Unless being on “the streets” means running with gangs and/or living in a slum. I’d rather spend those years in jail rather than watch my friends get shot (assuming that I’m stuck in this environment and have come to the conclusion that murdering is bad, revenge is unsatisfactory, etc).
Though I can’t imagine a situation where a person is rational enough to choose jail over the streets but not rational enough to find another way out of his current situation.
The gen eds are tricky to deal with. You can’t usually get out of them, but some schools are pretty good with what classes satisfy them. I would suggest ignoring the recommended gen ed courses (though try to get specific advice from fellow students and listen to them if it contradicts this) and going straight to the department which is related to the requirement. Look around and see what courses they offer, and then ask if it will satisfy a gen ed. I’ve found that taking department specific introductory courses is WAY more interesting than trying to slog through the default ones, which are usually filled with the same people you had to deal with in high school. It’s also been my experience that most of the default courses are actually harder (I think this might be because they want to push freshmen into college mode). Again, this varies with the school, so take it with a grain of salt.
One more thing that I wish people had told me: find all the problem solving strategies you can, and use the hell out of them. You might think you are good at this and you don’t need anyone’s advice on how to think (actually you probably don’t, since you are on this site...), but the falseness of this statement will become increasingly clear when you attempt problem sets. I thought I knew this, but looking back I would spend hours on one problem just trying the same method over and over, thinking I was doing something new.
If you don’t see a solution or the path to the solution within 5 or 10 minutes, try something completely new no matter how close you think you are. Keep prodding your brain like this, and eventually one of those stubborn folds of tissue will spill its guts for you. But if you keep hitting the same part over and over again, you’re just gonna have a pissed off commander in chief. Yeah, it does sound obvious… but if you don’t check to make sure you’re doing it, most of the time you’re just going to keep hacking your way to nowhere.
Also, find or make a study group. I was too damn stubborn to do this—biggest mistake of my college career. It might be annoying when you know all the answers and everyone else doesn’t, but that won’t happen often.
If you understand that you have to work very hard and you are able to judge how much you can handle, you’ll probably be okay. I’ve just seen a lot of people doing a math degree because they were always good at math and they thought they could breeze through it. That won’t happen.
I use SRS daily for math stuff, and the best thing you can do is get one of those cheap graphics tablets. I think mine was about $60. Then you can just write out all your question answer pairs. I did the LaTeX route for a while, but the amount of time you have to spend inputting everything is not worth it. If you really want to get into this kind of studying, you can try this incremental learning technique. And definitely read ahead before each lecture.
Your course selection looks pretty good, but I would swap Differential Eq. and Calc III. I took Differential Eq. freshman year (stupid) while taking Calc III, and it was heavy on both linear algebra and calc III material. Your class may be different, but I would recommend a full semester of linear algebra before. Try to find some fellow students to ask though; professors can be either too strict or too lenient when it comes to what they require before taking a course.
You might want to consider throwing in some computer science courses too. Even a minor will increase your opportunities immensely after college.
Mindfulness meditation seems like another good example, especially since the required time investment for you to start seeing benefits seems to be pretty large.
As a data point, I was always horrible at visualization. My friends used to make fun of me for not being able to navigate my hometown.
That is interesting though, I hadn’t heard of this method. Thanks!
As someone who just finished my sophomore year as a math major, I think I can give some useful advice in the vale of tears that is a mathematics degree.
All in all, it comes down to how much your GPA matters to you versus how much math matters to you when choosing courses. Even if you are ridiculously smart, most of the stuff you see after calculus and linear algebra is going to be pretty damn hard, and in order to get something substantial out of those courses you’ll have to spend a large amount of time staring at symbols.
So if you want to maintain a good GPA, limit your desire to speed ahead and focus on the recommended courses. You’ll then have the time to be able to really understand the material and have good grades. Even if you were at the top of your class in high school, your GPA will benefit from understanding this. I would even recommend going slower than the pace set by the administrators. No matter how ready you think you are for a certain course, there will be a point where you have absolutely no clue what the fuck is going on. Trust me.
