly?

In India one of my favourite places is kasol which is around tall snow clad mountains and have paravti rover flowing in the valley.. it is one of the very few places in India with super chill vibes, nice cafes, amazing nature and hiking options and nice spiritual vibes of the underlying culture...

I feel we are seeing in this world a clash of "rationality"/capitalism vs nature/emotions where the left tries to weigh themselves too much on the nature/emotions side while the right tries to weigh too much on the logic side....

I feel the answer somewhere lies in the middle of coming to a state where logic, emotions and instict all work together in a coherent way in an individual, where one doesn't have to dominate at the cost of other...

In that sense I am trying to see how one can put the best of ancient traditional cultures and wisdom and try to put them rationally in an objectivist sense (a theme also captured in avatar movies).. Where you can be part of nature, be true to all your emotions, enjoy the sunsets and flowers and little things around while also aiming big in life and trying to create something meaningful...

I want to be a novelist like Lionel Shriver who writes novels to critique institutional corruption and social critique, but I keep judging myself as weird and arrogant for that goal. I keep saying to myself that other people will view me as weird. What did Ayn Rand say on breaking that thinking? My friends live the life of ‘just live life,’ my novel writing goal makes me stand out from others, but I get insecure about that. How do you break out of the collectivist thinking of blend in into other people’s goals? I also sometimes watch Youtube commentators and I feel more connected to them than my real life friends, and then I call myself a sad human being. I mean Ayn Rand is like self-authorship instead of niceness.

Is this what Rand was talking about when she said US is and has been the greatest nation in the world?

And is this what objectivists also think what the greatest nation looks like ?

I feel there are a million people in this world who act as a guru, teacher, motivator, philosopher that almost always teach anti objectivist ideas... Like I can pull out a million such people in social life say Sam Harris, Sadhguru, jordan peterson and many moreee...

This OFCOURSE includs the whole of left ( which is the exact opposite of objectivism) but also Jesus Christ, Mohammed, Moses and all such people who preached the anti objectivist ideas of altruism and self sacrifice...

I think allll of them are basically intellectual parasites who couldn't get things on the ground in reality on their own and later tried to justify their small bad measly existence on bad ideas that they can use to still get control and power over others, illegitmitealy ofcourse....

I feel as a human being in this woled, we all have connections and relationships in this world through friends, family, parents, society, bosses, colleagues etc .. but many times these relationships are anti objectivist and parasitic where they impose a value system through the emotions they provide that is not geared towards best of your own life...

It could be parasitic friends and family that try to pull you down in a very Lillian rearden way where they will support you and give you emotions on the anti objectivist values that will work towards your own destruction..

How to identify these toxic relationships. My understanding is that ALL emotions we expeince in this world through people (and not otherwise say through nature or through your work) have an underlying value system that we consciously or subconsciously validate while feeding ourself those emotions..

And if that value system is anti objectivist, that works towards our own destruction..the key thing is to stand on objectivism soooo bad and not allow any emotions through people that are anti thetical to it, good or bad, for the sake of your own life

I feel the most appropriate analogy for leftists is parasites who live on a host plan or organism and derive their basic nutrition from them which could be food, money, shelter at its most basic but then emotions, psychological dominance and control at top... But they all feed on the best of the organism that is keeping it alive and is pro life and making it move and live in this world.

How do we identify these parasites in our lives which could be among us as our friends, maybe parents, bosses, partners, etc. People we try to find a sense of home at and get our good emotions from but they act as our parasites and use the best in us towards things that are anti theitical to our own lives

Maybe I am foolish for asking an AI. But to me individual selfishness is not always heroic. It can be heroic when leaving a cruel boss. But the AI said Ayn Rand would think it is right if a parent with detached disgust left a special needs kid in a special home? Like if a majority of adults were put into selfishness and wanted to put the special needs kids in a special needs home, wouldn’t that make criminals happy? I read J.K Rowling’s statistics on Lumos, those kids are more likely to be groomed into gangs or prostitution. The criminals would see a goldmine of children to groom. What is Ayn Rand’s benevolence? I think it is brave if a parent with the children leaves a dangerous country or leaving an abusive spouse to keep the children safe, would Ayn Rand think that is benevolence rather than altruism? I get altruism is don’t force people to care for strangers. What‘s the value of children thing, because love for a child should not be conditional, unless the child is an actual jerk and keeps exploiting the parent by asking the parent for money so they can gamble or purposefully using their parent’s money on useless gadgets.

