/lit/ - Literature

because she wants to end the gravy train of free gibs

- until recently worked with mid-20s philosophy graduate in cafe
- sees me reading The Fountainhead on my break
- asks me why
- I ask, why not?
- quote:
- 'She's mean'
- Never felt quite so suicidal as I did in that moment

>>11871492
I've never actually read any of her books

Reminding everyone that humans are fucking selfish no matter the good intent

>>11871492
I don't think she's hated very much. If anything, most people simply don't know about her.

Rand exemplifies many things with her writing, including but not limited to: bad ideas, poor reasoning, trash prose, dogmatism, doctrinaire aspiration, and animus.

Beyond that, her self absorbed narcissism and hubris, demonstrated as a complete willingness to ascribe character defects to anyone who could possibly believe that workers need basic protections from exploitation, attracts the scummiest type of grifters who can't understand why everyone around them doesn't understand their inner greatness and exceptional nature when they just regurgitate new and somehow more vile iterations of the free rider problem as a panacea against all social progress.

>>11871536
/thread

>>11871536
this but with more nuance

>>11871536
>attracts the scummiest type of grifters who can't understand why everyone around them doesn't understand their inner greatness and exceptional nature when they just regurgitate new and somehow more vile iterations of the free rider problem as a panacea against all social progres
Fair enough but it doesn't make her wrong.

Its just atheist nonsense

>>11871536

Translated:

Not a left wing conflict theory piece of shit

>hurr durr taxation is theft, muh individualism, capitalism is rational self interest and the only way forward
>*receieves gibs from gov anyways*

Politics aside she is probably the most boring author I have ever attempted to read.

>>11871492
I think it's a couple of things.

For one, she beyond arrogant. She said that there are only three As in philosophy: Aristotle, Aquinas, and Ayn Rand. Like, what fucking normal person talks that way? Even an actual attention whore like Milo wouldn't go this far. The other alternative is that she's simply THAT convinced in her own arguments, which is a big warning sign for any reader. You want a thinker that is CONVINCING, not one that's CONVINCED of his own ideas.

The second is that she comes across as a total traitor, in the same way that beta male feminists do. Okay, so you love productive men that are driven by capital. But she never came close to that. Even when she had the option to choose a guy, she chose a fucking painter. Basically, she talks with dogmatic conviction about things she hasn't even experienced firsthand.

The third and final reason is that she has a warped mind. I personally don't hate Ayn Rand because I understand what must've happened to her in Russia was brutal, and I always got the impression maybe she hid some less pleasant facts due to her vanity. But nevertheless, it's clear that she DESPISED the Soviets to an insane degree. It's likely that no matter what she found in America, even f it were a Muslim theocracy, she would've praised it simply for not being what ruined her life back home.

That, and she's just a really poor writer with tired ideas, none of which are her own. But that's not why people dislike her, since there's tons of those and people praise them like there's no tomorrow.

Haven't read her, so I'm the ideal person to tell you, the ignorant and prejudiced person. She comes across as praising selfishness as a virtue, in something of a crass, disordered, "ambitious in the bad sense of the word" way.

She seems tacky. Like she would admire strong CEOs who sue their competitors into bankruptcy in a backhanded fashion. She is tacky in the same way that Steve Vai is tacky. I think Flannery O'Connor remarked on her bad literary taste. One of Rand's literary heroes was a certain "Mickey Spillane".

Triggers socialists by denying them a moral case for expropriating other people's time & efforts.

>>11871492
>jew
>woman
>slav
three strikes, she’s out

Holier than thou fags think narcissims and hypocracy makes you bad.

>>11871608
>Haven't read her, so I'm the ideal person to tell you

This should be the tagline for /lit/ now that I think about it

Basically because she was a terrible writer who chose to disseminate her philosophy as fiction instead of just writing her ideas. Yes, a lot of criticism is aimed at her ideology, but if there's anything both sides of the coin agree is that she was a terrible writer. This is usually the first thing people say, whether they agree with her or not.

Just, why on earth would you choose to showcase your ideas in a way you're terrible at? A lot of philosophers have wit and humour in their writing, but even those who haven't we can still accept it because the important thing is their ideas and not how they presented them, but they don't pretend to have wit or to be great writers. In Rand's case, she chose a means she was not a master of, to present a philosophy that could be summed up in a quarter of the length. There's a lot of novels that are philosophical in nature, but they are not just good philosophy -- they are good novels as well. I gave up halfway not because I really hated what she had to say, but because I couldn't stomach anymore such a terrible book.

Her writing is the equivalent of an ophthalmologist putting an add on the other side of a cliff.

>>11871573
>*forced to pay taxes for 99% of her life*
>*receives 1% of it back in her old age*
>"hahaha fucking hypocrite*

she chose to disseminate her "philosophy" via badly written novels instead of engaging in legitimate peer reviewed academia.

her "ideas" tend to appeal to awful human beings, which is off-putting to say the least

>>11871703
>legitimate peer reviewed academia.

"Peer review" is a monumental farce.

Academic science is a farce. Most studies are not replicable. Impeccably conducted studies with tabboo results don't get published; shoddy studies funded with lobby money that get politically correct results or results otherwise favourable to the establishment get published.

The "peers" don't do their "reviews" as rigorously as you would think. Houellebecq is right about scientists: second-rate intellects. Taleb remarked on the fact that the average IQ of academics seems to hover in the middling 120 to 130 zone, and maybe that's too generous.

Academics are hacks. Careerists. The peer-review system is a system of circlejerking careerism. It is more bureaucracy than science.

>>11871703
That said, Ayn Rand is bad. I like libertarianism, for the most part, but Rand not so much.

>>11871536
>her self absorbed narcissism and hubris
vague leftist ad-hominem argumentation

>demonstrated as a complete willingness to ascribe character defects to anyone who could possibly believe that workers need basic protections from exploitation
Common leftists strawman from someone who clearly doesn't understand Rand or probably hasn't read any of her books.
She isn't against protections from exploitation. She just doesn't believe that government is always the best way to accomplish this.

>attracts the scummiest type of grifters who can't understand
Typical leftist arrogance and hypocrasy. They condescend and think lower of everyone else, oddly accusing Rand of doing the very same.

>they just regurgitate new and somehow more vile iterations of the free rider problem as a panacea against all social progress

"Social progress" is another buzz phrase for regressive marxism and government coercion. The ultimate pill is that everyone is born naturally as "right wingers". It's our human nature. Leftist/marxist/progressivism is simply the denial and repression of our basic human nature, human decency, civility, morality, culture and identity. It is propagated by a marxist state-sponsored education system that is undoubtedly dubiously funded by the very Bourgeoisie ruler-class that idiot leftists like this poster think they are fighting against.

Everyone... --do not be fooled by this "academic".

>>11872029
>Leftist/marxist/progressivism is simply the denial and repression of our basic human nature, human decency, civility, morality, culture and identity.

what the flying fuck does this even mean you pseud, you have shapiro-tier debating skills

>>11872064
There is no debate as I have no adversary.

>>11871790
t. butthurt because science doesn’t validate his favorite pet theories

>>11872064
>what the flying fuck does this even mean

translation:
>summarize ayn rands entire catalogue of books and her beliefs for me as I have never read them and just regurgitate my leftist sociology professors talking points

>>11872029

>vague leftist ad-hominem argumentation

That wasn't an argument. The thread asked why was she hated, which does not pertain only her work, but her as a person as well. Being a dick is a pretty good reason to be hated despite one's work. Just think of that fag from The Smiths.