In my opinion, you will get as much out of doing this as you would if you sped ahead but kept the same work ethic. I use this heuristic: If I want to take another math course and have the same GPA and an increased net mathematical knowledge gain, I need to increase my work ethic by ten. If I’m missing a pre-requisite, I need to increase it by twenty. Grad courses are a hit or miss; sometimes they can be an easy, relaxed way to get into higher math, and sometimes they can be insanely hard.
Now, if you don’t care about your GPA, then take as many math courses as you can. That’s what I did. Worked my ass off for B’s and C’s. The only reason why it works for me (in terms of my level of satisfaction with my choices) is that I don’t (and didn’t) do much of anything other than math. So I was able to really delve into all of these topics and come out with internalized knowledge—but I had to sacrifice my ability to complete assignments on time and prepare adequately for exams. Had I focused on getting A’s… I might’ve been able to do it, but it would be at the expense of optimal learning (not that I didn’t try to get A’s with my “internalized knowledge”, I’m just really driving home the point that this shit is hard, especially in timed situations).
I guess what I’m getting at here is: don’t overestimate yourself if you want to keep doing and loving math. Know your breaking point, or at least remember that you have one—you will hit it, and it will hurt. Even if you are not super into math and just want to use it another things, the core courses are still very hard and this advice is still valid. And if you do want to skip ahead and do as much as possible, think about how much harder you think you will have to work, and multiply that by ten. This is if you actually want to get anything out of these courses—I’m sure you can skip ahead and get A’s, but you won’t have gained much. Unless you’re Gauss. (On that note, you will encounter a lot of this, even as an undergrad).
Memory skills and the ability to do quick arithmetic in your head (the two go hand in hand). I would suggest reading some of Dominic O’Brian’s books, and then visit the various mnemotechnic forums. Most of the techniques you will find are geared towards memorizing for competitions, but with slight adjustments they can be used anywhere.
It seems a little silly at first, but it has probably been the biggest return on investment I have ever made. I started practicing these techniques last summer, and when school started I used them (Method of Loci especially—basically you just imagine a spatial location you know well and place images representing the things you want to memorize at unique points in your spatial journey) to memorize as much as I could, using spaced repetition software (mentioned somewhere else on this thread) to lock the most important things in.
Now, instead of writing down copious amounts of notes in class and not understanding a single thing, I just sit, listen, and memorize. I’ll also write down broad labels for things I need to make sure I remember (i.e if we are talking about “normal subgroups”, I will write down “normal subgroups”, but memorize the rest. This is just to have a hook to the topic so I can look it up later if I don’t remember something). By focusing on the images I am creating in my head, I’ve noticed that it even helps me focus more intensely on the topic that the images are referencing. By the time class is over, I can run through the entire lecture as if I was reading a book. This is the best part, really; it’s completely flipped my idea of studying on its head. Now I can just sit in the park and think, and it will qualify as studying because I have an entire book in my head with images to play around with.
I’ve also used it to memorize entire textbooks (not word for word, more like “page for page”). Again, it seems silly and pointless at first, but it really works wonders when you get the hang of it. Instead of belaboring over a topic that you don’t understand and then an hour later looking back 10 pages to see the illuminating point, all you have to do is rewind a “walk through your friend’s house” or “a drive to the beach”. At first it will take 10 times longer to do this than it would to just read the book. Currently, it only takes me about twice as long. I just have to make sure I go back through it in my head later on so I can plant it in my long term memory (spaced repetition is amazing for this).
It takes a hell of a lot of work though, if you want it to be more than a gimmick. And there doesn’t seem to be much information for people who want to use it for scholarship rather than for their shopping lists. Even posts I’ve seen here about the method of loci seem pretty dismissive of its utility, that it doesn’t help you understand. I think these claims are somewhat valid, but it’s like using Mathematica to solve integrals and then claiming that it doesn’t help you understand them. Well, yeah. But you could construct a 3d plot of an integral, and even make it interactive to see how it changes when you change some of the variables. Surely that will help you understand more. It’s the same thing for mnemonics. I could memorize a book word for word using these techniques and not understand a single thing; or I could take concepts and ideas from a page, mold a visual representation of them in my head, and make sure that my notion of how the representation acts and looks is congruent with these concepts and ideas. Then as I learn more, I go back and adjust this image for any discrepancies, and also use the image in later scenes when the concept/idea comes up again. Kind of like OOP in your imagination. They don’t have to be valid physical models for your concept, only approximations of the idea as you understand it in visual form. It surprised me how illuminating these approximations can be—more than once I have attempted to create a visual image only to get stuck and realize “Ah, that’s what I don’t understand!”.
