KawaiiMathematician
Wow! So Reddit is actively stealing the work of creators. It’s even worse than I had imagined. I am very glad that I have left the platform now!
I told protestors on my favorites subs that they needed to post an alternative if anything would happen, but no one did anything. Well, I’m here now anyway, and I posted a farewell message that will hopefully wake a few others up as well.
I really don’t have a problem with this. No government should support any private causes, no matter their nature, with the exception of international treaties and the like, such as NATO or the UN. I think it makes sense to ban flags representing personal opinions from federal buildings. LGBTQ+ rights must be protected by every rational humanitarian government, but it’s rather unprofessional for a government entity to fly a flag of solidarity next to a national flag in my opinion.
The solution to the “both sides” argument is to develop a rigorous system of values based on purely logical reasoning with a definitive answer to what is ethical and what cannot be tolerated. As long as people follow emotional arguments and lines of reasoning based on higher-level concepts that fail to highlight the chain of proof that has led to their truth, then uncertainty will cause inaction and complacency.
Firstly, that pessimistic attitude is invading the minds of many and all it does is confuse values and prevent progress, so I would recommend focusing on doing what you can to assert your values and bring change rather than spreading fatalism.
Secondly, this formulation has been done to a great extent by Ayn Rand, and reading Peikoff’s full exploration of her ideas would be a great way to see this in detail. I think her prejudice prevents her from reasoning accurately on some higher-level points, but the point is that ethics and politics can be derived from basic axioms specifically because all humans have one core value of their own continued existence. I’ve been working the details out and I’d like to talk about it if you are interested in playing with the ideas.
Your arguments have nothing to do with my comment and distract from the point. There is nothing similar between lacking the need to eat or being abused with a nail and the fact that consistent and fair political ideas must be rational in nature. I didn’t claim that emotions are not relevant.
Emotions represent beliefs which, if they match what ia metaphysically true, will ve logical. Emotions that conflict with facts represent miscalculations. The point is that, since ethics can be based off of logic from starting principles about humans and the universe, it should be followed as such instead of being tugges in any given direction by populism.
At any rate, you’re right that others don’t support the idea.
Have you really looked into her philosophical work? I think she’s historically the closest to constructing a convincing ethical system based on logical principles connected to reality. Your last quote is something that might as well have been a toned-down version of her ideas, given how close it is to what she believed in her life.
I don’t suggest ignoring anything. However, many people take the fatalist perspective as a careful one without really evaluating its accuracy, and thus it spreads and locks an uncertain future into the result it assumes.
Okay, but have you read a construction of her actual system? It’s not about greed, it’s a system of ethics based on two things: basic metaphysical axioms you must accept to even consider any kind of philosophical discourse, and the fact that human being are alive. It sounds impossible, but she created a 100% objective system of ethics based on these principles, hence the name Objectivism. The point isn’t whether you like the idea or not, the point is whether you understand the logical origin of the ideas and why they are correct. It’s a deeply interesting system if you want to fully examine it. Here is a link to an objective source on her work including many criticisms that might help you understand it better if that’s something you wish to do.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ayn-rand/notes.html#note-7