>Common leftists strawman from someone who clearly doesn't understand Rand or probably hasn't read any of her books.

As I understand it, what anon criticized was her poor characterization, and how she only applies defects to the characters that are in the wrong (come on, this is classic Rand, all her self-insert characters are embodiments of moral high grounds, her work has no nuance). This might work as a way to present her ideas, but as a novel it's a shit way to convey a story.

>Typical leftist arrogance and hypocrasy. They condescend and think lower of everyone else, oddly accusing Rand of doing the very same.

You haven't really said anything here.

>"Social progress" is another buzz phrase for regressive marxism and government coercion.

I do agree with most of your points here, but your rethoric makes me wonder if you're really sound of mind, or if you're just the radical buzzword spitter opposite of the leftists you seem to loathe so much. I don't think you are as far from them as you believe.

>>11872101
>That wasn't an argument.

That is my point. Their style of argumentation is weightless. It is devoid of any claims or denials and purely personal opinion on her character rather than the substance of her values and beliefs.

>As I understand it
Unnecessary.

>what anon criticized was her poor characterization, and how she only applies defects to the characters that are in the wrong

First you defend the posters character assault on her as being relevant to the topic... not the subject of her works. Now you're arguing that he's criticizing how her characters in her novels are portrayed... and you admit that it could work to present her ideas, but you simply don't like the stories from a creative/literary perspective.

Which is it?

>You haven't really said anything here.
Yes I have. I pointed out that he was being hypocritical in calling her narcissistic and self-absorbed by accusing her of attracting "the scummiest type of grifters". What a loathsome and condescending way to characterize people... especially if it is as you say, simply innocent criticism of her character development.

>I do agree with most of your points here, but your rethoric makes me wonder if you're really sound of mind
Wonder all you want. it makes no difference to me and the points I've made stand unrefuted. But let me ask you this: if a paranoid schizophrenic psychotic madman tells you that 2+2=4, is he not right regardless of his mental handicap?

>>11872029
Imagine liking the Mitt Romney of philosophy.

> The ultimate pill is that everyone is born naturally as "right wingers". It's our human nature. Leftist/marxist/progressivism is simply the denial and repression of our basic human nature, human decency, civility, morality, culture and identity.

Bold statements here, friend. How do you prove all of these?

>>11872101
Also, are you the same guy thats always in these threads or are Rand detractors really so eerily similar in their unsubstantiated disapproval of her? You sound a lot like the college professor I outed the last time I played in one of these threads. Or perhaps it is deja vu? ;)

>>11872200

The likeness of Mitt Romney is something you can only dream of... I assure you.

>>11871628
tagline of our times is more like it desu

>he ultimate pill is that everyone is born naturally as "right wingers". It's our human nature. Leftist/marxist/progressivism is simply the denial and repression of our basic human nature, human decency, civility, morality, culture and identity
It isn't, unless you have a very curious definition of "right wing". Humans are born selfish, self-centered, and fairly sociopathic, but also, in a very contradictory fashion, altruistic, communal, and with an intrisic, if very poorly defined, vague, and inconsistent moral tendencies.

>>11872204
Would take a long time but a very good source would be Ayn Rand if you're interested. Ever heard of her? Believe it or not, she is the topic of this very thread!

>>11872029
I'm only going to address
>Typical leftist arrogance and hypocrasy. They condescend and think lower of everyone else, oddly accusing Rand of doing the very same.

You're blaming a political group for something you're doing right now, and is common to every opposing group in history. You can dress it up in pretty words but you're denouncing things solely because you believe a leftist said them.

>>11872070
No. The dire state of Western science, its precipitous fall from the heights it once occupied, has been remarked upon by not a few contemporary insiders, both secular and religious.

I am all for the scientific method. I am all for rigour. I am all for facing the facts whether or not they happen to suit our worldviews or our metaphysical pressupositions.

But the contemporary scientific establishment is characterized more by bureaucracy than science, more by careerism than genuine inquiry. Its facade is still convicing to normies, as facades always are, no matter how hollow the carcass they disguise. But you're not a normie, are you?

>>11872262
If she takes that as dogma as you do then i guess it's not worth it to bother.

>>11872191

>purely personal opinion on her character rather than the substance of her values and beliefs.

Hate is based only in personal opinion. There's no way one can ascertain hate outside of one's own opinion. As such, her character being smudgy greatly contributes to the dislike people feel towards her. I don't know what you were expecting here.

>First you defend the posters character assault on her as being relevant to the topic

Because the thread question was : "Why is she so universally hated?". Attention to the word used: "universally". If her personality is one of the reasons she is universally hated then, yes, it is relevant to the topic.

>Now you're arguing that he's criticizing how her characters in her novels are portrayed...and you admit that it could work to present her ideas

One does not cancel the other. Ideas aren't enough to compose a novel. If they were, she was better off writing a shopping list, not fiction.

>I pointed out that he was being hypocritical

As I said, you didn't really say anything. Pointing another's hypocrisy is irrelevant. It does not counters what has been said. Rather, it is counterproductive.

>and the points I've made stand unrefuted

There's not much to be refuted. Your points are as based in your personal opinion as everybody else's.

>if a paranoid schizophrenic psychotic madman tells you that 2+2=4, is he not right regardless of his mental handicap?

I didn't mean that by sound of mind. But yes, he would be right. But being right is made pointless if he himself isn't even aware of that.

>>11872211

No, it's wasn't me. Being smug won't work.

>>11872264
>>11872029
Furthermore, if you need to point out what the person holding the idea is in an argument to denounce their ideas, your argument is probably unsubstantiated shit and holding extreme bias.

>>11872259
The leftist definition of right wing extremist is anyone who isn't a god hating violent marxist "activist" hack. So the other 99% of the population is "right wing" and it isn't my definition that's curious, it is theirs. The upper echelon leftists (not the bootlickers you find here) are the real 1%.

>>11871586
>warped because she despised the Soviets
Yeah, the proper emotional attitude to the people who fucked up your family and, oh yeah, murdered a hundred million people, is "mild disdain"

>>11872275
>>11872029
And lastly, maybe instead of denouncing because "oh no liberals and their elitism" maybe ask the poster why they feel this way, and then determine from the information presented if you agree or disagree.

As much as you'd love to believe it, you're not an expert and there is always someone more knowledgeable. Also plenty of people less knowledgeable as well. Deciding which one of these they are before seeing why they believe it to be the case means your opinion is worthless by default, even if right.

There's a logical method to these kind of things, and I can promise you it doesn't consist of "call them a leftist 5 times". People with good world views achieve them by accepting all information with no judgement, and deducing from a larger pool of information what to believe.

Going "no i've read her work and this is wrong" is a great way to guarantee you miss hugely important aspects. It's willful stupidity, even if you end up being correct.

>>11872268
>Muh science went to shit
That only applies to social "sciences" ie shit such as psychology and sociology, which is less a case of "going to shit" and more a case of "they were always shit, and putting them through the scientific method showed that".

>>11871492
I remember reading a book of hers in school, it was in English class and it was the novella Anthem. I thought it was a pretty clever way to satirize communism-I especially thought the use of having the characters only use plural nouns such as We, they, and Us as being clever. I haven't really read much else of hers, but I thought that novella was fine

>>11872273
>There's not much to be refuted. Your points are as based in your personal opinion as everybody else's.