Even if creating images doesn’t help you understand, using this method is still an amazing way to create hooks for stumbling points in your reasoning. It’s like having a jumper cable for your mind at all times. For any topic or concept you know you understand but have trouble at certain points, just make an image reminding you of the key elements and place it in your chosen spatial journey. When you need your reasoning, moving through your spatial journey and seeing these images will trigger a domino effect and you’ll slide right through with no trouble.
Anyway, sorry for the jumbled wall of text. I’m trying to communicate how fucking useful this has been for me, but it’s a little difficult with this kind of personal topic. So even if you find my reasons too subjective, I implore you to really try it. Not with the mindset that it’s a stupid little parlor trick, but that it has the possibility to be a huge improvement in how you assimilate knowledge.
I think I am in the same position as you are (uninitiated but curious) and I had the same immediate reaction that Pei was more convincing. However, for me, I think this was the result of two factors
Pei is a Professor
Pei treated the interview like a conversation with someone who has read a couple books and that’s about it.
Maybe the 2nd point isn’t entirely true, but that was what immediately stuck out after thinking about why I was drawn to Pei’s arguments. Once I eliminated his status as a barometer for his arguments… it just became (1) an issue of my own lack of knowledge and (2) the tone of the responses.
For one thing, why the hell should I understand this in the first place? This is a dialogue between two prominent AI researchers. What I would expect from such a dialogue would be exactly what I would expect from sitting in on a graduate philosophy seminar or a computer science colloquium—I would be able to follow the gist of it, but not the gritty details. I would expect to hear some complex arguments that would require a couple textbooks and a dozen tabs open in my browser to be able to follow.
But I was able to understand Pei’s arguments and play with them! If solving these kinds of conceptual problems is this easy, I might try to take over the world myself.
Not to say that the appearance of “complexity” is necessary for a good argument (EY’s essays are proof), but here it seems like this lack of complexity (or as someone else said, the appeal to common sense) is a warning for the easily persuaded. Rereading with these things in mind illuminates the discussion a bit better.
I was actually a bit depressed by this dialogue. It seemed like an earnest (but maybe a little over the top with the LW references) attempt by lukeprog to communicate interesting ideas. I may be setting my expectations a little high, but Pei seemed to think he was engaging an undergraduate asking about sorting algorithms.
Of course, I could be completely misinterpreting things. I thought I would share my thought process after I came to the same conclusion as you did.
Sure. But is the interpretation of EY significantly different if instead of AR the woman that’s AR the myth? I know a number of Objectivists who really do believe that AR was the most important person in history. It’s very different from reading the Analects, in which Confucius, mourning a gifted pupil, tells another pupil that the dead pupil was five times as clever as Confucius was. Regardless of whether or not Rand had the properly calibrated humility of science, she definitely failed to inculcate it in her friends and students.
Isn’t that a subtle point that would require multiple readings to fully understand? I mean if someone were to read the essay while going through the sequences, they would understand that Rand did not do enough to resist the slide into entropy, but they would also think that Rand actively encouraged the slide itself. Only after thinking about it heavily would they consider that it was Ayn Rand the myth, the one that objectivists defend in the absence of reason, that was being spoken of, and not the person who had some ideas and wrote them down. For example, I read this essay while in the middle of Atlas Shrugged, and because of her portrayal I kept expecting some completely ridiculous or offensive idea to come up, and I even considered putting it down when it was getting good, since I thought I might be buying into some evil ideas on accident. While that was definitely my fault, it not hard to imagine it happening to anyone else. It might even be enough to convince them that Rand is not even worth reading, which I think would be a mistake.
Sure. “Particularly good at math” may mean very different things to you and EY. Math was Rand’s favorite subject, but if EY means “Math Olympiad winner” by “particularly good” then those are different standards. Compare to Asimov, who was a professor of biochemistry.
