Susanart19523rtf it seems that things have taken a turn recently. I’ve seen a number of comments calling names, lots and lots of pro-gun posts, and some actually advocating violence. It’s disturbing, especially from a group that I expected to be in favor of reason and against initiating violence.

People seem to think that the outcome in atlas shrugged is fiction. Perhaps they should watch the current news to see just how fictional it is. I do think that the only way people will accept that a change is needed is for their to be a collapse of the current system. What happens after that is dependent on a degree of rational thought, however.

absolutely correct.

True comment that premature babies are also viable is true, to varying degrees with outside help. It seems to me that abortion is most cases is just a low rent way to solve a self created problem. Much better to solve it either before its conceived or very shortly after.

It appears that one big difference between communist, socialist, and OUR system is just the group at the top that gets most of the money.

diving>you must mean its already there.

I read most of her work, but I have to say that I do make up my own mind and live with the consequences. I would engage in abortion if I were a woman. It seems just like a low rent way out of self created problem. I am not anti business, but I do think they have to treat people fairly and NOT use government to get special privileges at the expense of others.

I hope you're right. But it was noticeably cultish while Rand was alive. I'm thinking especially of her very public expulsion of Alan Greenspan from Objectivism. She did go through some disillusionments and learn from them, but sometimes she just wouldn't accept that she was wrong about something.

Yes, and the idea of interchangeable parts was Thanks to Eli Whitney, of the Cotton Gin.
But it came from Gunsmithing. Back in the day, every gun was made UNIQUE. A trigger from one gun would NOT work with most other guns.

Whitney, seeing the insanity of this, and realizing that 20 broken guns could MAYBE net you 1 gun.
Realized that if the parts were made to the same standard... Then 20 broken guns could become 10-16 working guns.
Furthermore, this feature alone would literally cause gun purchasers to FLOCK to standardized parts.

Ford was a PoS of a person. Awarded awards by the NAZIs... (National Socialists for those thinking Hitler was RIGHT wing, LMAO. Ignorant people!). And he built tanks for them... While Standard Oil (and Shell, I think) provided the fuel additive for his plane fuel and rocket fuel. IF THESE 2 companies would have withheld this from the Nazis... The war could have NEVER been fought. Hitler had to IMPORT these chemicals! (Conveniently left out of our education about the war)...

Copulation feels good. for one reason. It ensures the race procreates! Consider how internal this urge is. We wrap societal rules around it. But just applying the rules of nature. The body chemistry of pregnant women. Their glow. The direct impact on a man. Yes, he could just leave them. But for EONS he usually did not. and if he did, 2 things happened. Either his family/offspring DIED for lack of support. Or they survived, being raised by a mom or a village. And that CHANGES the offspring (as we see in young boys raised by moms. They can have SIGNIFICANT changes in both directions of Testosterone. Raised in a loving/caring environment, their testosterone drops. Raised in a Poor/Cruel/Painful environment, their Testosterone cranks higher. It takes a man to TAMP that down, usually).

Anyways, we, as society wrapped rules around this crap. Our rules are half-baked and full of superstition. But also designed to ensure the largest group of people survive into the future.

And that is the fundamental difference between the 2 sides in my opinion. The left believe we have too many people, and too few resources, and we should give to people based on their NEED. The more enlightened realize that EVERY PERSON on the earth today could easily fit in a 3ft square in Texas alone. Let that image sink in. The vast majority of this country and most countries are open land. A handful of cities hold the majority of our population. Their cognitive bias is skewed. And manipulated.

People today will answer this question: "Where does Electricity Come From?"
With: "The Wall and/or The Electric Company" (and thus missing the point that we CREATE it with Energy/Fuel)

Dob, I COMPLETELY agree that the Large Companies use the law as a barrier to entry for their competition.
The FDA shouldn't APPROVE drugs the way they do (and then go to work for those companies), despite the science.
I would be happy with the FDA being reduced to LABELLING.
- This is DANGEROUS/ADDICTIVE
- This May work for Pain
- This drug requires 1,000 people to take it for 1 person to get the benefit

Imagine... Meanwhile, let me harp on Vitamin C. We are told that High Dose Vitamin C does nothing to help colds, etc.
YET, Linus Pauling had plenty of evidence to the contrary... They REFUTED his studies by using PALTRY amounts of Vitamin C, but others later showed EVEN AT those amounts there was an OBVIOUS BENEFIT. Of the 2 sets of studies, which one do you think they published? Yep. The one that WRONGLY refuted Pauling (a 2 times Nobel Laureate).

Furthermore, there are a ton of Claims that High Dose Vitamin C was used to defeat Viral infections like Polio and Cancer. This was REALLY high dose stuff, given as an IV... Which allows 200 times the blood concentration (in line with what animals who produce their own C will produce).

Don't worry. That study was REFUTED with High Dose ORAL vitamin C. 30 years AFTER it was known that Oral Vitamin, regardless of the dose, can only raise the blood levels to a specific (200 times LOWER) range.

As an ENGINEER who wears a CGM. I took 6G of Vitamin C for a virus recently, and it spiked my glucose for 85 to 145. [This is FALSE. Vitamin C and Glucose are SO SIMILAR, that the CGM confuses one for the other! The MFG warns you of this]. Keep in mind that my actual Glucose (as measured with a blood stick) did not move.