My claim can be summarized as this: the poster is a hypocrite and not really making any substantive claim about her other than personal attacks, as has been my experience with most if not all Rand detractors.

I quoted him. If you're going to ignore his words then you'd have every reason to think I'm just stating personal opinion, but I assure you, hypocrisy is very clearly defined, and ad-hominem attacks are very clearly understood as fallacy. There is no opinionation there.

>>11872319
OP was asking why people deslike her, not about her ideas, and yeah, a deslike of her because of her ideas(or, alternatively, because of her followers) is actually valid, even if the ideas themselves must be put under proper scrutiny. But an actual question: Why everyone either hates her or worship the very ground she walks like she is capitalist Jesus?

>>11872279
I know at this point replying to you is probably a moot effort but lemme hit you with it.

Leftists aren't a different breed from you, nor are they conniving and trying to fuck up the world.

They're people who value different things, is all. What you find important, they may not. What you find unimportant, they may obsess over. What you think is morally just, they may think is immoral.

This doesn't make them objectively bad. You mention the upper echelon of leftists, but if you had ever met such people you would know they don't really have any political or moral alignment beyond power and protection of it.

Calling an extremely wealthy person either a leftist or a righty is exactly what they want, because in reality they don't concern themselves with what political parties are squabbling over. They're concerned with who will support their personal goals.

I don't know if you've realized, and you'd have to be naive not to, but those in power consider themselves a different breed, mostly. Same as you would consider a leftist. You and I and everyone else are merely a means for them to get what they want.

Sociopathy amongst the extremely wealthy is demonstrable. They don't care for your cause or mine. They care for maintaining wealth and control, which by it's very nature prevents others from attaining it.

If you're bitching about the other party, and view them as everything wrong with the world, you're buying into propaganda designed to keep you in place. No matter what you believe in morally or politically, someone on the opposite end of the spectrum is closer to being an ally to you than any extremely wealthy person in existence. Even the one who espouses what you believe in.

>>11872319

Yes, I understood that, though I still insist that pointing out hypocrisies is counterproductive. My only gripe with her was that she was a terrible and unimaginative writer, and thus chose the worst way possible to deliver her ideas. If she wasn't, maybe I could have cared more about what she had to say.

>>11872296
No. It applies to the natural sciences too. It applies to medicine. You would be surprised at how much blind, coarse dogmatism there is in these academic fields. And this, again, is what intelligent and honest insiders have to say on the matter.

>>11872294
>And lastly, maybe instead of denouncing because "oh no liberals and their elitism" maybe ask the poster why they feel this way, and then determine from the information presented if you agree or disagree.

I know why he feels that way and I've already determined that I disagree.

Liberals have been perpetuating the same garbage for decades if not centuries or even millennia. The only thing that changes is the vernacular used to describe their subtle hatred of human existence.

I need no convincing and I need not convince others. You either get it or you don't. I'm simply talking about Ayn Rand and why people hate her. Their reasons can never be substantiated.

You know what you never see from someone who doesn't like Ayn Rand? You never see them quoting her or citing passages from her books as evidence of their characterization of her. Makes you wonder if Ayn Rand cut them off in traffic or jumped ahead of them in line at Arby's.

Or perhaps another explanation for this phenomenon is that they don't hate her based on any rational independent thought and that they are just submitting to the Rand-hating bandwagon of leftists in higher academia who hate her for what she believes rather than what she does or how she writes her novels.

>>11871790
blah blah blah Houellebecq blah blah blah

I;m sure the cunts that churn out pop-philosophy titles at your local barnes and nobles or the brainlets on yootoob are filling the intellectual void that was previously inhabited by academics.........in your world.

why are you even on /lit/, newfag?

gb2T_d

>>11872380
Nah.

>>11872373
>"Liberals" blah blah "poor me"

didn't even read your post

>>11871492
>she

>>11872380
The following was written by a high IQ atheist, not by poor old me:

"Until about 1946 or so science in the west was advancing rapidly. However, shortly after the war ended peer review was widely adopted, and at about the same time science history was abruptly rewritten so that science had always practiced peer review, and at the same time also rewritten so that Roger Bacon, instead of being imprisoned in solitary confinement on bread and water by the Church for advocating the scientific method as in the earlier histories, was instead supposedly placed under “a form of house arrest” for advocating astrology. With the adoption of peer review, the scientific method was de-emphasized. It was not written out of history, but in the new version of official history, the scientific method lost its starring, heroic, and revolutionary role in western civilization. The scientific method was still routinely taught in schools, though after the seventies, less so.

It is hard to say exactly when science slowed down, but after we landed on the moon, obviously slower. I suspect that the decline is caused by peer review and the de-emphasis of the scientific method, but because it is hard to say when science slowed, hard to say what caused it. I say the problem is that if the scientific method is central to science, then it is science, but if peer review is central, then nothing distinguishes “science” from any other state sponsored theocratic priesthood. That is my explanation of the problem, but your interpretation of the evidence may differ."

But by all means hurl another scorching zany meme in my direction.

>>11872029
>human nature
It's already known humans have worked together before a proper state. That's just pseudo-darwinism.

>>11872343
If you dislike someone you've never personally met then how else are you to rationalize if not based solely on that persons works and aspects of their life that have been made public?

I can't say I hate Jim Joe Jeffry Johnson III if I've never met the man UNLESS Jim Joe Jeffry Johnson III wrote a book about why he hates puppies. If you hate Ayn Rand, you're either basing it on her public life as an author or you're basing it solely on hearsay. So far, I've only seen hearsay, unless Ayn Rand made your machiatto with too much caramel syrup this morning. That's all I'm saying.

>>11872371
>It applies to medicine
Only insofar as because of poor methodology(primarily small sample sizes with little control), and even then it often relates back to, surprise, surprise, psychology, unless have something new to add.

>>11871492
Because she's right and collectivists don't like that.

>>11872402
>leftypol can't meme

>>11872418
Wrong again. The following was written by a British medical doctor and University of Buckingham professor:

"I simply want to point out that since medical progress *is* the major validation of modernity, the failure of medical progress is the most powerful refutation of modernity.

I have previously written about the failure of medical progress from the mid-twentieth century, and that for half a century we have been living through a medical research bubble -

Yet the failure of medical research, defined as above, is stark: in broad terms we have not disovered any new classes either of antibiotics or pain killers for many decades.

Just think about the shocking magnitude of this *failure* of modernity: for decades people have been going on and on about the wonders and triumphs of medical progress, its importance - yet our civilization has failed to sustain this progress.

The failure to sustain medical progress is the most significant failure of modernity.

*

The reason we have failed to sustain medical progress are doubtless manyfold, but in essence I think it is because modernity has chosen bureaucratic expansion above creative individual discovery.

We prefer process over results - consequently we have a truly massive and expanding medical research process with zero or negative results.

*

It is not just medical research that has collapsed, but the whole practice of medicine.

As I look around medicine it is my impression that doctors know less, can do less, have less spirit, less sense of vocation (or none at all), are less able, make fewer breakthroughs, suffer greater losses of knowledge, have poorer judgment, do worse science, are less honest and have more wrong ideas than they did a generation ago.

And of course, doctors are increasingly managed by ignorant and spiteful time-servers, replaced with inferior professionals and by protocols, and denigrated.

