1. Ayn Rand Institute archivist Brian Lisi has an interesting discussion of Rand’s speaking career.
2. OCON 2026 will be held later this month in New Orleans. As I’ve mentioned before, psychologist Steven Pinker will be taking part in an hour-and-one-half panel discussion. Pinker’s best-known book is probably The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. I don’t know much about Pinker, but he has said that intelligence is largely genetic and some gaps in IQ among ethnic groups might have a genetic component. I thought this was anathema in Objectivism.
3. At OCON, Shoshana Knapp will be giving a talk on Ayn Rand’s writing on Marilyn Monroe. (Monroe would have been 100 this month.) I’ve always thought that Rand’s brief piece on the death of Monroe was one of the more unusual things she wrote.
—Neil Parille
28 comments:
Same here, why didn't she write one about Veronica Lake!
No link to the Brian Lisi piece or youtube?
I found this but didn't read it. I guess it's conclusion is "Ayn Rand was the greatest speaker...ever." https://newideal.aynrand.org/when-ayn-rand-took-the-stage-highlights-from-her-public-speaking-career/
If I remember correctly, Rand was also a great admirer of Farrah Fawcett, though I can't understand why.
>"I don’t know much about Pinker"
"2002 Flight Logs: Pinker’s name appears in flight logs for Epstein's private jet. Pinker stated he joined a group of TED speakers flying to a conference in California on Epstein's plane in 2002 at the invitation of his literary agent. He has maintained that at the time, Epstein's sex crimes were unknown."
"Pinker has met Epstein a handful of times in professional and academic settings, including an exclusive intellectual dinner and a 2014 lunch where they were photographed together. Pinker has stated he received no funding from Epstein and disliked him, finding him to be a "distasteful" and "tedious" dilettante."
" Pinker provided a linguistic interpretation of a federal prostitution law to his friend and Harvard colleague Alan Dershowitz. Dershowitz—who was representing Epstein at the time—used Pinker's opinion in a letter to the court during proceedings that resulted in a controversial 2008 plea deal. Pinker has stated he did not know his unpaid semantic analysis was going to be used in Epstein's defense and has expressed regret over writing it."
[Pinker's best known pop book is probably "The Language Instinct," in which he claims the parts of speech are "hard-wired" in the brain. Thus, there is a synapse somewhere that produces knowledge of prepositions; another one that produces knowledge of conjunctions; same, of course, for nouns, verbs, et al. Pinker's arguments were debunked by British linguist Geoffrey Sampson in his book "Educating Eve" (later retitled "The Language Instinct Debate." Sampson’s work acts as a significant counter-narrative in cognitive science, challenging how "published demigods" in linguistics (e.g., Pinker and Chomsky) built sweeping evolutionary theories on what he argues are unproven, weak foundations.
"Sampson is politically active and was elected to Wealden District Council in 2001, serving until 2002 with the local Conservative Party branch. He resigned this position after he was criticised by Labour Party and Liberal Democrat ministers and councillors for publishing on his website an article, There's Nothing Wrong With Racism (Except the Name), containing a number of racist claims."
>>". . . containing a number of racist claims"
For example?
To be fair I can...but not from an objectivist point of view
"For example?"
Beats me, it's what Wikipedia said. Take it up with them.
But let's be fair, it's about as in-depth as the assertion that Sampson's work "debunks" Pinker. Does it, actually? According to who? And how well? It's very easy to claim such a thing, but of course there's no indication of what logic is used on either side or what evidence counters one stance or another. You'll forgive me if I just don't accept these unattributed statements at face value.
And isn't your entire post just a dumping of innuendo to take potshots at Pinker just because his name was mentioned?
I don't have an actual dog in the fight, I just thought you were taking some cheap shots for no good reason, and it took me all of 10 seconds to Google up a smear quote for someone you mentioned, and who you seem willing to defend. What's good for the goose, you know.
Alex Epstein, Objectivism's resident shill for the oil industry, has an association with Peter Thiel, who was heavily involved with the Epstein conspiracy and is one of the most evil people on the planet today. For example, Epstein gave a talk at Thiel's Hereticon II conference that was a hodge podge of distinctly "un-Objectivist" topics like parapsychology and UFOs, and I've spied him referencing Thiel and other people involved with Thiel's Founder's Fund. As long as we're tossing out random facts about people, I mean.
BTW, I'm surprised nobody's mentioned that Robert Tracinski is running for Congress as a Democrat. He's maybe the most consistently anti-Trump of all the Atlas Society people, and in fact I remain surprised that he still associates with them given how different his political positions are from theirs.
