A Gift: Ayn Rand on Johnny Carson 1967

originally posted by: Semicollegiate

originally posted by: FyreByrd

originally posted by: greencmp

originally posted by: FyreByrd
a reply to: greencmp

Interesting how I don't see the 'logic' and 'reason' in her arguments. After learning a little bit of her background, I can understand her 'anger' and 'fear' but it goes unacknowledged and she 'justifies' her position with non-reality based suppositions.

Her premise that 'we are all greedy and selfish and looking out only for number 1' and that idea is a sound basis for the ordering of society is a fallacy.

Most 'progress', in fact any society whatsoever, has been made possible by people working together for the 'common' good which ultimately benefits everyone in the long term.

Another premise of hers, that of the 'self-made man' is absurd. If you exist in this world it is only because of society and the beneficence of her members.

You can certainly be forgiven for deriving that somewhat disingenuous paraphrase. As I said, she chose a wholly confrontational and derisive method of communicating her opposition to socialism. Much more than even I have.

(IBAPIRTT)

Do you deny that her basic philosophy is one of 'looking out for number 1, regardless of damage done to others'?

Do you find her arguments sound?

Philosophy should have true axioms as its starting point.

Self interest is true, Altruism is false. Reference Evolution.

Feeling good by helping other people is not altruism.

Altruism is saying that your life belongs to all of humanity and that the individual has no right to what he produces or to his own life.

the actual definition of axiom:

Full Definition of AXIOM

1
: a maxim widely accepted on its intrinsic merit
2
: a statement accepted as true as the basis for argument or inference : postulate 1
3
: an established rule or principle or a self-evident truth

as to 'self-interest' being true and 'altrusim' false - that is just an opinion.

There are arguments to support the supremecy of either characteristic being of more value to evolution of a species.

Cells had to cooperate to form molecules - if self-interest was the true evolutionary truth - we'd just have a lot of warring cells. In fact, we wouldn't even have proper cells, with membranes and mitochrondria and all that other biologocial stuf.

You really shouldn't shout truth without knowing what you are about.

Say after me; "just because it sounds good to me doesn't make it true." and "Just because I read it somewhere, doesn't make it true."

originally posted by: TheSubversiveOne
a reply to: FyreByrd

Do you deny that her basic philosophy is one of 'looking out for number 1, regardless of damage done to others'?

Do you find her arguments sound?

Her arguments for rational self-interest are laid out in more length and detail in her collection of essays "The Virtue of Selfishness". It would be impossible to lay out these arguments in an interview.

Her philosophy is a throwback to Aristotle. She named the chapters of Atlas Shrugged after Aristotle's laws.

Yes the good old 'orginal state' if my very old poli sci courses come back to me correctly. I didn't buy it then and I don't buy it now. It was an artificial construct then and it is now.

As to Ms Rand's philosophy, I've never looked beyond my youthful couple of readings of Atlas Shrugged. I found it an Entertaining story - bogged down by an unrealistic philosophy.

I would say that Miss Rand has quite a few problems. There is a recurring emphasis on faces which belong to the 'aristocracy' who have been beaten down into lowly positions. Most likely, the bolsheviks put bullets in every aristocratic head that didn't bow to cultural marxism and a godless confession, so how did they escape? There is an inescapable insistence that Miss Rand is referring to herself as belonging to this caste, as well. Moreover, she seems to be frightened of age and aging. I recall one sentence which described a 28 year old woman as something to be ashamed of, and needing make-up to hide this fact. She describes a perfume which was as rare as a gem, and as expensive, worn by her heroine Dagny. Apparently she had milked a couple of Pharaohs in her previous incarnations. Sex is given vivid descriptions which include stainless steel cables taught with ecstatic tension-I had to skip through these parts-and rape seems one of her fantasies. She flat out encourages it, nay, she insists upon it.

Her work is a bizarre look into the mind of an out of control megalomaniac with a methamphetamine addiction. Sort of like Tony Montana with tiddays, but using Technology instead of a machine gun. If only she had found amerika sooner, she would be picking up gold in the streets. Thus the clock is always ticking faster than she can tolerate. Always she is looking for more and more gratification in having riches, and setting herself apart from normal po folk. It makes her day to be above others. And anything 'mystical' is severely scorned, which includes any mention of or belief in God. All the bad guys look like Governor Christie, or that Waxman miscreant, or like something from the mind of a Seth Macfarlane. Her heroes drive cars so powerful that the earth moves rather than the car (she may have been doing a little more than just speed for this imagery).

