[extropy-chat] Rand

[Technotranscendence]

On Wednesday, November 17, 2004 1:50 PM John K Clark jonkc at att.net
wrote:
> I'll tell you one thing, I'm not impressed with
> the followers of Ayn Rand, those armchair
> philosophers and self described intellectuals
> that call themselves Objectivists.  A few
> months ago I was invited to join an online
> forum called Objectivism Online but I was
> soon banned for life.

You might do better at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/atlantis_II/

There the dicsussion is a lot more freewheeling, though the traffic is
not that high, and there have been some more serious discussions of
physics.  Either way, you'll find it very hard to get "banned for life"
from it.

> I was astonished at their ignorance of the
> revolution in physics and mathematical logic
> made during the previous century; they were
> oblivious of the profound implications for
> philosophy these discoverers had, they didn't
> know and they didn't care, they just quoted
> Ayn Rand back at me as if what she said was
> more important than Bell's experiment or Godel.

That's the problem with many Randroids.  They've only managed to read
some Rand and they think they know everything.  Classic true believers.

> I said a lot of stuff they didn't like very much but
> then I said something that made the howls of
> protest reach a crescendo and they looked for
> the tar and feathers. The dreadful blasphemy I
> dared to utter is this:
>
> "We've suspected for 80 years and known with
> certainty for nearly 40 that some events have no
> cause and are random.  I mean, I liked Atlas
> Shrugged as much as anyone but if Ayn Rand
> tells me one thing and experiment tells me
> another it's no contest; I'm a rational
> man so I have to go with experiment."

Good for you.

> I don't believe I will go back there.

No need to -- unless you just like to argue with people who'll never
change -- but please don't dismiss every last Objectivist or every last
part of Objectivism itself just because of a few dozen (hundred,
thousand, million) ignorant fools.  Be critical and see where they or it
correspond to reality and chuck out the rest.

Cheers!

Dan
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/MyWorksBySubject.html