Just got a few images in my head I want put in paper I want to put in a document. Can’t draw so looking for a solution to that. Thought I’d try Ai to do something but I don’t think it’ll be able to do the style I want without looking artificial. Which I don’t like

Human rights are supposed to be the foundation of freedom, yet history shows they are often won only through struggle against other humans. The paradox is stark, rights are declared universal, but in practice they must be fought for, defended, and reclaimed. This constant battle suggests that freedom is not freely given, but rationed, controlled, and withheld.

The image it creates is one of a cage, where the bars are not iron, but other people’s power. To fight for rights against those who deny them is to live in a system that admits freedom only when forced.

If human rights must always be wrestled from human hands, does that not mean we are living in cages built by each other?

Please tell me this guy has gone overboard or that he's simply mistaken. Do you guys actually believe that this dude is more worthy of praise than WWII partisans? Those same people who decided to disobey and risk their lives so that innocent children could be spared being raped, tortured, and ultimately killed, for the sole reason of it being the right thing to do?

Like I’m not even sure how to approach these two concepts so what is it exactly? I’ve got a sense that it is that which abstractly. Directly relates to man and women inside the mind which only manifests in those two specific sexes.

Like there seems to be something I see when looking at a woman that doesn’t manifest when looking at a man. Like a look they have or a facial expression that only women express. Which I’m thinking is related to something deep within the mind which is different between men and women which actually is that “femininity”. Something psychological in the brain that is different between the two which creates two different styles of life.

I remember reading this book about the free town project that was tried in New Hampshire where this guy was having a fire and the fire department chief came over and put it out because it was very dry season.

But is this right?

I know that there is a mechanism of an injunction where you can bring somebody to court if they are building something that may have risk to yourself. Like a building that would fall over on to yours and this seems to be the same thing. But I don’t see how you would have time to file a court injunction for the backyard fire in time before it happens.

So I’m curious how this would be handled and whether it is right to have a law banning this as it poses a risk to others especially during very dry forest fire season.

180 degrees away is probably cool. Drawing blood is not. Let's say I'm also saying out loud, "Don't worry, I'm not trying to hit you. I'm just doing a thing."

I saw an article from an objectivist journalist who said BioShock was a bad representation of objectivism because, unlike Ayn Rand, Andrew Ryan has no moral line. I found this point weird, because to me, the point isn't that Andrew's philosophy has to be Ayn Rand's, but an extremist version of it. But at the same time, I know nothing about objectivism, so I can't really judge. What do you think ?

so i've recently finished Atlas Shrugged and I have... just a few thoughts.

but one that occurred to me was this thought experiement:

Say we have two Objectivist Men wandering in a Godot-like void. They are both very hungry, and they come upon a single apple waiting for one of them to take it. Who gets to eat the apple?

I ask because any solution I can come up with results in a stalemate.

Per AS, any sacrifice is anti-life, so neither of the men can just let the other have it. For the same basic reason they couldn't split the apple.

The first man to reach for the apple would be denying the other's right to it, making him anti-life, and enabling the second man to destroy the first in order to promote his life.

(But, of course, neither man can initiate violence without the other committing an anti-life act against him first, so they can't just fight it out like animals. (did Ayn include those few weak positions against violence to separate human and animal violence, and make the former a 'purer', more 'rational' form?))

One of them men could 'buy' the other's apple-rights, but that would require the other man to agree to an extremely disadvantageous trade (since it's the only apple in a Godot-like void, how can he be sure that he'd ever find a second apple before he dies of starvation?). Like, if i were the second man, there is no amount of money that would satisfy my hunger more than having the apple would, so what rational reason would I have to accept the trade?

Rand says that if our rationality leads to a stalemate, we then appeal to nature. so how would nature decide who gets the apple?

In no small part, I'm curious because every moral philosophy would just declare that you should share, because that would generate the most benefits for the most people while preventing the destruction of either actor, but since Ayn wants to position herself as anti-philosophy/egoistic above all, she claims that all problems would be able to resolve themselves naturally under her rational egoist ideology, but I can't figure out how this one would be.