Yes, but the statement that follows it says that “She could not aspire to rival her heroes”. But her heroes were characterized by the existence of ability and their desire to use it, not the existence of specific abilities. Suppose John Galt, instead of being a physicist, was a novelist whose ideas were so powerful that should he allow the government to take his books, they would control the world. Well that’s almost exactly what he was! And I don’t think you could argue that she did not have the capacity to rival that ability, being a particularly good writer.
Even if being an engineer was necessary for her to rival her heroes, I think her math teacher saying “It would be a crime if you didn’t go into mathematics” is enough evidence of the fact that she at least had the capacity to rival them.
Compare these statements. Are there criticisms out there that you think are fair?
I thought the criticism in your parent comment and your subsequent remarks of her influence on her followers were fair, and they cover all the bases that need to be covered without being overly dismissive. I don’t see why you couldn’t turn it into an interesting essay without losing the neutral but critical tone.
But taking a step back, it’s hard to see why Rand’s treatment in EY’s post is significant. Is it because you think people on LW ought to have a higher opinion of Rand than they currently do? Because you think the story would be more effective at showing how to not become a cult if it included more nuance or references to Rand’s life? Some other reason?
I think I addressed this in my example above. If the sequences are to be read by those who have little experience with rationality, I think it would turn them off to a good writer with interesting ideas. If instead it was more supportive of the fundamentals of Rand’s philosophy but sharply criticizing the fact that she did not attempt to stop the slide into entropy, it would prime readers to take her writing with a grain of salt without dismissing her as irrelevant.
I don’t think LW ought to have a higher opinion of Rand, but I also don’t think they should be convinced to have a low opinion of her.
The vibrance that Rand admired in science, in commerce, in every railroad that replaced a horse-and-buggy route, in every skyscraper built with new architecture—it all comes from the principle of surpassing the ancient masters. How can there be science, if the most knowledgeable scientist there will ever be, has already lived? Who would raise the New York skyline that Rand admired so, if the tallest building that would ever exist, had already been built? And yet Ayn Rand acknowledged no superior, in the past, or in the future yet to come.
This seems to state that Rand was incapable of accepting that someone could be better than her, which I think was an exaggeration of her bloated ego. I understand the point, but the following passage from Branden’s book did not seem to justify this statement enough. Here is some more context on that quote (take it with a grain of salt, as I found it on objectivist site, though it seems to be well cited) :
No, she did not. Tales that Rand ended relationships with people over disagreements in musical tastes seem to stem primarily from Barbara Branden’s book The Passion of Ayn Rand, in which Branden gives a brief account of several arguments between Rand and her longtime friends Joan Mitchell Blumenthal and Allan Blumenthal, over differences of taste in music and painting. According to the information in Branden’s book, these arguments were part of a generally worsening relationship between Rand and the Blumenthals over several years in the 1970s, which culminated in the Blumenthals initiating a break with Rand (not vice versa) in 1978. Even if one believes that Rand ran a cult from which she excommunicated people, it is hard to see how these disagreements could be interpreted as instances of excommunication, since the Blumenthals remained friends with Rand for several years while these arguments were happening, and they were the ones who initiated the break.[] Other accounts of how Rand dealt with artistic differences also fail to support the “excommunication” interpretation. Alan Greenspan is reported to have disagreed openly with Rand’s opinions on music, and even convinced her to moderate her negative opinion of Mozart.[] At least one person who remained Rand’s friend until her death was an admitted lover of Beethoven’s music: Leonard Peikoff, who was Rand’s closest friend for over a decade and the heir to her estate.[*]
Another quote:
It’s noteworthy, I think, that Ayn Rand’s fictional heroes were architects and engineers; John Galt, her ultimate, was a physicist; and yet Ayn Rand herself wasn’t a great scientist. As far as I know, she wasn’t particularly good at math. She could not aspire to rival her own heroes. Maybe that’s why she began to lose track of Tsuyoku Naritai.
I think I showed why this statement was untrue, and I don’t think anyone can argue how arrogant it sounds (though that is a personal gripe I have with it).
“Study science, not just me!” is probably the most important piece of advice Ayn Rand should’ve given her followers and didn’t. There’s no one human being who ever lived, whose shoulders were broad enough to bear all the weight of a true science with many contributors.