I found this quote fascinating (if I'd seen it before, it was a long time ago):
After she gave a grim prognostication of the state of the world and the lack of men of great ability in today’s culture, Wallace commented that Rand must be “an awful pessimist.” Rand responded: “Oh, not at all. Ideas brought us here and ideas can take us out. I am the opposite of a pessimist. Why do you think I come out and defy 2,000 years or more of civilization? Because I know that if the right is on my side, if reason is on my side, I will win. The right ideas have always won.”
If the right ideas have always won, then why did she need to come out and defy 2,000 years or more of civilization? If it's that she was the first to present the right ideas, then she has no empirical basis for the assertion that they always win. Of course, if Objectivism represents the right ideas, then she's been refuted because it's obviously not winning.
That one I remember. She liked the TV show "Charlie's Angels," and thought that the Fawcett character had the same kind of "feisty" nature or something as Rand's heroines. She thought the show was an example of Romanticism in American television. Probably, Fawcett fit Rand's idealized view of feminine beauty or whatever, which of course she derived by applying reason and not at all from any evolutionary cues.
Regarding Peter Thiel, Objectivists don't like acknowledging the problems capitalists can cause when these guys accumulate their piles of F-U money, and then, when they no longer have to "serve" their customers, they can use their wealth and other assets to promote socially damaging projects.
A classic but underacknowledged example of this phenomenon is Friedrich Engels. Engels was a successful businessman and investor who basically hired his otherwise unemployable friend Karl Marx to create the socialist ideology they both wanted; and then Engels deployed his money, business skills and experience as a published journalist to promote Marxism like it was a company's product, with Marx as the company's brand.
Engels was the competent and organized partner in the Marx/Engels friendship, and we have Engels the capitalist to thank for turning Marxism into the destructive force it became in the 20th Century.
That's an interesting analogy. In this case, Thiel's philosophical guru is Curtis Yarvin, who's basically a mix of neo-fascism, neo-monarchism, and anti-democracy. Maybe you could sum up his political ideas -- or their fruition -- as a sort of neo-feudalism, but he's hard to nail down.
Yarvin is the intellectual energy behind the techno-fascist Network States project, which they are actually building and which would be a sort of Galt's Gulch only with serfs to do the menial labor. Just like Galt's Gulch, there would be a Galt-like figure (a CEO-Monarch, in Yarvin's words) in charge who could do whatever he wants, like telling a trespasser she can't leave because he sets the rules and he really wants to get busy with her.
There are videos out there of Thiel giving talks at Atlas Society events. I guess maybe they perceive him as a sort of libertarian, so an ally, and they either don't know about or simply evade his techno-fascist tendencies. I wouldn't be surprised with either, because of course Objectivists are so fundamentally rationalistic and simply don't want to know or acknowledge any facts that might upset their intellectual apple carts. Thiel gives a private talk on the Antichrist? Who cares, he talks about deregulation and that floating abstraction is good enough for the Objectivists at the Atlas Society.
Has Tracinski ever held a real job? I get the impression that he's a grown-up Richie Rich sort of personality, a trust-fund kid from a wealthy family, who turned to promoting Objectivism as an adult to have something to do, without having to be very good at it because he doesn't need the income from his Objectivist activism to pay the bills.
Presented without commentary, an ode to Elon Musk by Craig Biddle:
https://craigbiddle.substack.com/p/heres-to-the-trillionaire
Here’s to the trillionaire
Who made it with his mind.
Here’s to the trillionaire
Who never stole a dime.
Here’s to the trillionaire
Whose rockets breach the sky.
Here’s to the trillionaire
Who bids old limits die.
Here’s to the trillionaire
Whose joy in building shows.
Here’s to the trillionaire
Whose genius overflows.
Here’s to the trillionaire
Who levels up our world.
Here’s to the trillionaire
Who shrugs off insults hurled.
Here’s to the trillionaire
Who fails and learns and grows.
Here’s to the trillionaire
Who always forward goes.
Down with the envious
Who sneer at human good.
Stand with the rational
Who cheer—as humans should.
Cheers to this trillionaire.
We honor earned success.
And, to the next who rise:
We wish you all the best.
Frankly I don't see Musk's long-term plan here. What is going to happen to SpaceX after he dies? Because SpaceX is probably going to lose money indefinitely, his heirs will probably shut it down and repurpose the company's assets towards uses which actually produce value.
Who says he has to have a plan? He has enough money to say "I want to do this thing" and then go ahead and do it. He could even set up some kind of trust or foundation to keep it going after he dies. I'm not a Musk fan, but aside from any shareholder responsibility, it's his money to burn. And value is subjective.