This despite - or rather because - medicine as a social system has expanded by about an order of magnitude (c. tenfold)."

she is a hypocrite, but her ideas should be based on their merit, not on her character flaws.

>>11872412
>Muh church hate science
Literally meme history. Also, no one knows why Bacon was put under house arrest, with theories ranging from astrology, to political factors, to his combative personality, to borderline heresy.

I can understand brainlets and plebs being enamoured with her train of thought..... but i cannot understand how people who are familiar with an objective, dialectical development of ideas buy into her shtick. I can only assume they're either jewish or have vested interests.

>>11872457
Fine, mate. Go read the Scientific American and your Carl Sagan books. I hope one day to be as smart as you. Best regards.

>>11872348

>Leftists aren't a different breed from you, nor are they conniving and trying to fuck up the world.
Yes leftists are a different breed from me. They are conniving and trying to fuck up the world. But not ALL leftists. Just the ones that have all the power. Most leftists are minorities and impoverished ill-educated people that have been manipulated. To the ruling class of marxists, they are simply votes... useful idiots. Ayn Rand goes over this in a much more detailed and eloquent way than I ever will.

>They're people who value different things, is all.
An obvious truth about everyone. You mean well though, I can see it.

>This doesn't make them objectively bad.
If they don't value knowledge enough to actively pursue it and question things that others have spoonfed them, then I would argue that they are. If there is any true evil on this earth, it is made possible by ignorance. But being ignorant doesn't make you evil, I will concede to that. Choosing to be ignorant? That's where I draw the line.

>Calling an extremely wealthy person either a leftist or a righty is exactly what they want
Wealth is not synonymous with power. I have no problem with the wealthy.

>Sociopathy amongst the extremely wealthy is demonstrable
Sociopathy with anyone is demonstrable.

>
If you're bitching about the other party, and view them as everything wrong with the world, you're buying into propaganda designed to keep you in place. No matter what you believe in morally or politically, someone on the opposite end of the spectrum is closer to being an ally to you than any extremely wealthy person in existence. Even the one who espouses what you believe in.

You're conflating my disdain for a party and what they represent (leftism/marxism/progressivism) and individual people who may be member to such a party.

I hate the party. I don't hate the individual who fell for their lies. But that doesn't mean I won't call him a shithead from time to time. I'm not perfect. (yet)

>>11872412
le confirmation bias.

gb2leT_d

>>11872436
At least try to actually say so is saying what where. Also, 4 new antibiotic classes have been developted since the 2000's.

It's fucking annoying how everyone brings up Rand's character as a way to show how she was a bad philosopher. It's like these people don't understand the basic ad hominem fallacy, which if they study philosophy they should obviously know. But it's like they can't help it. If she was arrogant and didn't like to get involved with other philosophers, that may strike you as arrogant but it is meaningless when judging the veracity of her ideas.

>>11872481
>so
who*

>As a person
Narcissistic, unfriendly, petty.

>As a novelist
Pedestrian style, cartoonish characters, no subtlety. She's like J. K. Rowling with a political agenda.

>As an ethical philosopher
Wholly unoriginal. Nothing in her works is both original and correct, and certainly none of it is articulated very well. You would do better to read just read Aristotle, Stirner, and Nietzsche.

>As a political philosopher
Inconsistent and anti-altruistic. This is part of why she ends up being discussed more outside of libertarian circles than amongst them.

For non-libertarians, it's good to have an unlikable villain like Rand to mock lolberts with. Similar to the way one would use dunderheads like John Oliver, Cenk Uygur, and Ben Shapiro to denigrate their respective political positions.

For libertarians, in addition to being tasteless, Rand often draws conclusions willy-nilly as she sees fit, rather than via rigorous reasoning from first principles (read as: autistic pilpul). If you actually go over to /liberty/ or /r/libertarianism, you'll be surprised to find Rand isn't very widely discussed.

>>11872029
Call me crazy but I don’t think baby’s are very well versed in neo liberalism or social conservativism but what ever to make you believe you side is inherently right, after you don’t have to make arguments then. also naturalistic fallacy

>>11872491
>read just read
god fuckin dammit

>>11872491
>If you actually go over to /liberty/ or /r/libertarianism, you'll be surprised to find Rand isn't very widely discussed.

Have you ever considered that reddit may be a censored leftist shithole ran by sjw mods?

>>11872476
Yeah, confirmation bias, that is exactly what it is. That is exactly what my posts suggest, and what the excerpts I have quote suggest, and not the other way around at all.

>>11872468
Literally not an argument, and have you forgot that the scientic method literally arouse from religious-vinculated aristotelian thought?
>>11872486
I think praxeology is shit but I respect Mises far more than Rand or Rothbard.

>>11872507
You can't that about Rand when r/ancap exist.

>>11872507
Wouldn't it be in the sjw's interests to censor out all the nice guys like Hazlitt/Mises/etc. and favor a shithead like Rand?

I must say I like the chapter in Atlast Shrugged where the train explodes in the tunnel, and you can see everyone responsible passing the responsibility further down the chain because they don't want to take the blame. I think there's one line that goes "normally in his work, there was a direct relationship between keeping the passengers safe and doing his job. Somehow, that was no longer the case". I think this idea of people having skin in the game, the proper amount of responsibility, is what she cared about the most.

Because you hang out in leftie circles, also most readers are lefties

>>11872521
Not if you are a cowardly socialist/marxist that is secretly afraid of Ayn Rands reach and mass appeal

Individualism is still a radical concept and most people are offended by it. The idea that someone could actually want to live for themselves and their own happiness offends most people to the core.

>>11872481
You're right, concrete examples are good. You fill find them in spades in this webpage: raypeat dot com

The guy has a Ph.D.in Biology from the University of Oregon, if respectability of sources is your thing. His online following is full of seriously intelligent people.

Just click on "Articles" and read any of the articles. Reading Peat's articles feels like being Neo in the Matrix seeing the cascading neon numbers, except instead of the Matrix it's the current medical-academic establishment. Maybe start with the ones on cancer and on serotonin and get ready to unlearn everything you have absorbed about these things from our diseased cultural milieu.

>>11872508
Not him, but you just quoted two guys without names or identification that were outright wrong about Bacon and antibiotics, and that can't even be found through googling excerpts.

>>11872262
You can’t source a fucking fiction writer to support sociological claims

>>11872510
>Literally not an argument

It wasn't meant to be an argument. It was meant as a mere sarcastic remark.

>and have you forgot that the scientic method literally arouse from religious-vinculated aristotelian thought?

Yes, I am aware of this. And our current plunge into irreligiousness might have something to do with the decline of our scientific standards.

Misogyny.

>>11872534
>The idea that someone could actually want to live for themselves and their own happiness offends most people to the core.

It doesn't offend anyone other than the small percentage of leftist elites that maintain their status quo by propagating the idea what we shouldn't live for ourselves and our happiness.

It is not a radical concept, it is a natural concept. Don't let them fool you.

>>11872540
Sorry. I thought their blogs would be easy to find on Google. Seems like Google is going to shit as well.

Here you go:

blog dot jim dot com
charltonteaching dot blogspot dot com

>>11872543
Sociology is borderline fiction itself. Nothing more psued than a sociology degree.

>>11871790
So science is invalid if it doesn’t validate your worldview

>>11872561
This is not what I have said at all, ever, anywhere.