She did tell her followers to study science.
To be one more milestone in humanity’s road is the best that can be said of anyone; but this seemed too lowly to please Ayn Rand. And that is how she became a mere Ultimate Prophet.
She seemed very pleased with her achievements, and I couldn’t find any evidence that said she refused to accept other ideas when faced with substantial proof (though this a difficult topic, since many of her ideas were based on her axioms of morality and so I’m sure she refused to accept many ideas that contradicted her axioms and thus invalidating many of the things I’ve said. But I still think the portrayal was a bit harsh). I recall that she was invited to speak at the Ford Hall Forum where she knew there would be many, many people challenging her ideas. I know she was very rigid in her beliefs, but it seems hard for me to accept that “being one more milestone in humanity’s road” was not enough for Rand. But I may be giving her too much credit in this regard.
Ayn Rand fled the Soviet Union, wrote a book about individualism that a lot of people liked, got plenty of compliments, and formed a coterie of admirers. Her admirers found nicer and nicer things to say about her (happy death spiral), and she enjoyed it too much to tell them to shut up. She found herself with the power to crush those of whom she disapproved, and she didn’t resist the temptation of power.
This is related to my previous criticisms. It just seems to harsh to me. I wanted more factual evidence for this, not just the quote about musical differences which turned out to be more ambiguous than it was portrayed.
Perhaps I’m being too picky. Calling Rand an “Ultimate Prophet” seemed so incongruous with her actions and her philosophy. She was incredibly forthright and in your face with her ideas, and I can see why it was interpreted as evangelism. But objectively speaking, it seemed to harsh for my tastes. Saying she “crushed those of whom she disapproved” is just… I don’t know.
I see your position and I accept that you have every right to criticize my thoughts. This is a very ambiguous topic, and I think I can see why people seem to be angry with my choice of presenting this. I don’t think her portrayal was very fair, is all. Yes, compared with other criticisms out there, this looks like praise. I just hold these Sequence posts to a higher standard. If I found this in a popular article about Ayn Rand, or a newspaper article, or a Reddit post… I would note it’s high quality. I’ve just been so used to every side of an argument being represented incredibly clearly and without ambiguity (ironic, given my post) that I felt a need to post this. It was kind of like eating a bunch of skittles and getting an M&M; not so bad, just a little jarring.
I don’t think I missed the point of the essay. I clearly state at the end of the post that the ideas presented were incredibly interesting. I even posted an essay about Peikoff’s defense of the closed system of objectivism, which I thought was more representative of the cultish nature of the group. I was responding to what I saw as a misrepresentation of Ayn Rand that I thought was unnecessary with respect to the goals of the essay.
Suppose Eleizer decided to collect all of his writings and found his own philosophy called Yudkowism of which he was the final arbiter. You can object to him doing that, and that’s a pretty damn valid objection considering the nature of his writing. But suppose he didn’t care what you thought, and did it anyway. He writes up plenty more ideas, gives some lectures, influences people, vigorously tries to further intellectual progress, and dies. Towards the end of his life, people notice him doing some weird things that don’t seem to fit with his ideas. Someone thinks “Hey, this isn’t’ cool! I thought he was an advocate of rationality, but he doesn’t seem to be accepting of other people’s reasonable ideas!’. Then this person writes an essay using him as an example of what to avoid when trying to further humanity, “raise the sanity waterline”, and encourage progress in philosophy and science. In this essay, the person uses Eliezer’s personal life to reveal the extent of his spiral into destruction.
Now, you and I both think very highly of the ideas presented in Yudkowism, though we might object to the name, to the closed system, or to its structure. We have read his writings, and they have influenced us in a positive way and helped us become more rational people. We don’t see him as a Great Leader, and we don’t want him presented as such, but we can’t deny that his actions have precipitated this label. And so we read this essay, and we feel like we learned more about rationality, about group identification, about the need for openness and the awareness of our place in the progress of humanity.
But then we notice that the essay is unnecessarily dismissive of Eliezer. We realize that this may or may not have any influence on the relevance of his philosophy (as, of course, if the ideas are good enough they should be able to stand up to any criticism of its spokesman), but we are a little taken aback by the flawed portrayal of his character.