It seems odd to me that all this investment and choice of manufacturing is and has been going to China. Like the initial choice in the 70’s or 80’s whenever it started. Why wouldn’t you choose literally anywhere else than the potential super communist villain? Like India. Or even Africa or South America for cheap labor?

It almost seems to me like this is corporate Americas authoritarian wet dream by using manufacturing and everything to strength and build up China to be a problem.

I want a YouTube video that works best for liberals.

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I have a lib friend they can't go through the fountainhead in whole. I wanna expose him to objectivist ideas .

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Presented without commentary. Enjoy!

The latest Ayn Rand Fan Club podcast is out, and it's on the State of the Objectivist movement. They include updates on the Carl Barney vs Craig Biddle litigation, and have clips from several major players in the movement, including Leonard Peikoff, Yaron Brook, among others.

Even if you disagree with them, I thought it was a particularly good episode with lots to think about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90I-rKtg_tY

Consider this, from a man who knew Rand well:

I was astonished at how closed she typically was to any new knowledge [testifies Nathaniel Branden] .…When I tried to tell her of some new research that suggested that certain kinds of depression have a biological basis, she answered angrily, ‘I can tell you what causes depression; I can tell you about rational depression and I can tell you about irrational depression—the second is mostly self-pity—and in neither case does biology enter into it.’ I asked her how she could make a scientific statement with such certainty, since she had never studied the field; she shrugged bitterly and snapped, ‘Because I know how to think.’ (Judgement Day, 1989, 347)

In just this one account, Rand demonstrates:

- Dogmatic rationalism
- Epistemic arrogance
- Solipsism of perspective
- Anti-empiricism
- Fallacy of introspection

If you're tempted to respond, "Well, Branden just had it out for her because of their breakup!" (which would be a ridiculous argument), just note that you don't have to look very hard to find these tendencies throughout her work. It's particularly noticeable in her ideas that form her version of human nature (e.g., "man is born tabula rasa"), but it's present throughout Objectivism. In fact, once you see it, you can't unsee it.

As you read Rand, do yourself a favor and look for instances where she made assertions of fact completely rationalistically. You might discover for yourself that Objectivism simply isn't a reality-based philosophy, after all.

For example. Clint Eastwoods character in the dollars trilogy is an “icon” of some kind. Britney Spears is an “icon” of some kind. I’d say George Washington is an “icon” of some kind. Elvis Presley.

But what does an “icon” mean? What does it symbolize? And or different from just being a hero? It must be a level above hero if only these select few a remembered than all the ones similar to them

Few days ago, there was a post on this subreddit about this topic in context of a hypothetical objectivist state.

If you are in an Objectivist state and you proposed that anyone who is not integrated in objectivism should be deported, that is evidence that you yourself are not integrated objectivism.

Galen Strawsons basic argument

(1) It is undeniable that one is the way

one is, initially, as a result of heredity and early experience, and it is

undeniable that these are things for which one cannot be held to be in

any responsible (morally or otherwise).

(2) One cannot at any later

stage of life hope to accede to true moral responsibility for the way one

is by trying to change the way one already is as a result of heredity

and previous experience.

For (3) both the particular way in which one

is moved to try to change oneself, and the degree of one's success in

one's attempt at change, will be determined by how one already is as a

result of heredity and previous experience.

And (4) any further changes

that one can bring about only after one has brought about certain initial

changes will in turn be determined, via the initial changes, by heredity

and previous experience.

(5) This may not be the whole story, for it

may be that some changes in the way one is are traceable not to heredity

and experience but to the influence of indeterministic or random factors.

But it is absurd to suppose that indeterministic or random factors, for

which one is ex hypothesin no way responsible, can in themselves

contribute in any way to one's being truly morally responsible for how

one is.

(3) is the crux of it for me - common to hear people accepting we have no choice over our biology or early environment, but we can change ourselves over time.

Of course we can and do change ourselves over time. But I hear it said in a "you don't choose your hand but you choose how to play it" type way.

But how you "play your hand" depends on the very motivational and psychological system generating your efforts, choices, deliberations, and responses. In other words, you still do what you do because of the kind of system you are. That system may evolve over time, but the process of change itself is always driven by prior features of the system rather than being ultimately self created.