>>11872534
>Somehow the American dream is radical idea,

>>11872576
Its easy to see the evidence of the myths propagated by the leftist shills. Soon my friend. Soon they will roast.

>>11872508
you're a dumbfuck.

i bet you're too stupid to become a barista.

sensitive too

>>11872559
Okay so you don’t trust the people do actual research based on objective reasoning, experiments or studies but you do trust people who make up stories to validate there own political beliefs. That’s not to say that makes you a bad writer necessarily but writing is a creative prosses that inherently appeals to the emotional over rational. A great writer like George Orwell can capture the zeitgeist of living under a facist state but it won’t teach you anything about the actual machancics of fascism (apart from his political essays because there not narrative)

>>11872555
>blogs

>>11872584
No your just acting like your ideas which are and have always been dominant and widely accepted are somehow new and radical

>>11872559
>Nothing more psued than a sociology degree.

social anthropology

>>11872589
I'm not. But the simple-minded such as you regard as stupid and provincial those who swim against the fashionable intellectual currents of the day. Don't think I'm not aware of this. And I'm not sensitive, I'm just doing my damnedest to be polite to you shit-flinging toddlers. Which perhaps is a treatment you don't really deserve. In short, get fucked.

And I'm not sensitive, I'm just doing my damndest to be polite.

>>11872555
So you don’t trust the internet, soft sciences, hard sciences, per reviewed studies and anyone who leans slightly left of regan. Do you trust anyone outside of your own head

>>11872602
Some of the finest contemporary writing takes place in blogs. Don't be a sissy.

Capitalism's homogenising effect is so strong that even when people attempt to give a list of products they HATE, they still produce a list basically identical to some other randomised skim of books people LOVE, because fundamentally the people selected for polling will (a) have all read the same things, (b) have no standards, and (c) will base their decision on "This popular thing that people like, well I DIDN'T like it! It just wasn't for me!" which is a fundamentally massified and consumerized relationship to culture

But if you're passably intelligent and your brain actually works and you've even somehow escaped the anal torture of modern Youtube culture and read more books than you were forced to in high school and by some hipster faggot on /lit/, that is if you somehow magically have actual taste in this culture, you will walk by this stand and incorrectly project real opinions produced by real minds onto the people who were polled for what to include in the stand. You will assume "I bet some people fucking HATED Infinite Jest," or "I bet people HATE Ayn Rand," or "I bet people with taste like myself were revolted by Dan Brown!" or "I bet people hated this shallow flash in the pan filth book that was only popular with housewives!" but that's only because you don't realize: The people who hated Infinite Jest know "of" it, and don't know it in any intimate way. Most didn't even read it, but wanted to feel involved in and participate in the activity of being the kind of guy who totally hates Infinite Jest, which is an archetype just stable enough to be visible to the bestial status-seeking algorithms that litter a prole's heads-up display as he navigates a confusing world full of sugared turds to eat that are literally indigestible and seem hypersaccharine in East Asian cultures fortunate enough to not have been raised on corn syrup. The people who hated Ayn Rand know that Hating Ayn Rand is an activity that you perform when you want your Facebook "Things I Like" biography to be more complete so people can know you're the kind of person who hates Ayn Rand, that libertarian LOL her PROSE is so bad and she's SOCIOPATHIC! The people who hate Dan Brown know that DAN BROWN IS FOR PLEBS and I don't want to be a pleb. I only read sophisticated things, such as, Books I Read in High School. The people who hated the housewives books are housewives who exclusively read books exactly like that when Oprah tells them to read those books, and then once in a while they "You know what? I didn't like this book, y'all! #fierce" as a playful Maussian social game in their potlatch circle with their disgusting cunt friends.

If you are a real person, you pass by that book stand and you think you're surrounded by real people and the books were selected by real people for you to look at. But there would be more humanity in the selection if it had been done by chimps. At least chimps have organic social relations.

Feel free to point out the dangling sentence I forgot to excise from my post, too. And when you're done you are welcome to suck my dick.

>>11872610
>I’m just trying to be polite
>get fucked shit flinging toddler

>>11872601

Sociology:

>African Americans only get bit by sharks while in the ocean
>the ocean is suffering from systemic racism, time to expand the gubment

>>11872619
what the fuck is this commie gobbledygook

>>11872555
>Decide to look at those
>NPC shit, a retarded 9/11 truther argument, "muh global warming is a librul lie", and fucking comicgates of all the things in one, and "muh british(and irish, too, for some reason) christian awakening" in the other.
Jesus Christ. At least stick to Edward Feser with you want someone with a vague resembling of intelectual chops.
>>11872614
>Some of the finest contemporary writing takes place in blogs.
Yeah. These aren't those, thought.

>>11872612
No. I trust logic. I trust the principle of non-contradiction. I trust that two and two equal four. I trust the scientific method. I trust that we may infer things using our senses, imperfect as they are. I trust that modern lab equipment helps us tease out elusive scientific verities that were inaccessible to our forebears. In a sense modern science is indeed remarkably sophisticated, of course. Our technology, this laptop I'm typing my rambling posts on, yes, what a marvel indeed. Thank you science.

To affirm that abiogenesis is false because flies fail to emerge from a carefully sealed rotten piece of meat is sound scientific thinking. To affirm that rain falls from the sky because water will precipitate once it goes from "gaseous" to "liquid" (I'm Brazilian, forgive me if this is not the elegant terminology), a process taking place on the molecular level, and not because the rain gods decided to make it rain, is fine scientific thinking. Of course.

All I'm saying is that the current "peer-review" scientific establishment is not as rigorous, as honest and as competent *in many areas* as most people seem to believe. If you want to know how deeply and indeed malignantly and harmfully corrupt it is, read Ray Peat's articles. I will give you one concrete example. Onions oil, corn oil, sunflower oil, every oil high in poly-insaturated fats, they are extremely - extremely - carcinogenic. If people stopped consuming them, cancer rates would plummet tremendously. And yet this doesn't make the cover of the Scientific American.

>>11871492
She effectively btfos many of the left's arguements and societal stances and they can't refute it properly with appeals to emotion and authority, which in turn proves her stances correct once again.

>>11872553
No one is being “controlled” or “fooled” your jousting at windmills when you wine about the “left elites” “controlling the masses”. What is it with right wingers and there victim complex. You control the executive, legislative and judicial branch, you don’t get to always be underdogs. So instead of acting like your ideas are inherently right maybe just make good arguments for them

>>11872656
>>Decide to look at those
>>NPC shit, a retarded 9/11 truther argument, "muh global warming is a librul lie", and fucking comicgates of all the things in one, and "muh british(and irish, too, for some reason) christian awakening" in the other.

You're not very smart... or you're not very intellectually intrepid. Look past these hot topics, as tacky as they seem to you. Look for the gold. These bloggers I have linked to are incredibly bright fellows. Jim is not a truther, by the way. He is criticizing trutherism in his post.

>>11872657
>Onions oil, corn oil, sunflower oil, every oil high in poly-insaturated fats, they are extremely - extremely - carcinogenic
Oil and fried stuff in general is widely know to be very carcinogenic. It is akin to saying that smoking causes cancer by this point.
Also, hue, macaco, espero que você esconda sua macaquice do publico gringo.

>>11872686
É com um brasileiro que eu estive debatendo esse tempo todo, ou você só apareceu agora?

