Egervari

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Posts posted by Egervari

  2. Posted · Report post

    Yeah, that's exactly it - I guess I'm just not aware of the fear that they experience. I mean, these people seem to be so brazzen with their actions, as if they know they won't ever get caught - like ever. It really seems like they don't feel fear of their actions. But, I can't possibly know what they feel.

    I know Rand's ethics isn't the same as karma, but I do wish these people had it coming to them in the external world too. I wish Bush was actually hit the shoe for example, lol.

  3. Posted · Report post

    I really enjoy Rand's work, but something that has been bothering me is how does Rand's ethics apply to a psychopath who seems to actually get away with evil, even in the long-term? I think with most people, especially non-psychopaths, Rand's ethics works out pretty well. Things like guilt, shame, regret, etc. are definitely not things that benefit one's rational self-interest, so committing evils that causes these emotions would not be a good thing to do for a non-psychopath.

    So what of the psychopath? Yes, there's a dumb psycopaths that can't escape reality anyway. They do eventually get caught if they murder someone for example, and they can't escape what they've done just as the non-psychpath - they will have to behave differently as a result of the murder than they would otherwise, liking being on the run, constantly having to lie, and so on. I realize that most psychopaths still can't escape rand's ethics and show that she's still right.

    But... how does that explain the psychopath who has no need to worry? This is not a straw man argument - at least I hope it's not - but there's seems to be people, however few, that to get away with a great amount of evil and they live well until the end of their days. Some of these people are the most well-connected and powerful in the political sphere, and they are basically untouchable. They figured seemed to really figure out how to avoid the negative consequences of reality.

    Maybe this is a straw man after all - I can't really gleem into the mind of an evil, powerful, well-connected psychopath... maybe they have a whole lost of problems I am not aware of - but I just don't understand why so many powerful people don't have it coming to them, and they seem to have everything in life. It seems that by living an alternative to Rand's ethics - a drastically different one in fact - they have prospered anyway.

    I'd love to hear people's thoughts on this.

  4. Posted · Report post

    Software engineering is method and procedure, not metaphysics. Time is a measure of change. Time is in the universe; the universe is not in time. The universe is eternal means it is outside of time, not that there is an actual infinity. There is a potential infinite in measuring time backwards or forward insofar as change exists. That is an open-ended process of measurement within the universe. It does not mean existence is infinite or a thing called 'time' is infinite. Neither does existence have a beginning in time, it simply is. It changes, and that is how you experience time. The totality of existence does not have a "cause" outside of existence; there is nothing outside of existence to be a cause. Existence is what it is, always, at each point in time. There is no sequence of existences existing in time, only change of the only existence that is.

    Actually, that is exactly what I meant. In software, we don't just model method and procedures. Maybe they did 30+ years ago, but we actual model entities/concepts first, as well as hierarchies and all kinds of things that are extremely similar to the way Ayn Rand describes entities in metaphysics and concepts in epistemology. Entities in software (called classes) have attributes and behaviour. Good software design mirrors what happens in reality the best it can, although we usually take a snapshot of the things that are of interest to the program and not everything. So, in such a computer program, time would in fact be in the entity 'Existence' :)

  5. Posted · Report post

    This is all rationalism cut off from reality. He is misusing the concepts of statistics, chance and and probability as metaphysical. They are means of estimating what something may be, based on limited evidence, and have nothing to do with explaining why things are as they are. Things are exactly what they are because they are what they are. There is a 100% "chance" that he is what he is, or he wouldn't be here talking about it. As usual, the attempt to replace causality with supernatural intervention does not solve his original problem and makes his "solution" even more hopelessly complex and fantastically hopeless, which tells you something about his motives that you mistook for rational understanding. He prefers deep mystery.

    You put this very nicely. Thanks! I actually tried to tell him that entities are what they are as well, and just because we may not know why they are the way they are, it still doesn't take away the fact that they do exist and have the nature they have.

