Ayn Rand and cults generally, In which I have a bet with Jimbo Options

[Peter Damian]

See Jimbo's talk page, and the [[Ayn Rand]] article which I have rewritten. The bet is how long it will stay in its rewritten state. I love the remark that 'Aristotle was sorely over-rated'.

'Aristotle was sorely overrated'. Ha! Wikipediot. Obscure greek Homer 42k, famous american Homer 65k. I would have bought this argument when Wikipedia first began. But as I pointed out above, the project is now mature, and we still find it difficult to attract editors who can write accessible material on more encylopedic subjects. The reason is abundantly clear: the place is infested with cranks, advocates of strange fringe theories, mystics, lunatics of all kinds. No sane intelligent person would go near the place with a bargepole. In any case, I have now re-written the introduction to Ayn Rand that makes it less obviously written by Rand fanatics. Let's see what happens from there on. If the introduction stands relatively unchanged, I lose my bet. If it is torn to shreds and returned to the unreadable ungrammatical state as before, I win, bigtime. Peter Damian (talk) 13:08, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...es_in_Wikipedia

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[maggot3]

I still find it absolutely unbelievable that people subscribe to Ayn Rand's abhorrent views, believe that that nonsense is applicable to real life, and even worse, read her awful, awful writing.

Uh, actually, this is kind of off topic for the thread. Oops. This sort of thing is pretty sad. To be kind of on topic.

This post has been edited by maggot3:

[Kurt M. Weber]

I still find it absolutely unbelievable that people subscribe to Ayn Rand's abhorrent views, believe that that nonsense is applicable to real life,

Please show me a flaw in her logic or premises.

[Milton Roe]

I still find it absolutely unbelievable that people subscribe to Ayn Rand's abhorrent views, believe that that nonsense is applicable to real life,

Please show me a flaw in her logic or premises.

Trolling again, are we, Kurt?

An obvious flaw in her premises was that there is no difference between inductive and deductive statements, otherwise known as analytic vs. synthetic assertions, or (if you like) between assertions-true-by-definition (e.g. "humans are mammals") and things which may or may not be true, but certainly aren't true by definition (all swans are white, the Sun will rise tomorrow in the East, etc).

In order to assert this messy synthesis between these two types of logic, Rand tried mightily to redefine the very idea of a synthetic statement. Alas for her, whether she personally redefined it or not, we still need a word for the problem of induction and the statements which arise from inductive reasoning of various kinds. That word was "synthetic." Redefining "synthetic" doesn't make the problem of evaluating synthetic statements go away. Rand kept promising an answer to induction, but provided none. We are thus left with a "philosophy" which does not even address the most interesting parts of philosophy, science, and epistemology. Whoop-de-do, Kurt.

Rand also believed in "contextural certainty" which was the idea that there was only one rational hypothesis (thing to believe provisionally) from any given data-set. To which we must add a big {{citation needed}} because she never proved this totally-outrageous idea. So that would be a "flaw." (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/wink.gif)

Why should I not spend my time more profitably with Karnap or W.V. Quine or even Popper? Quine is especially fun, as he did quite the opposite of Rand in deciding that analytic and synthetic propositions should not be distinguished, because (as he thought) we aren't even totally sure about analytic ones! http://www.mun.ca/phil/codgito/vol3/v3doc4.html. I imagine Quine's cell is right next to Rand's in Hell, where they argue about Kant's a priori knowledge, not knowing that Kant himself is on the cell on the other side, gagged and forced to listen, but not talk. And Piekoff in due time will be down the hall a long way, where both Rand and Quine can shout at him, but nobody can quite with certainty make out the words at either end....