>>11872686
Anyway, no, the *insane degree to which they are carcinogenic* is not officially acknowledged. In fact, "studies" have "proven" that these oils are actually good for your health. Monsanto lobby money has a curious way of bending the truth.

>>11872657
>>11872657
You seem to advocate for science on a individual personal scale. Well sorry to inform you but that doesn’t really work in the age of information. As a broader scientific community there is an obligation to commentate and critique the on the work of others. It wasn’t one person that descovred that rain isn’t made by gods or The birthing process is just as nuanced on flies as it is in humans. It was a community that built on each others ideas and tossed away the ones that didn’t hold water (that the gods made rain). Great men stand on the shoulders of giants and in a era were there are endless giants amounst a wide array of field why dilibrately blind yourself

>>11872675
>He is criticizing trutherism in his post.
I know that, but a fucking +500 post discussion about it is demented, especially in the [CURRENT YEAR]. Also, both of your quotes contained basic mistakes, to the point is hard to take the whole thing seriously.
>>11872690
Some post, yeah. This one is mine >>11872656, but >>11872612 isn't.
>>11872696
The first thing I heard in nutrition class back when I was 10 was that fried shit gives you cancer, and the impacts of fats on cancer was also talked about in organic chemistry when I was in high school.

>>11872673
We're done arguing. You had your chance.

>>11872714
>. As a broader scientific community there is an obligation to commentate and critique the on the work of others

You are very naive if you think this actually works. You are very naive if you think most peer-reviewers are punctiliously serious, honest and rigorous in what they do, and not, on the whole, bureaucratic careerists.

The peer-review system makes science devolve into bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is invariably inimical to honesty, ingenuity, free inquiry and so on.

We don't live in an age of endless giants in an unprecedented array of fields. We live in the age of hyper-specialists, each ensconced in their own hyper-specific field, most of them bereft of anything like a robust underlying metaphysical outlook. The chasm between the contemporary sciences, the lack of a unifying big picture, of a coherent general outlook uniting all the fields - surely you have heard of this.

>>11871498
this

people are lazy, emotional, and hate responsibility.

to be fair though, she is fueled by emotional biases as well, and often sacrifices reason in favor of her preferences. I would say she's a good writer, but she isn't a great prose stylist - which is another mark in her disfavor amongst artfags.

>>11872727
Well, when you're done talking about fried food, take a look at Peat's articles on serotonin and estrogen. What we have been told about these hormones is so far, so unbelieavably far from the verifiable truth (he references numerous scientific studies in each article), that it's not even funny, it's just grotesque.

As for the comments on Jim's post, who cares. Take a good read at his and Bruce's blog and tell me the fellas aren't fucking smart and well-read. They are, and impressively so. Who cares if you found a mistake here or there. On the whole they are as sharp as they come.

And, for fuck's sake, I quoted Bruce Charlton on the decline of science because he is an actual fucking doctor and university teacher. That should count for something.

>>11871492
As I understand it, Ayn Rand isn't hated so much for any particular view as she was for how she argued it.

There are plenty of good philosophers who argue for a free market or minimal limited government system, such as John Locke or Robert Nozick, and they are well respected even by their critics.

So the issue isn't so much what her views were so much as the actual quality of her work, which has a number of flaws.

1. Ayn Rand has terrible jargon.

Ayn Rand's big radical claim set to shake the world was her defense of selfishness and condemnation of altruism. This is certainly not a claim that we hear very often. So what is her big defense of this?

"What is the moral code of altruism? The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value."

"Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others. These are not primaries, but consequences, which, in fact, altruism makes impossible. The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute, is self-sacrifice—which means; self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction—which means: the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good."(Ayn Rand,Philosophy: Who Needs It,61)

'“Sacrifice” is the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser one or of a nonvalue. Thus, altruism gauges a man’s virtue by the degree to which he surrenders, renounces or betrays his values (since help to a stranger or an enemy is regarded as more virtuous, less “selfish,” than help to those one loves). The rational principle of conduct is the exact opposite: always act in accordance with the hierarchy of your values, and never sacrifice a greater value to a lesser one.'(Ayn Rand,The Virtue of Selfishness,44)

Of course in the real world, kindness, good will, and respect for others is precisely what people mean by altruism, and the lack of these qualities precisely what selfishness means. In Ayn Rand's world, an employer who steals the wages of their workers for their own material benefit is an altruist.

>>11871492
2. Ayn Rand only engaged philosophers on the level of name-calling.

It's a thing among Objectivists to say that there are only three philosophers, the three A's: Aristotle, Aquinas, and Ayn Rand. This is how highly she puts herself, and how lowly she thinks of everyone else.

"Descartes began with the basic epistemological premise of every Witch Doctor (a premise he shared explicitly with Augustine): “the prior certainty of consciousness,” the belief that the existence of an external world is not self-evident, but must be proved by deduction from the contents of one’s consciousness—which means: the concept of consciousness as some faculty other than the faculty of perception—which means: the indiscriminate contents of one’s consciousness as the irreducible primary and absolute, to which reality has to conform. What followed was the grotesquely tragic spectacle of philosophers struggling to prove the existence of an external world by staring, with the Witch Doctor’s blind, inward stare, at the random twists of their conceptions—then of perceptions—then of sensations."

"When the medieval Witch Doctor had merely ordered men to doubt the validity of their mind, the philosophers’ rebellion against him consisted of proclaiming that they doubted whether man was conscious at all and whether anything existed for him to be conscious of."(Ayn Rand,For the New Intellectual,173)

"The implicit, but unadmitted premise of the neo-mystics of modern philosophy, is the notion that only an ineffable consciousness can acquire a valid knowledge of reality, that “true” knowledge has to be causeless, i.e., acquired without any means of cognition."

"The entire apparatus of Kant’s system, like a hippopotamus engaged in belly-dancing, goes through its gyrations while resting on a single point: that man’s knowledge is not valid because his consciousness possesses identity. . . ." (Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology)

Ayn Rand mostly has a passing understanding of the people she talks about, and isn't interested in considering their ideas any further. Her language is extremely colorful, and often even entertaining like with the belly-dancing hippo, but the actual substance of her argument is lacking, as is her understanding of what they argue.

Ayn Rand does not engage other philosophers, so naturally other philosophers don't engage her. Which is mostly justified, because...

>>11872756
>The peer-review system makes science devolve into bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is invariably inimical to honesty, ingenuity, free inquiry and so on.
Can you actually define this "bureaucracy"? A bureaucracy generally is defined as an hiercharchy with a well defined vertical and sometimes horizontal separation ie there is a boss, and the boss have also a boss, and the different bosses watch over different departments and subdepartments, which doesn't really describe the "anything goes" situation of peer-review.

>>11871492
3. Ayn Rand's arguments are garbage.

Ayn Rand can't lay out a simple argument from beginning to end. She'sconstantlyjumping all over the place, making some outlandish claim, and then never backing it up properly. For someone claiming to be objective and rational, most of the "strength" of her argument comes from this kind of emotivist language.

For example, she tries to ground the idea of natural rights on the law of identity, that A is A. Her argument jumps all over the place though. It goes something like "A is A, therefore Man is Man, and man has natural rights so he can live properly." The parts she tries to take the most credit for, that she's grounding this all on "reason," is extremely flimsy.

The only other idea I've really gone to the effort of tearing apart would be her view on intellectual property, which is as usual a strange mixture of contradictory ideas which all remain underdeveloped.