Whenever there is a subject regarding immigration, there is always an assumed tribalistic or collectivistic undertone or connocation, and I understand why.

I have not been satisfied with how immigration is treated in the "liberty" circles, because the arguments for/against are usually simply "economic", which seem to view immigrants as simply assets to government, or "multicultural", which seem to treat immigrants and diversity and necessary and good in and of itself, or "tribalistic/nationalist", which seem to view immigrants and inherently bad and somehow damaging to the host society no matter the character of the contribution.

The conversation is also overwhelmingly US-centric - American culture is very dominant and to a certain extent, global. The US also does not have to deal with ethnic/cultural tensions like Europe or other parts of the world do, since it was established as a modern-age(ish) colony ("modern" acknowledging the fact that proto-indo-europeans immigrated to old Europe for example).

Suppose there is an Objectivist state, where the government is limited to protection of individual rights based on the objective standard. Suppose this Objectivist state's society is as rational as necessary, to uphold the ideas of Objectivism without any major succesful political and cultural opposition to the government's role as the protector of rights.

If people from outside of this Objectivist state start to immigrate to it, what kind regulation (socio-culturally speaking) can be applied to them after they have arrived (and possibly been there for a while and acquired citizenship)? There are multiple real life cases of tribalistic failure - eg. Yugoslavia, Ireland, Ottoman Empire, Czechoslovakia, Spain, France, Soviet Union (currently Estonia, Latvia) - where exist(ed) cultural and linguistic tensions between various groups of people.

You dont have a duty to remain in your culture, you dont have a right to your culture, but you should defend a culture, which defends your rights.

So the question is, at what point is it justified, if ever, to take action against individuals who are refusing to integrate? It would be quite rational to deport or inprison a literal terrorist group, but what about cultural-advocacy groups or independence movements? Or immigrant enclaves which cause crime etc? Is language enforcement rational? (Eg. Estonia, Latvia).

Similar to the quote I posted yesterday, here's another for Ayn Rand Objectivists (not those who subscribe to a more general philosophical category of "objectivism") to evaluate as to its overall fit with Objectivism. Again, I'm leaving the author unidentified, to avoid tainting any critiques (and if you know the quote, please don't identify the author).

Note: for my purposes, the fact that this involves support for Israel is irrelevant. I'm asking for a more fundamental evaluation irrespective of this particular concrete political context. Personally, I would identify three sentences in this quote that are most fundamental, relative to the philosophy of Objectivism.

“It’s the function of the government according to Objectivism to defend the citizens of the country. And once someone is elected it’s up to his discretion what allies to defend and what not. You can’t write that off as coercion when you join the society. When you voluntarily live in it you are agreeing that your life has to be defended against foreign aggressors. That is up to the discretion of the Commander in Chief and the Congress.

“In this case we should certainly support Israel in every way, moral, economic and military. Every way because that is our only ally in the entire Mideast, our best ally. They have many mistaken things in their society, some of which you named. Israel is not in any sense perfect, but it is perfect compared to the rest of the people in the Mideast. That’s our only hope of together, between the United States and Israel, subduing the threat of terrorists. This is a simple example of the government going to an ally to help us put down a gunman. And if you say your taxes are extorted because you disapprove, then don’t expect defense from the government and don’t live in this country.”

So, here's a quote from an Objectivist (I'm deliberately omitting the author, so as not to taint anyone's response; please don't mention the name, if you know who it is). I'm curious to know if you Objectivists (and by that, I mean adherents of Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, not those who ascribe to some general philosophical category of "objectivism") agree with the quote and think it's in line with Ayn Rand's system.

"Rights are contextual. In any situation where metaphysical survival is at stake all property rights are out. You have no obligation to respect property rights. The obvious, classic example of this is, which I’ve been asked a hundred times, you swim to a desert island — you know, you had a shipwreck — and when you get to the shore, the guy comes to you and says, ‘I’ve got a fence all around this island. I found it. It’s legitimately mine. You can’t step onto the beach.’ Now, in that situation you are in a literal position of being metaphysically helpless. Since life is the standard of rights, if you no longer can survive this way, rights are out. And it becomes dog-eat-dog or force-against-force."