This was the point of my post. I don’t think it’s necessary to attack a person’s character for the sake of rhetoric, especially when the highlighted aspects of that person’s character are exaggerated. You might think the same, but disagree that the rhetoric was all that harmful, and that’s fine. I thought it was harmful.
I think the rest of your comment pertains to the actual evidence of Rand’s strangehold over her followers. The bit about homosexuality is especially revealing without resorting to harmful rhetoric. Again, I liked the final conclusion and thesis of the essay, but I disliked the way it was reached.
By “justify” I meant “show that her actions were not a contradiction of her philosophy”, which is what I think you said in your third question.
However, I was not trying to provide a justification for objectivism, and I was not attempting to use the tenets of objectivism in any clever sort of way.
I also was not trying to give strong justifications of her actions, only to show that if one were to give her main ideas a charitable reading, one would find a significant amount of evidence showing that her portrayal in Guardians of Ayn Rand was not consistent with the facts. Each time I “defended” her actions, I gave a quote that showed her characters acting in a similar way or giving credence to a similar action. Again, this was not a defense of her philosophy.
What I wrote was not about the structure of objectivism or lack thereof, not about objectivism being a closed system, and not about Rand’s motives in her construction of objectivism. I specifically stated that I am not an expert on objectivism, and I would not try to defend it a community of rationalists.
My only motive behind this post was to highlight factual inaccuracies and (in my opinion) deceitful rhetoric in the original essay. It would have liked to have put in a comment, but it seemed much too long; so I formatted it a little and posted it here. Next time I’ll have to treat these posts like a formal analysis and not like a casual writeup.
Agreed. I was lugging around her specs only to justify her actions, not to justify her philosophy.
Ah, I see. The mind killing bit makes sense, but wouldn’t you want to combat it by confronting it head on and refusing to succumb to the polarization? I don’t find it to be particularly hard to do, and I’m fairly certain I haven’t been mind killed. But I very much respect this position, and I accept the consequences of publishing material that enables these tendencies.
The factual inaccuracies were primarily in the presentation of her actions as being discordant with her philosophy. I have attempted to show her actions were not so incongruous. Also, the presentation of her character was inaccurate, portraying her as some sort of pseudo philosopher who had no idea what she was talking about. Just because she idolizes Aristotle is not evidence of her ineptitude as a thinker. Just because she has a bloated ego (though this is also a big part of her philosophy) does not mean she is incapable of recognizing her superiors. She may have thought she was the epitome of a rational person, but this certainly did not prevent her from recognizing ability when she saw it. She is portrayed in the original essay as being unable to recognize the nature of science and its progression, when there is much evidence that she was very aware of how science progresses and why.
I’m sincerely confused as to why this is getting downvoted so heavily (and it seems to have disappeared… is this a feature?). Is it just the nature of the topic? Honestly, it’s not a well structured critique or whatever, but this is the discussion page, is it not? I’m not arguing some logically indefensible position, and I can’t seem to find any errors in my logic (my logic consisting of my use of Rand’s philosophy and not of the logical positioning of her ideas).
Is it not encouraging valid discussion? I don’t see why not, as there are many things to talk about here. Perhaps a response to the idea of a closed system? I thought that was interesting. Maybe a defense of why it is okay to disregard facts in favor of convincing rhetoric? I honestly think I may be missing something in Eleizer’s post, because it seems to me to hold a blatant disregard for evidence.
Did I need to make it more clear that I am not arguing for or against objectivism, only for a more charitable rhetorical representation of a cultural and philosophical character? Maybe someone can enlighten me on the atrocities committed by Rand.
Have these things been said before? Maybe someone can link me to the relevant discussion.
Is this “mind killing”? I would like to know which parts, and why.
Could you explain to me this whole “mind killing” business? I’m not talking politics here, I’m talking rhetoric. All I did was take Rand’s actions as mentioned in the original essay and gave a justification by Rand’s philosophy. This wasn’t used to justify her philosophy, only to show that her actions were consistent with it. I agree with Eliezer’s final points, but I don’t agree with the way they were represented, and that’s all I sought to show here.
I don’t see how the nature of the criticism is changed by the fact that worse criticism exists. If the facts are incorrect, they are incorrect and that’s it.
