On Rand’s record, short version here,
referencing this, and the canonical demolition job is
this. Rand has been mentioned a few other times on LessWrong, generally as an example of a cult figure.
On the applause-light nature of the passage, the more I look at it, setting aside my urge to applaud and asking “what does this mean? is it true?”, the more the substance dissolves. “Reason as one’s only source of knowledge”—what about observation? She goes on to talk about observation (perception, evidence), but how well was she observing her own words when she wrote “reason as one’s only source of knowledge”?
“One must never place any value or consideration whatsoever above one’s perception of reality”—even when the perception is mistaken? Our senses are fallible, an issue which I think Rand never grappled with, or if she did, only to come to the opposite conclusion. (I say “I think”, only because I have not actually read Rand, only read about her, but what I’ve read about her sufficiently persuades me that reading the source would be about as useful as reading the Book of Mormon, i.e. low enough on my list of priorities that it is unlikely ever to rise higher.) She fell into the rational anti-pattern that goes “A is A, therefore B”.
“One must never seek or grant the unearned and undeserved”—doing good to others as a sin, deduced from doing good to oneself as the sole good action, deduced from reason as one’s only source of knowledge.
Objectivism is a classic example of C.S. Lewis’ observation that every purportedly new moral system consists of nothing but the puffing up of one part of what he called the universal moral law at the expense of the rest.
On Rand’s record, short version here, referencing this, and the canonical demolition job is this. Rand has been mentioned a few other times on LessWrong, generally as an example of a cult figure.
On the applause-light nature of the passage, the more I look at it, setting aside my urge to applaud and asking “what does this mean? is it true?”, the more the substance dissolves. “Reason as one’s only source of knowledge”—what about observation? She goes on to talk about observation (perception, evidence), but how well was she observing her own words when she wrote “reason as one’s only source of knowledge”?
“One must never place any value or consideration whatsoever above one’s perception of reality”—even when the perception is mistaken? Our senses are fallible, an issue which I think Rand never grappled with, or if she did, only to come to the opposite conclusion. (I say “I think”, only because I have not actually read Rand, only read about her, but what I’ve read about her sufficiently persuades me that reading the source would be about as useful as reading the Book of Mormon, i.e. low enough on my list of priorities that it is unlikely ever to rise higher.) She fell into the rational anti-pattern that goes “A is A, therefore B”.
“One must never seek or grant the unearned and undeserved”—doing good to others as a sin, deduced from doing good to oneself as the sole good action, deduced from reason as one’s only source of knowledge.
Objectivism is a classic example of C.S. Lewis’ observation that every purportedly new moral system consists of nothing but the puffing up of one part of what he called the universal moral law at the expense of the rest.