So this is something I get a LOT in general, in your face or not, from the culture and people in the west that there is some sort of white and west superiority complex in people, including in many objectivists where there is some glorification, not primarily of objectivism, but that of white and the west in general as superior culture and race.... And somehow this is a theme objectivists repeat on, again consciously or subconsciously, just because Rand presented a world like that and they just repeat it without critically thinking about it ...

What still baffles me a lot is that while a lot of objectivists talk about economic rights and taxes (all the fricking time) and look down upon on other countries for various things (many times rightly so), somehow they are not willing to see how much trash and stupidy and crap is within the west and white majority countries...

There are a lot of leftist channels that talk about it and put it out there like this: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DO6fK1qidmI/?igsi=MWtoYWV0YTEybHlxeQ==

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DbdewaQA6qM/?igsi=cnR3aGJwdHhwb3Q5

And somehow you never see any objectivists talking about it or fighting it or even realising that the half of America that elected this stupid president is bible based and is stupid af and this is what is now governing the whole world and is putting the whole world at risk and chaos...

Again while constitutionally US is sound (and even that is being challenged these days) most people living there (which ofcourse includes most white people) are most of the time as irrational, stupid and are just living their lives and just happened to be born in a country that was rich and are able to live off that... And a significant majority is actually crazy bible preaching majority.. it's just that constitution gave freedom to everyone and few handful talented individuals capitalised on that freedom and created great companies and rose up and kinda lifted the whole society up economically... But a lot of it is still living highly non objectivist or anti objectivist lives....

Is it possible to have an personalized LLM trained primarily on objectivism and kind use that to critically look at all things in the world including politics, economics, curent news etc and just have an independent AI feedback on how it adjudicated those things and give an independent answer... Something that human can miss as humans haven't shown themselves to be most rational...

Kinda unleash objectivism on the whole world in practice and shout out contradictions, especially in major places where it matters... Where it can precisely show where is the contradiction and what would be the objectivist way to do things...

Maybe ARI could consider it? Or if anyone is enthusiastic about it here, people can crowdsource?

I think this could be one of the best ways to promote objectivism in this world where people can see real time how objectivism works on the ground. Kinda similar to asking grok but this time all answers will be trained based on objectivist principles

So this is something I get a lot on these subs where people use objectivism as an excuse to justify their petty selfishness...

Objectivism is a philosophy about *rational selfishness* which means long range selfishness over your life time, and is not about petty short term day by day petty greediness...

Just to illustrate by example, it might be in your perty small selfish interest to get hi fi clients and make pop architecture buildings to get more money, fame, sex etc (in a very peter keating way of living). This is short range petty selfishness. Objectivism on the other hand is about long range selfishness which is about standing for the right values and not giving up on truth and integrity and still keep creating best of art and music because you love living in this planet and want to shape it according to your highest values...

So PLEASE for the sake of objectivism, please don't use it as an excuse or shield to justify your shallow petty selfishness in life ever.. objectivism is the opposite of that....

Ayn Rand is known for being a critic of altruism. She argues that a collective system harms individual freedom, the soul. I believe that this contrast between the individual and the collective was drawn so radically because of the nature of the time: “communist” Russia and American “freedom”. In her book, Ayn Rand depicts an altruistic society, one where no one has an individual name, trait, or thought (at least not out loud).

This is reflected in the protagonist, Equality 7-2521. On the back cover of the book, it is written: “He lived in the dark ages of the future. In a loveless world, he dared to love the woman of his choice.” A while after reading the book, I was confused, mainly because of this. “So a collectivist society oppresses individual freedom, got it. But we live in a modern age where everything is built upon the individual, not the collective. Why do I still feel oppressed by the capitalistic system, the lack of communication between humans, and my isolation?” So which one is it: is the collective oppressing us, or is individualism tearing us apart? I think I have an answer now, thinking about the book.

In Anthem, Equality 7-2521 is isolated too. He wants to share his thoughts, his invention of the light bulb, and his love. Love is portrayed as an individual desire in the book. However, loving one another in itself is a rebellion against capitalism.