I don’t think this is done. The bad things about Rand are emphasized, yes, but that is because that is what we can learn from.
Most people commenting did not seem like they were very familiar with the philosophy, and I think the presentation of 1. the ideas behind the philosophy and 2. the founder of the philosophy were incredibly misleading. If someone (like me) were relatively new the site were to read this, they would have an incredibly biased view of her philosophy. I don’t see how justifying that point by saying people already know her philosophy gives any credence to the way it was portrayed. The bad things about Rand are emphasized with no regard for factual evidence. We can still learn from her errors without resorting to what felt to me like a curt dismissal of an otherwise intelligent and influential character. If we are willing to discard evidence in favor of more elegant rhetoric, I want no part of it.
No, the main character of Atlas Shrugged was a physicist, who invented a motor that harnessed the power of static electricity, and then went on to flip the entire country the bird. Regardless of whether or not you sympathize with him, is Galt’s position so utterly important that it justifies the mass starvation and destitution of the entire country? In my opinion, Galt had a good point to make. But that doesn’t justify letting the entire world burn around you just to make your point.
The world as it was portrayed in the book would not have survived long if Galt hadn’t done anything. I don’t think we can compare it with the real world—America was the last pillar of support, and if it collapsed without Galt having convinced people to “save their minds” then there would have been another long “Dark Ages” period. And people don’t actually act the way they do in her books. I would compare it to the decisions made in the Foundation series. But that wasn’t really my point anyway—in the book, it was clear that Galt was saving the country in the way Rand thought it should be saved, meaning that she believed that a scientist had that power, and thus advocating something akin to “Study Science!” regardless of the morality of Galt’s decision.
I disagree. I don’t think LW does this. We’re (or at least I am) happy to admit that Rand was correct about a number of things. She made more progress than most philosophers, but that bar is set so unbearably low as to not really be worth mentioning. It’s more that she is a better example of what not to become. It’s not that she did nothing good. There have even been some decently upvoted Ayn Rand quotes in the threads.
I didn’t say LW did this. It was only in this specific essay. I would find it hard to believe that LW disagreed with everything she said. My only problem was with the presentation, and that it would lead to wrong interpretations, or at least interpretations based on falsities.
She quite vehemently signaled agreement with the scientific tribe, I agree. But that’s not the same as actually supporting it. (Well, it supports it in some way, but I think you get my point.) Given how she felt about the environment (and based on the positions taken by most Objectivist themed organizations (ARI, ARC, etc.)) she probably wouldn’t have much respect for anthropomorphic global warming as a theory. I don’t know much about the science of it myself, so my opinion isn’t worth much, but I believe the predominant opinion on LW is closer to AGW denial is akin to evolution denial.
Again, I only have problems with the way her positions were portrayed. She was most definitely portrayed as failing to tell her followers to “study science” when in fact she did exactly that. Whether her support of the scientific community was any good is an entirely different discussion which I will probably agree with you on.
I think I failed to make it clear that I do think she is a good example of what not to strive for. I just think that the rhetoric involved in convincing me of that point was deceitful.
Apologies, I should have thought about the about possible interpretations of such a dialogue; I meant it more as a “feel good” kind of thing rather than a factual assessment about the nature of mentally unstable people. Thinking about it, “crazy” definitely does not map easily into “moron”, and my usage of the above dialogue was intended to convey the notion that logically thinking about whether or not you are a moron is a good sign that you are probably not a moron.
But I think your comment brings up another interesting point. Would it be right to say that your emotional states are changing your definition of “crazy”? That, when you are in a different mental state, “crazy” is referencing an entirely different object? That when you are asking the question “am I crazy” you are actually asking an entirely different question? I would think that if you keep entering these manic states of mind, your normal cached version of “crazy” would slowly be chipped away and eventually you wouldn’t even be able to access it anymore. Then you really have the inability to ask the question.
I’m not defending the use of the above dialogue though. It’s clear to me that it’s usefulness is outweighed by the possible negative interpretations.
I think Wozniak is only evangelical about the Uberman schedule being a horrible idea. He states in his 2010 update that the Everyman 3-hour core sounds “pretty sustainable”.