    I also pointed out to him that perhaps the constants that he is referring to also had to be that way, as he didn't present ANY proof at all that they could have been variable. He just assumed that the constants were mere variables before they became constants (kind of funny when one actually types this. lol).

    One point I forgot to mention was that he said "your philosophy assumes that existence is infinite, and because it's infinite and nothing infinite can exist in reality, that proves that it must have a starting point." In other words, his starting point is god.

    But I went on to tell him, "Well, clearly existence exists... we know this... so it must be finite because it IS something."

    Then he went on to say, "But if it's eternal, it you don't have starting point and an ending point. It stretches forwards and backwards infinitely long."

    I was reminded that the potentiality is infinite, but in this moment in time, it is clearly finite. But then I got to thinking on it more and realized that there is only 1 existence, and this whole thing about time was just a way to obfuscate the fact that there's only one of them. Like, if I had to model existence in a computer program, I would include time as one of its attributes, but I would only have 1 class and 1 instantiated object of this class in the entire program (we call that a singleton in software design).

    I don't know if my explanation is right, but it makes a lot more sense to me than what he's saying.

    Never grant "assuming his premise" to a rationalist, it only keeps his game going for no good purpose.

    Noted :)

    Multiple chances for anything to happen doesn't mean it will no matter how long you wait. Rolling dice eventually gives all the combinations because all of them are possible because of what they are; there is no chance that one of them will turn into a toad and commune with the tooth fairy no matter how long you wait and whether or not anyone is watching. There is no "all possible worlds", only this one.

    Agreed. I was merely going along with his random constant premise and following that out, the very thing you said not to do. LOL.

    And if you never know why, they are still correct. But he is not asking "why", he asking "who", assuming primacy of consciousness. He does not accept your axioms of existence and consciousness. He thinks consciousness must create existence rather than being aware of it.

    Exactly. I tried so hard to get this point through, but he kept saying, "How convenient for you to ignore this and say it's not an aspect of philosophy so that you can use it as an excuse to not answer my questions."

    I asked him several times, "What are your premises?" and "Show me, from the ground up, how you arrive at these conclusions." Of course, he never did. He just kept saying, "I have you the evidence! Why don't you believe it! Argh!" Very frustrating :)

    What if evolution had not been proven -- how does an unproven hypothesis by virtue of its lack of proof make another one proven? His arguments are nonsensical. Arguing over whether or not evolution is proven science does not address that.

    Totally agree. I brought this to his attention as well (I didn't type it). He just changed the topic and started attacking me :)

    Yes there is an easy way to shut it down. Stop talking to him. The conversation wasn't running in circles, you were, in trying to contend with the impossible because you mistook his rationalism for taking ideas seriously. They weren't the kind of ideas (about reality) you had in mind. You can only spend so much time talking to someone by providing rational explanations before deciding if he is playing a rationalist game not worth your time. Anything else only sanctions and encourages him. You have no obligation to engage anyone who wants to talk to you or to try to convince him. Learn from the experience. You only have so much time on earth to pursue and achieve your values. Use it wisely.

    I have a hard time with this, because I think my world would be much better if the people around me were more rational. I will have to learn when it's time to jump ship next time rather than invest so much, because no good comes out of it other than frustration and wasted time, which you are totally correct.

    Thanks for the insights and tips!

  6. Posted · Report post

    Is it immoral for an Objectivist to use a public library or even drive their car on a public road for that matter? Is it a case of well, were paying for it already, might as well use it?

    A more then somewhat socialist friend of mine were just have an argument about the local Tea Party canceling their protest do to a weather report released by an organization that is paid for by the government. Wouldn't the moral thing to do have been to just go ahead and protest in spite the NWS.

    If one didn't make or support the idea of public services, then it would be silly not to at least get some benefit from your taxes. You didn't make the rules, and if you did, then that is another matter.

