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It is completely unfair to dismiss Rand for any one thing she says or believes. Like any philosophy, the good come with the bad, and Rand has some very thought

• nandemo 17y ago
  On HN of all places, I expect that most people would agree that there's an objective reality. I wonder if greenlblue stopped watching because she was talking about something so darned obvious.
  • greenlblue 17y ago
    No, I stopped watching because she was talking about something so obviously wrong. The amount of processing your brains does to fill in details and recreate memories from sparse details is quite amazing and this is enough evidence for me to throw out objective reality. Also, I don't understand how HN influences people's philosophical views or why anyone with an HN account would be pro objective reality.
    • tokenadult 17y ago
      I used to have occasion to read transcripts of first degree murder trials when the convicted murderers appealed their convictions to my states's Supreme Court, where I was a judicial clerk. It is a fact that when people are put on oath to testify at trial, and subject to cross-examination, their memories will be both faulty and internally contradictory. But that doesn't mean that nothing they report happened. The jury's job at trial is to figure out which partial, or biased, or mistaken recollections best correspond to what happened, but something happened. What do you say is what to hold on to after you "throw out objective reality"?
    • T_S_ 17y ago
      There is only a Rashomon-like reality and it is getting worse thanks to compressed sensing technology. Just kidding I think. There are generalizations like mathematics that are objective, at least until we try to apply them to the world. I always find it interesting that she says many of the same things that an anarchist of the left would say yet they would both hate to be identified with the other. It also seems to be impossible to bring about and maintain the systems objectivists, libertarians or anarchists advocate without a widespread shift in morality if not human nature itself.
    • thaumaturgy 17y ago
      (I haven't watched the interview.) I suppose that whether reality is objective or subjective is both one of the greatest questions in philosophy, and one of the most useless. But, what you're talking about is the difference between reality, and perception of reality. I happen to think that reality is pretty objective, various nuances of quantum mechanics aside. I certainly think that reality existed long before we as individuals or as species appeared on the scene, and I think it extends far beyond our relatively meager sphere of perception.
    • volodia 17y ago
      You're contradicting yourself. If you don't believe in objective reality, you can't use biological arguments involving the brain. If you doubt objective reality, then you have to doubt all those observations about the brain you mention. (Natural) science presupposes the existence of an objective reality you can measure. If you don't believe in that, then you have to doubt all observations you make about that "reality".
      • greenlblue 17y ago
        Ya, let me cover my eyes and ears and tie my hands behind my back as well since I disagree with some persons view of what things are. Grow up.
    • Tycho 17y ago
      Why would your memory disprove objective reality? Does a painting of a garden disprove the garden existed? Did you mean, objective perception?
      • greenlblue 17y ago
        No, I meant reality. Unless you give me a means of separating my perceptions from the reality then there is no useful distinction to be drawn here.
        • RevRal 17y ago
          Confusing the map and territory needs to be classified as a psychological disorder, where sanity is below a minimum threshold. This kind of thinking is too easy. This is basic stuff, and you call it "obviously wrong." That's an indication that you haven't thought about it enough; there is very little which is "obviously" this or that. You must examine an idea and it's surrounding evidences, or established ideas. If you're going to state something as "obvious" in the sense that it's axiomatic, that's fine if you are treating it as a temporary variable and examining its implications and drawing it out to conclusions. The mistake at this point is noticing that, after treating objective reality as axiomatic, the world you see is congruent with your internalized map and therefore that is "how it is." This is a functional facade. An illusion, and you've been tricked. The world is not very colorful in an objective reality. \/@greenlblue: Sorry, I have a bad habit of submitting comments then editing the rest into it, so I don't know where into my editing you read. Anyway, from my experience, there's no use in carrying a conversation about "objective reality." I just had to say a little bit since I wouldn't feel right not giving some direction.
          • greenlblue 17y ago
            Making vague analogies with no relevance should be one as well. When you figure out a way of putting my perception, the map, and "reality", the territory, side by side on the screen then you can call me crazy for denying its existence. Until then be a little more courteous and respectful of other people's opinions and don't accuse them of confounding variables.
    • SwellJoe 17y ago
      The flawed human brain and its ability to remember is merely evidence of a flawed observer, and not evidence of a flawed reality. The processing your brain does to fill in details is irrelevant when there are multiple methods of observation and multiple observers, and all agree with reasonable precision. When multiple observers can measure an object and find that it has volume and mass, we can all agree that the thing exists. We might disagree on what to name it, or what it "means", but it'd be pointless to argue that it might really not be there. While one could argue that everything, including all the other observers, are a product of my imagination, it isn't productive to do so. Whether it is all in my head (or in a supercomputer and I'm really just a simulation) isn't a useful theory. I can't do anything with that theory. It is untestable, and thus is mere superstition. In short, objective reality is a good model for...reality. And, so, it makes sense to behave as though jumping off of a cliff will probably end ones existence. I believe the notion that someone on HN would be "pro objective reality" (whatever that means...I'm not sure there is any way to win against what is, so why fight against it?) comes from the fact that we are all mostly nerdy, science-oriented, and we tend to be more likely to know how things (where "things" can be mechanical, biological, electrical, etc.) work. We know that when you feed voltage into a particular semi-conductor, the same thing happens every time...so, we tend to be less likely to fall into the trap of thinking things happen because of magic or because we imagined they happened or whatever. In short, I reckon accepting objective reality has a net positive value in my life. I'm not sure how denying reality would do me any good. I'm pretty pragmatic, and I like having some level of control over stuff in my life, so I reckon I'm a believer.
      • greenlblue 17y ago
        Whoa, nobody said anything about denying that things exist but what I did deny was the fact that it was objective. Objective only makes sense if you know what subjective means and since all I know are subjective states of being it does not make sense for me to say there is something else that I can not make any sense of that is as real as anything I feel. All I can say is that there is a patchwork of things that my brain puts together and that thing is what I call reality but to jump from the patchwork to the existence of a completed whole is in my opinion a mistake.
• greenlblue 17y ago
  I'm not dismissing a person. I'm sure in her time she was a nice and friendly person but that doesn't stop me from rejecting her philosophy.