She's big on the idea of supporting copyrights and patents, but she does not believe that these are government granted monopolies, but a natural right, just like any other kind of property right. The government does not grant these rights, it recognizes them. It is literally property in an idea for her. Someone put into the effort of making this idea, so it's now their property.

"Patents and copyrights are the legal implementation of the base of all property rights: a man’s right to the product of his mind. ..." (Ayn Rand,Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal,130)

All right, but how does she deal with problem areas?

What about the scientist, mathematician, or philosopher? They put work into their ideas as well. Do they own them? Ayn Rand answers no, it only applies to "inventions."

"It is important to note, in this connection, that a discovery cannot be patented, only an invention. A scientific or philosophical discovery, which identifies a law of nature, a principle or a fact of reality not previously known, cannot be the exclusive property of the discoverer because: (a) he did not create it, and (b) if he cares to make his discovery public, claiming it to be true, he cannot demand that men continue to pursue or practice falsehoods except by his permission." (Ayn Rand,Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal,130)

But wait a sec, I thought that intellectual property was supposed to be the same as physical property. But man doesn't create the physical property he owns from nothing. He instead discovers it and works it, just as the scientist discover and work with an idea. Why then shouldn't they own it?

Or if two people simultaneously and independently work on an idea together, they both have put labor into it. Who owns it? Ayn Rand's answer is the first person to get to the government office.

>>11871492
3. (cont)

"As an objection to the patent laws, some people cite the fact that two inventors may work independently for years on the same invention, but one will beat the other to the patent office by an hour or a day and will acquire an exclusive monopoly, while the loser’s work will then be totally wasted. This type of objection is based on the error of equating the potential with the actual. The fact that a man might have been first, does not alter the fact that he wasn’t." (Ayn Rand,Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal,133)

But wait, I thought governments just recognized the work people already put in, not granted the title to one person or the other. Why should the government recognizing someone as first preclude them from recognizing someone else?

Her work is a confused mess which simply waves away all the blatant issues that can be brought up with it, and in combination with her disdain for critics and her own invented jargon making it difficult to work through, Ayn Rand has naturally not ended up well respected among philosophers.

>>11872780
>Bruce Charlton
That man is a joke. His whole butthurt about peer-review is because he got his ass fired after the magazine he worked as the editor published Peter Duesberg crap.

>>11872814
It is bureaucratic insofar as it is ideologically driven. Good research doesn't get published if the conclusions are unpleasant. Good luck publishing a study about the IQ differences between races. Meanwhile, studies "proving" that estrogen (a stress hormone) supplements are good for your health or that poly-unsaturated fats are "essential fats" get published.

Or just fucking google "peer-review crisis" or "peer-review scandal" and inform yourself about it. This stuff actually made the news a few years ago.

>>11872848
Yeah man, I have no doubt that this is the reason he criticizes the peer-review system. Everyone else who criticizes it must be driven by some similar emotional, petty reason. Thank you for showing me the light. I'm subscribing to the Scientific American right now, and to Bill Nye's channel on Youtube. Truly it is the truthful and the honest who rise to the top of the establishment, and the ass-kissing hacks who get expelled from it, and never the other way around. We live in a magical world in which corporate lobbying and institutional authoritarianism are unheard of things. Thanks for being so sharp and so brave.

>>11872849
So it isn't really a bureaucracy
>Good luck publishing a study about the IQ differences between races. Meanwhile, studies "proving" that estrogen (a stress hormone) supplements are good for your health or that poly-unsaturated fats are "essential fats" get published.
You can get both published with some easy, hell, there is some dedicated to just that, and the peer-review crisis is largely on psychology, sociology, and to lesser degree on medical stuff, rather than a widespread colapse of scientific standards.

>>11872880
>easy
ease*

>>11871536
Phew that last sentence

She was a satanist.
Otherwise she is a good start for any right-leaning person in age of 15-17. Reading Atlas Shrugged past the age of 17 is just embarassing. Natural progression would be Bastiat then Mises and Hayek before leaving economy and engaging in serious esoteric/spiritual philosophical treaties.

>>11872861
Dude, Bruce is literally to dumb to even understand epistemology(he literally said that epistemology<"common sense"), and his hatred of peer-review started after the Peter fiasco. Sure, there is actual, valid criticism of the way peer review is carried out and there is ways to improve it, but Bruce's stuff is legitimately just autistic screenching.

>>11872905
He is most emphatically not dumb, as even the most cursory reading of any of his posts or longer works should make clear.

You know who is fucking dumb? Whoever wrote "The Orgy of the Will", that most embarrassing monument to mediocrity that someone made a thread about here yesterday. I'm not a fucking genius but I can tell a bright bulb from a fucking dolt.

This is a very common phenomenon, though: men of evidently high IQ and considerable erudition will get called "dumb" for disagreeing with the fashionable prejudices of the day. I have seen this happen with several authors, not just Bruce Charlton.

When it doesn't stick, though, they will get be accused of being deliberate, malicious liars. When that doesn't stick either, they will get called insane. And when then doesn't stick, they get accused of resentful motives, or shilling for Israel, or God knows what.

And of course, even if they are spot on 90% of the time, their occasional blunders will be held as evidence that they are knuckle-dragging morons.

>>11872268
>I am all for the scientific method
>except when it produces results I disagree with then it’s just librul lies

>>11872945
Can you actually form an argument, or just remain in empty posturing? Saying that he is smart don't actually make him smart, and while he is probably well educated in his field of work, 99% of his blog is just shitty theology/nationalism pastiche, an obsession with Tolkien, and just hot opinions.

>>11872994
Click on his profile and read his other blogs. Some of them are full-on books, published in blog format. And quite enjoyable reads, too. Try "Addicted to Distraction".

I'm not posturing. I'm saying he is smart, and I know you are smart too, and I know that if you that a better look at his writings you will agree with me. That's all. I'm not saying you will revere him as a genius or anything like that.

My original point was that he, as an actual doctor and university professor, should be given at least a bit of attention when talking about the current medical-academic establishment. I'm not saying he's my literary hero or anything of the sort. He's just a guy. Who happens to be smart.

Seriously. Some guys here on /lil/ are not that bright, bless their hearts, and if they're convinced that some guy is dumb there's no arguing with them about it. But I can tell you're a smart guy.

Anyway this is discussion is getting kinda funny and futile. In short, I will go to my grave defending Bruce Charlton's smartness, and I hope you may one day be convinced of it.

>>11871536
Change the last sentence to finish like---

>...as a panacea for all that hinders development.

---and your nail hits a little closer. Her whole oeuvre is nothing but a long justification for being a cultish grifter, pathologically without a sympathetic imagination. If there ever was a queen of gaslighting, she's it, a whole lot sicker than merely mean. Only fools and knaves worship at her throne, from which she dispenses pejoratives in every direction, giving a bad name even to defenders of free speech, skeptical inquiry, and reproductive choice. I'm not enough of a hater to hate her, much as I enjoy a royal trashing of her blighted bitchcraft.

>>11871492

I listen to this spergy, unironic libertarian on night radio on a regular basis and he sometimes brings up Ayn Rand, praising her regularly. I'm not saying I agree but it's kind of nice that at least one person fights her corner, I guess. His program may be on tonight unless football gets in the way.