    That's a very tricky position. Using this logic, you would argue that it's okay to use the welfare system if you once had a job and paid your taxes. "Well, I didn't support the decision, but now that's there, you can't fault me for using it, can you?"

    The argument could be, "Well, I'm just getting a smaller portion of my own money back... and if they didn't take my money through forced taxes, I wouldn't even need the welfare in the first place."

    Still, I'm sure a lot of Objectivists would not take the welfare on princple.

  7. Posted · Report post

    Maybe, but it is a moot point. $500,000 is not very much money in terms of government spending. The stimulus package was hundreds of billions.

    To be fair, any wrongful spending, regardless of amount, is fair game to point out. If he's right, he has a point :)

    No because if he wasn't president he would be able to travel without that security. Obama does not have the money to spend on all those security costs, and having a president killed is extremely dangerous for the United States. There a lot of people who would love to get their hands on him.

    Perhaps what he's saying is that since other candidates competing for his job have to spend the money using campaign donations and not government funds, should the same standard also apply to current president in office? I guess what he's saying is, "why does obama or any other president get an exception when he's not actually WORKING?" If anything, would these little advantages make an unfair election?

  9. Posted · Report post

    I recently came across a person I was debating with, and I think a pretty good job explaining the points, but I wanted to be sure if my responses were truthful and accurate.

    This person claimed that it's "statistically impossible" for life, matter, etc. be created. He's one of those fine-tuned universe guys, and because of that theory lends itself to a creator, be believes in god. I am not a physics guy, so I simply asked him, "what evidence do you have to support that it is statistically impossible?"

    He goes on to talk about how all these constants, like the cosmological constant, needed to be exactly as they are in order for the universe to exist as it is today. He concluded that since it's a "statistical impossibility", it would take an infinite number of chances to reach it, and thus is not possible.

    I stopped him right there, because even assuming that his premise is correct, 1 out of a "very large number" is still not infinitely small, it's just " a very small chance".

    Now I don't know much about this, but if there's multiple chances for this to happen, and nobody's around to observe it... eventually it would happen right?

    But it doesn't stop there. He showed no evidence that these constants could be anything other than what they are in the first place. He's assuming that by chance they could be anything at all. Again, he showed no proof of this.

    I asked him, what are you axioms? He said the same as mine (existence and consciousness). But he says it's not enough for philosophy to simply take for granted that things exists, it needs to explain "why". I stopped him there and said, "No, that's the job of science, not philosophy." I proceeded to give him many examples and proofs that just because we don't know why doesn't mean the axioms and the proofs built on the axioms are in any invalidated. In fact, if we should learn the "why", all of the philosophical knowledge would still be correct.

    Of course, he doesn't accept this. He goes into multiverse theory, and says it's logically necessary. I ask him, is multiverse theory proven? He says it is, but we looked on wikipedia and it only acknowledges that it's "hypothetical" at best. I guess that's one more point for me. He was basing all kinds of proofs on top of multiverse theory, which fall apart because multiverse theory isn't proven.

    Then he goes on to say, "Evolution is hypothetical too, so they are both proven". Except I reminded him that evolution has perception going for it, not to mention that we can analyze really old fossils and know that certain life forms did not exist like they do today. Oh, we also this thing called "dna" and "the study of genetics" which overwhelmingly points the validation of evolution. So I told him, "No, they aren't even the same league".

    I mean, let's consider the fact that our consciousness, according to him, cannot perceive these other existences in the multiverse. So even though we can't even perceive them, let alone rationally prove it... he wants to take it as fact. Yeah right.

    And then began to blast me that "my philosophy assumes god does not exist and works from there". And I had to explain to him, from the ground up, that it makes no such assumption. In fact, there is no proof per say because 'god' would be an anti-concept - nothing in reality even suggests that such a being exists in the first place.

    I guess the conversation was running in circles, but I was wondering if you have some points that are so clear to shut this down much more easily than I could. Thanks!