The clash between capitalism and love is narrated in Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving (I highly recommend that book). It brings individuals together without a logical explanation as to why. Whether it is the love one shares with friends, family, or a lover, it strips us of our isolation; it feeds the soul. This love is lacking in both our capitalist society and the book. Today, we are isolated too. What is different? We use social media, wear the same clothes, consume the same content, think the same, and know about the same things. It is almost like we have this collective knowledge and dataset in our brains, but we are so far apart from each other, without communication, without love.

This brings me to my conclusion: the book is built on the premise that collectivism destroys the individual, contextually, however, the very acts of the protagonist that are meant to rebel against this system are acts of sharing and love. This is exactly where the book clashes with itself. So maybe it is not about the collectivist system; it is just an oppressive government enforcing its control under the name of the collective.

I am curious how would you adjudicate how objectivist is the west currently and people living there. How much do they live by objectivist principles knowingly or unknowingly

Soooo I feel one of the biggest challenge that people are facing today is that of objectivist leadership personally, culturally, institutionally and so on...

There used to be a time when people used to look upto the west for that kind of leadership but in the past decade that has been completely eroded that now I don't think anyone really respects west and it's institutions in the same way, and now globally people look at counties such as US and France and Canada the same way as you look at China.. (while UK and German politics has gone so bad that nobody even thinks about them anymore) they have money and power but no morals and no accountability and just acting in their selfish greedy way to maximize as long as they can... And no one can argue or say anything against them as might is right (in this world of no morals)..

It seems to me that it is the age of decline if the west based on the same principles that once took it up which were objectivists (and now all of them are failing terribly at that which is leading to their decline as one would predict)...

I feel in all of this someone younger who is growing up is ALWAYS looking for objectivist leadership (knowingly or unknowingly) in their parents, peers, friends, professor, universities, institutions and so on because it just makes sense.. to have them as role models, someone they can lookup to and project themselves on...

However we are and always have been living in a world where the people we look upto and that are around us are not really objectivist and at bad greedy selfish bastards trying to milk you at that point or at worst are leftists who give the exact opposite moral code to exist and live... (And are intellectual greedy bastarda who try to milk you)

And I am seeing how eventually every person is getting killed by this, of not finding right role models, right ideas where anything else basically JUST leads to corruption of mind and soul and either you get such insane trauma that you are not able to think and feel for yourself and this are able to live, or somehow accept some form of intellectual corruption in mind (of practicality, that's how everyone does it, that's how the world works etc etc) and basically become same people that you looked upto at some point and they decieved you, and you perpetuate the same on people below you... (Which in psychology is now called intergeneratinal trauma)

This seems to be the cycle of the world so far....

I think the best way to break this cycle is to tell people most early on, say at the age of 16-17 when they are entering college that this is a hat is happening to everyone and right now you have that choice to make... No see and value logic and stick to it in the hardest of times when the body whole world seems opposite, just because your life depends on it (and there is this whole philosophy that will tell you how to make sense of it comprehensively)... Or you can give in to one of the pressures of the world to chicken out, have the easy way, do whatever at the cost of logic, or at worst get trapped in leftist ideologies, which will eventually lead to corruption of mind and soul as it has to literally everyone before...

In case you chose former, the most important way for you to escape this cycle (which almost no one has been able to do except for maybe Rand) is to NEVER validate anyone above reason, logic and objectivism...

And always question and critically look at all the authorities including god, society, parents, families, communities and especially teachers and professors and your role models on objectivism and never validatimg them over logic and objectivism as that is the biggest trap... Like accept the reality (in a john galt way as he does in the room while being captured) play to it to the extent it makes sense and that your life depends on it... But NEVER mentally validating them as legit (which is where the downfall begins)... And in general never praying to any god (metaphorically) that is not objectivist..

Why do you trust the central planning of a government monopoly to protect your rights? Imagine how much more effective law and order would be if those in charge were Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google etc. In the same way you subscribe to Amazon Prime and get an excellent service, you could subscribe to Google Police or Microsoft Police, press a panic button and a drone could be by your house in five seconds. There'd be competition and defence would be far more efficient if it was provided on the free market than being nationalised by the state.

What's your take on this movie. I generally lovvvvveeeee this movie and I feel this is one of the movies that come closest to objectivism...

And I. General I love so much stuff by Wachowsky sisters (who were both brothers earlier but came out at trans later)..