I was once in a literal communist bookstore and these two old unhappy guys, the communist Statler and Waldorf, were chatting at a table. The conversation got round to Ayn Rand: "oh you know, she took social security/welfare in the end." "Yes, but at least she was an atheist, so she had that going for her." The point of the first comment being to point out a hypocrisy. Actually, the above radio guy rebutted this point once, on his program. His basic argument was that you can disagree with a social policy in principle and seek to end it, but if the thing exists and you can avail yourself of it and it's a material benefit to you, then you can use it without hypocrisy. He buttressed this by comparing the head of a household to a CEO, saying that both are financially obligated to Their People to do right by them with whatever means are available. It was well-argued as he put it, but the hypocrisy still stinks a bit.

A bunch of "tolerant" leftists in here, trashing a dead author that had reached critical levels of acclaim that they couldn't dare dream of reaching.

You know Ayn Rand was a force for good just by the reactionary leftist shills that desperately try to discredit her. No other author gets this much hate. Its kind of like how the media hates our President Trump. You know he's doing Gods work because they hate him more than anyone else.

>>11872945
Coralation isn’t causation. It could be he “to brilliant for his time” or I could be he’s an actual idiot who deserves the hate and derision but this is all hearsay. Do have anything defending his actual ideas cause unless you do this is pointless

>>11871536
true but same could be said for Rawls

>>11873396
Oh no criticism of a political writers work. How horrible we want to actually take a public figure to task and critique there work. That’s so horrible.

>>11871790
t. francois lyotard
t. sandra harding

>>11872507
*violate terms of service*
>MUH FREEZE PEACH

>>11872029
the hero /lit needs but not the one /lit/ deserves

>>11873396
>you know Al-Qaeda is doing God's work because people hate them more than anyone else
>you know syphilis is doing God's work because people hate it more than anything else
>you know North Korea is the best country in the world because people hate it more than anywhere else

kek

>>11873368

People don't "take" social security from the government. The money was theirs to begin with, the government just takes it from them and appropriates it as a wonderful slush fund that perpetuates important programs like paying for Shaniqua's seven fatherless children, or saving the endangered botswanan spotted river slug or vital education programs to teach first graders about trannies, and how we can design less offensive bathroom signs.

Keep up the great work liberals. The kavanaugh hearing was almost the tipping point for full blown hitler rising from the grave like the second coming of christ and roasting you all rotisserie style like some kind of fucked up isis execution en masse. What a time to be alive.

>>11873490
Keep telling yourself that while the muller trial countinues to spiral
Also
>wtf I love social programs now

>>11873396
no one says money is the root of all evil rand you insufferable hackzoid cunt. you probably think that though just because you grew up a primped and preened little jewess to rich parents in soviet union. superior straw man much? ffs, siberian winter should have ended you.

>>11873461
*sluuurp*

>>11871492
>does pseudo philosophy, without th gut of doing it formally/academically
>bro my opinion is objective
>bro state shouldnt exist, let all the good moishe get the power
>long boring pointless books
no wonder why

>>11871492
She isn't hated. You can't hate rubes, for they occupy their own eternally-verdant acre which is completely innocuous to the rest of reality.

>>11873326
Reread what you wrote - Get off your pedestal, your write like shit.

>>11873422
Her work is never critiqued. It's always personal attacks and opinionated hearsay and then when this gets pointed out you shift the goalpost.

For example, in this very thread, first it was "she is a narcissist and self-absorbed"

When the ad-hominem folly is pointed out, then the argument becomes "oh well I just think she sucks as an author... I'm critiquing her writing style not her values".

There should be one and one thing only considered when evaluating Rand, and that is her writings. None of us knew her personally. And from there you can criticize her literary style, or you can criticize the subject matter that she wrote about... -both of which would require you to cite actual passages that shes written.

This of course, never happens. That is because you've probably never read her work and you're just on the leftist bandwagon. And the funny thing about marxists is how little they've actually read marx. He is, from a literary standpoint, the dryest most dull, opinionated author I've ever read. The manifesto is a series of matter-of-fact assertions with no basis or correlation to anything substantive. It's probably the most boring book I've ever had the displeasure of reading, and yet, the amount of hate expressed for his shitty political acumen is by a far and wide margin disproportionate to the amount of hatred Rand gets.

>>11873533
people literally repeat that ad nasuem you retard.

>>11873565
this isn't a creative writing class faggot. Speak concisely without such unnecessary drivel.

>>11871790
rejected academician detected. you're just as weak-minded as the lofty cunts who show up to critique and get ripped apart and vow never to return because the small minds of the leftist academy-machine cannot grasp your genius. Softies, once exposed, always retreat and pose as discerning outsiders.

>>11873593
>tells people "speak concisely without unnecessary drivel"
>is redundant
>says faggot because he can't think of a better insult
how's it feel being 19, randoid?

>>11873587
show me 3. randoms not accepted. book-writers only.

>>11873610
Do you actually believe the point of concise is redundant if expanded on, faggot?

>>11873619
>randoms not accepted
>can't google it to see about 44,800,000 results (0.51 seconds)

>>11873630
not my job to prove your point for you. show me 3 in print citations of this buzzphrase of yours

>>11873624
>missing the point this hard

>>11873656
I didn't miss the point, but posed a question questioning that exact point you claim I missed...
>psst, your the retard

>>11873652
It's not my job to prove my point either fuck head. Clearly, money is the root of all evil has been recited over and over again. A point that is so fucking obvious that I'm not going to waste my time.

>>11873619
its in the bible u fuckign retard lmaof

>>11873581
The amount of hatred Rand gets always seems to me as though she touched a nerve that people would have prefered were never touched. Zizek calls her an over-orthodox but I think it goes deeper since from her style of writing to her philosophy to the plot, it all crystalizes something people don't want to accept.

I do think that her writing is too dry and idealized at times but it's intentional. Too often I see people give half hearted attempts at criticism such as 'oh her heroes are too perfect, and the villains are ugly monsters' and not much else. And if people gave half a thought, they'd know it was a stylistic choice and not a flaw but a preference.

>>11872791
>Of course in the real world, kindness, good will, and respect for others is precisely what people mean by altruism, and the lack of these qualities precisely what selfishness means.
Did you miss the quote in your own post where Ayn Rand says to not confuse compassion for altruism? Sure, when people say to act altruistic, they mean act with some level of compassion, but altruism simply means to act in a sacrificial manner, without any self-interest for the greater good or for others. It's literally slave morality. Even Nietzsche shat on this, but when Ayn Rand does it, we trust 'the public' to tell us what altruism means, huh?

>>11872804
Nothing wrong with namecalling is there's more to just that, which she does do that. There's a really weird show of respect among people that if you ever namecall someone, you've automatically lost the argument. But that's just silly, especially when you only focus on that one aspect.

>>11872826
Rather ironic that you criticize Ayn Rand for jumping arguments yet that's exactly how you criticize her. Three posts going 'look at these quotes' with one snarky sweeping dismissal.

Her argument for Man is a Man is just starting from the ground up that we do not have innate means of survival therefore we need to use reason to survive. Saying it's 'flimsy' by omitting her process is just idiotic.

>Ayn Rand's answer is the first person to get to the government office.
Yes? And you don't say why that's bad except to infer that it is self-evidently bad. If you create an invention or idea and want to patent it, that's up to you, but the argument Ayn Rand makes isn't that any idea can be patented, but an idea that acts as an invention.

Because she hates commies.