Personally, I didn't mean to dig into the whole Musk question, because I've found that not so many people know enough of the facts about Musk to really come to a meaningful conclusion about him and it's not always worth debating. I just wanted to post this poem because 1) I think it's really cringeworthy and Biddle shouldn't quite his day job and 2) he obviously doesn't know any of the facts I'm referencing here. For Biddle, "Musk is a trillionaire hero" is just a floating abstraction completely disconnected from any reality of who the man actually is.
>there's no indication of what logic is used on either side or what evidence counters one stance or another.
So instead of reading Sampson's book on the language instinct debate yourself, you expect me to do the work for you by posting an in-depth review of why Sampson is right, and Pinker is rubbish. Wrong. You'll have to do it yourself. Additionally, I quoted a fact about Pinker and his relation to Jeffrey Epstein, which even Pinker admits is true (though he naturally excused himself for it). You were the one who posted an assertion about alleged racist statements by Sampson. I'm not going to take it up with Wikipedia; I'm taking it up with you. Cite examples of Sampson's racist statements, and please include the entire context.
Good grief, you *are* a smug and intellectually lazy dunce. Oh, wait. You're an Objectivist. That explains it.
>To be fair I can...but not from an objectivist point of view
No "objectivist point of view" can be fair. That's what makes it a "point of view."
>Probably, Fawcett fit Rand's idealized view of feminine beauty or whatever, which of course she derived by applying reason and not at all from any evolutionary cues.
What does an "idealized view of feminine beauty" have to do with so-called "evolutionary cues" (whatever that means)? Nothing.
>distinctly "un-Objectivist" topics like parapsychology and UFOs
Why are parapsychology and UFOs (or rather, UAPs) "unObjectivist"? Haven't kept up with research into alleged ESP at Duke University, but why would all those USAF pilots conspire with one another and lie to Congress about things they've witnessed but cannot plausibly explain?
>"Why do you think I come out and defy 2,000 years or more of civilization?"
A truly humble statement. Reminds me of the kinds of things Trump habitually claims: "The war in Ukraine *never would've happened* if I were President!" Or, "There's never been a peace deal like the one we now have with Iran! I'm the only one who couldn't done it!"
And did Rand really believe that there have been no worthwhile philosophical ideas for the past 2000 years? Really? Just . . . nothing? And she reinvented philosophy from scratch? ("There's never been a philosophy like it in history! I'm the only one who could've done it!"). And her acolytes wonder why so many others claim the whole "Objectivist movement" was really just a cult built around an interesting, if eccentric, personality.
Rand had very specific views on what constituted human beauty, which she reflected in her characters who pretty much shared the same or very similar physical traits. And she said that what a person is "sexually attracted" to is the direct result of their philosophical premises. It's not hard to interpret a belief that what she was attracted to was what is "rational."
That's as opposed to things like facial symmetry and waist-to-hip ratio in females which are evolutionary cues for fitness.
In my experience, Objectivists are distinctly disinclined to give any credence to such things, as being inherently "mystical." And once they've locked into such a position, the kind of empirical evidence you refer to here isn't nearly enough to sway them. In this regard as with so many other things, they tend to be incredibly narrow-minded.
"Good grief, you *are* a smug and intellectually lazy dunce. Oh, wait. You're an Objectivist. "
Well, not as lazy as that assumption of yours, since I'm not. Funny, I kind of thought YOU were.
"you expect me to do the work for you by posting an in-depth review of why Sampson is right, and Pinker is rubbish. Wrong."
I expect little from you. But you do bring this up as an assertion, without anything to back it up besides a quote that just says it's so. Notice that the assertion is in reply to the statement "I don't know much about Pinker." Did you really think that was questing for Pinker's ties, such as they may be, to Epstein? Or the idea that Pinker has been "debunked"? Obviously from context it was - at best - more of a question about his philosophy as it relates to Objectivism's stances, but you decided to go in a route that was obviously just to smear his character and declare him wrong. I don't feel obliged to abide by your rules of conduct if you're just here to take cheap shots at people just because they got mentioned. And further on the note of rules of conduct:
"I'm not going to take it up with Wikipedia; I'm taking it up with you. Cite examples of Sampson's racist statements, and please include the entire context."
You're in a real piss-poor position to be making demands, particularly after explicitly saying you would NOT do so with YOUR assertion. So, no, and also by the way, >>fuck you<<, you incredible hypocrite. Imagine me saying that as smugly as possible, if that idea bothers you.
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