Having said all this, I do find that there are some sane utterances in her literary efforts. In her bleak pedantic purview, she was simply describing the future; what nobody could conceive of: modern amerikan government. But she hates like a mofo. Too much of anything is bad, and it doesn't surprise me that she fell apart at such a young age. The stuff she saw and knew about between world wars was far worse than any western tyrant could have hoped to inflict. It was the impetus for a couple of world wars after all, the communist ideal, but we are supposed to focus on Hitler's Holocaust, and ignore all the zionist bloodletting that the godless clan daily designs and inflicts in their quest for world control. You know, the slow terror in every home thanks to a technofascist police state. She is, after all, a jew. But she was burning inside to become a self made aristocrat. I don't believe she found a jot of God in her lustful perception of the universe. If she did, it was stamped out with her own fascist footsteps and choked with self-deception like some thug posing with a wad of cash in his mouth and a sideways pointed Glock. When she sees a mountain, she thinks of dynamite. When she sees an ocean, she sees all this useless uninhabitable space. If she were incarnate today, she'd probably be taking applications for reverse-mortgages. Or fracking. But I'd date her just long enough so that we could watch the entire "Entourage" series, while swapping notes. Entourage is the acid test for determining tolerance to zionist propensities. Maybe play two, no, three holes of golf. Yeah, Turtle, couples keep lists! And gentlemen take Polaroids.

Bottoms up.

After that, we'd cuddle, and vow to improve our credit scores.

"Yeah, Turtle, adults establish credit!"

# 416

a reply to: FyreByrd

You are correct that altruism does exist, at least according to the proof provided by George R. Price.

Full Price equation

The simple Price equation was based on the assumption that the characters zi do not change over one generation. If it is assumed that they do change, with zi being the value of the character in the child population, then the full Price equation must be used. A change in character can come about in a number of ways. The following two examples illustrate two such possibilities, each of which introduces new insight into the Price equation.

Example: Evolution of altruism

To study the evolution of a genetic predisposition to altruism, altruism will be defined as the genetic predisposition to behavior which decreases individual fitness while increasing the average fitness of the group to which the individual belongs. First specifying a simple model, which will only require the simple Price equation. Specify a fitness wi by a model equation:

where zi is a measure of altruism, the azi term is the decrease in fitness of an individual due to altruism towards the group and bz is the increase in fitness of an individual due to the altruism of the group towards an individual. Assume that a and b are both greater than zero. From the Price equation:

where var(zi) is the variance of zi which is just the covariance of zi with itself:

It can be seen that, by this model, in order for altruism to persist it must be uniform throughout the group. If there are two altruist types the average altruism of the group will decrease, the more altruistic will lose out to the less altruistic.

Now assuming a hierarchy of groups which will require the full Price equation. The population will be divided into groups, labelled with index i and then each group will have a set of subgroups labelled by index j. Individuals will thus be identified by two indices, i and j, specifying which group and subgroup they belong to. nij will specify the number of individuals of type ij. Let zij be the degree of altruism expressed by individual j of group i towards the members of group i. Let's specify the fitness wij by a model equation:

The a zij term is the fitness the organism loses by being altruistic and is proportional to the degree of altruism zij that it expresses towards members of its own group. The b zi term is the fitness that the organism gains from the altruism of the members of its group, and is proportional to the average altruism zi expressed by the group towards its members. Again, in studying altruistic (rather than spiteful) behavior, it is expected that a and b are positive numbers. Note that the above behavior is altruistic only when azij >bzi. Defining the group averages:

and global averages:

It can be seen that since the zi and zi are now averages over a particular group, and since these groups are subject to selection, the value of Δzi = z′i−zi will not necessarily be zero, and the full Price equation will be needed.

In this case, the first term isolates the advantage to each group conferred by having altruistic members. The second term isolates the loss of altruistic members from their group due to their altruistic behavior. The second term will be negative. In other words there will be an average loss of altruism due to the in-group loss of altruists, assuming that the altruism is not uniform across the group. The first term is:

In other words, for b>a there may be a positive contribution to the average altruism as a result of a group growing due to its high number of altruists and this growth can offset in-group losses, especially if the variance of the in-group altruism is low. In order for this effect to be significant, there must be a spread in the average altruism of the groups.

Note that the function described is really determining whether there can be a forward genetic maintenance of the characteristic of altruism.

The (oversimplified) idea is that while less altruistic individuals will have a preference for survival, the distribution of the characteristic is sufficient to maintain it the gene pool nonetheless.

It does not mean that altruism is a desired feature necessarily but, it does establish that it can and does exist for reasons other than conscious personal sacrifice.

Self-interest is by far the more beneficial to the group as a whole and for its continually improving condition as measured by the well being of the individuals in the group.

As far as the term axiom goes:

An axiom or postulate is a premise or starting point of reasoning. As classically conceived, an axiom is a premise so evident as to be accepted as true without controversy. The word comes from the Greek axíōma (ἀξίωμα) 'that which is thought worthy or fit' or 'that which commends itself as evident.'

originally posted by: FyreByrd

originally posted by: Semicollegiate

originally posted by: FyreByrd

originally posted by: greencmp

originally posted by: FyreByrd
a reply to: greencmp

Interesting how I don't see the 'logic' and 'reason' in her arguments. After learning a little bit of her background, I can understand her 'anger' and 'fear' but it goes unacknowledged and she 'justifies' her position with non-reality based suppositions.

Her premise that 'we are all greedy and selfish and looking out only for number 1' and that idea is a sound basis for the ordering of society is a fallacy.

Most 'progress', in fact any society whatsoever, has been made possible by people working together for the 'common' good which ultimately benefits everyone in the long term.

Another premise of hers, that of the 'self-made man' is absurd. If you exist in this world it is only because of society and the beneficence of her members.

You can certainly be forgiven for deriving that somewhat disingenuous paraphrase. As I said, she chose a wholly confrontational and derisive method of communicating her opposition to socialism. Much more than even I have.

(IBAPIRTT)

Do you deny that her basic philosophy is one of 'looking out for number 1, regardless of damage done to others'?

Do you find her arguments sound?

Philosophy should have true axioms as its starting point.

Self interest is true, Altruism is false. Reference Evolution.

Feeling good by helping other people is not altruism.

Altruism is saying that your life belongs to all of humanity and that the individual has no right to what he produces or to his own life.

the actual definition of axiom:

Full Definition of AXIOM

1
: a maxim widely accepted on its intrinsic merit
2
: a statement accepted as true as the basis for argument or inference : postulate 1
3
: an established rule or principle or a self-evident truth

as to 'self-interest' being true and 'altrusim' false - that is just an opinion.

There are arguments to support the supremecy of either characteristic being of more value to evolution of a species.

Cells had to cooperate to form molecules - if self-interest was the true evolutionary truth - we'd just have a lot of warring cells. In fact, we wouldn't even have proper cells, with membranes and mitochrondria and all that other biologocial stuf.

You really shouldn't shout truth without knowing what you are about.

Say after me; "just because it sounds good to me doesn't make it true." and "Just because I read it somewhere, doesn't make it true."

Cooperation is not sacrifice. Nothing forced the cells to symbiosis. It was a win win for the cells that could use other cells production to make ends meet. There were no altruistic cells.

Altruism as truth is a legacy of religion. Altruism morphed from the Christian parable of the "loaves and fishes" by keeping the idea but removing the God. Socialism is a religion which takes for granted all of the advances created by self interest and assigning those advances to inevitable social/historical forces (the progressive God).

Altruism can be created as a type of behavior by brainwashing, lying, cajoling, and threats, as can any kind of atrocity, but it is not a natural behavior inherent in any individual organism given the competition axiom of evolution.

That is self evident.

Altruism is one rational given by a controlling group to justify exploiting one part of society to buy the support of another.

Weird things happen when an organism is totally successful in evolutionary development. The huge population which results can show unpredictable genetic directions because natural selection is out of the equation for the time being.

A huge population of predators is a very rare thing. I suppose predators become prey when their numbers grow high enough. Like back when slaves were 50 to 90 % of the population.

Human intelligence is the predominant force for evolution now, which shifts the direction of evolution away from species' success alone towards the success of species that favor Man's activities.

Intelligence is subject to the quality of information it receives and also to the extent of development of an individual's personal combination of intellectual abilities.

Progressivism has been shown to poison the quality of information and stifle the development of intellectual abilities.