Using this knowledge. Would a better study not consider using the Delta in the CGM value as a way to measure how much vitamin C was stored interstitually? (Which, FWIW, becomes a CONTINUOUS Source to replace the Vitamin C in the blood), and as my glucose dropped back down to NORMAL on the CGM... I could TELL I needed another Vitamin C dose.
==

Maybe it's just me. But I feel 80% of the problems we face are simply so easy to fix. It's not that we don't understand how to fix them. It is simply TOO PROFITABLE for a few, to payoff our "RULERS" to not let us get this level of information/education out to the people.

Our "Rulers" are captured by $ and re-election and corruption. The Captors are the biggest/wealthiest groups in the world.

And then there is us... We The Living... That are left... Depressingly so...

We the Living was depressing. And I think your analysis of the collusion between big business and government is absolutely correct. And, yes, the country is quickly diving into fascism.

There seems to be a number of posts arguing against abortion and pro-abortion. But since humans first walked upright and became self aware, they knew what caused pregnancy even if they did not know how it worked. Now in this day and age would it not be better to prevent the pregnancy than to undergo what is invasive surgery. What planned parent hood does not do is teach women how not to get pregnant because it would hurt the baby killing business and the selling of fetal tissue for research.

I totally agree with all of this.

Agreed.

Agreed. I think that is what was wrong with the Roe decision to start with and what is wrong with this new decision. Instead of looking to legal precedents and saying "we have to rule this way because that's what the law meant at X time in history" the courts should be looking at what we know scientifically and letting that inform their decisions. Sometimes the law literally is blind and blindness makes it stupid.

I love this response! Well said and well reasoned. This is the type of discussions I think people on both sides of the abortion issue should be having with each other. I think there is more common ground than people realize because they get emotional and entrenched and won't talk to each other.

Abortion would be almost unnecessary if people would use birth control, which is cheap and readily available in the U.S. You don't get to kill someone else because you acted irresponsibly.

I haven't read all of her works. 'Atlas' and 'the fountainhead'. I enjoyed both. I didn't agree with everything she wrote, but did think most of it was prophesy ( and has been proved as such) of Obama's and Biden's administrations.

I've read all of Rand's work except for a full read-through of all the articles in The Objectivist and The Ayn Rand Letter. 'Also had the opportunity in the 1990s to take Leonard Peikoff's taped 1976 "Philosophy of Objectivism" lecture course twice, and read his OPAR and a number of works by other Objectivist thinkers, as well as attend a number of their lectures in person. So I have a good understanding of her philosophy, though I won't claim to be a philosopher, or an "expert" on her philosophy, and as a standard disclaimer "I do not claim to speak for Objectivism," [There, donkey properly covered.] I urge every one of you to similarly explore Rand in depth, because her work is easily the most important philosophical advance since Locke hammered out his theory of rights and the American Founders created this nation. (Sorry Howie. Well actually I'm not.)

I have "chewed," understand, and for many years agreed with, the Objectivist position on abortion, but in recent years I've come to the conclusion - a conclusion possibly in error philosophically but which I believe is a line of thinking we must explore in any case - that Rand herself and all of the Objectivist community have made and are making a catastrophic error on abortion. I say "catastrophic" because if we've been wrong, we've been condoning murder on a massive scale. To put it in less inflammatory terms: We had better be right on this because human lives are literally hanging in the balance.

I won't try to present a thesis or treatise here - I would definitely hit the character-limit for this form 1/10 of the way in and I simply don't have the time or the formal expertise. But as briefly as possible, I think it's an error on two elements of metaphysics: causality and the nature of man.

In a nutshell, or the "standing on one foot" version:

Along with its epistemology, Objectivism correctly derives from the metaphysical fact of existence (reality) as an absolute, and of man's nature (as rational and individual,) as an absolute as well. All subsequent branches in philosophy's hierarchical structure - ethics, politics, aesthetics - stand atop that foundation and depend on it. In this particular context the relevant point is: man's individuality.

I submit that pregnancy, though a temporary condition, comprises a secondary metaphysical state of man that is utterly separate from, but no less factual than, individuality. It is a condition in which man becomes - again temporarily, but literally and factually - a duality rather than an individual; the only condition (aside from permanently-conjoined twins,) in which two human beings are physically part of one another, albeit briefly. The issue of the rights of mother vs. embryo must therefore be formulated not on the basis of individuality but rather on the metaphysical fact of duality.

So moving into ethics (and acknowledging the need for a lot of intermediate material to hash out 'twixt the two areas): As a duality, neither of the two has a right to kill the other for any reason (not that the issue of that decision ever comes up for the embryo, except for Embryo Chuck Norris,) any more than any individual has the right to kill any other individual.

The related, supporting metaphysical position (within Objectivism,) that "a potentiality is not an actuality and therefore cannot possess rights in any degree" I think is an error on causality.

The first analogy I thought about is that if someone is holding a ball made of chalk and drops it, by the laws of physics the ball will certainly hit the ground at some point; the fact that someone could take a bat, strike the ball halfway to the ground and disintegrate it into a cloud of dust that dissipates in the wind in a million different directions, does not invalidate the fact of the ball's initial existence or of gravity or of the laws of physics. It's not a perfect analogy, so another: If there's a nest of utterly helpless and defenseless baby birds screeching for food, and I capture the chicks' parents and lock them in a cage until the chicks die, it doesn't invalidate the fact that the chicks were, in fact, birds that would eventually have grown, learned to fly, and become 100% self-sufficient. To bring it to the physical connection element: If I remove an egg from a bird and cook it up for breakfast, does it somehow obliterate the egg's factual nature as a bird, albeit a bird at a very early step in its development?

The fact that an embryo is "a mass of protoplasm" that is "a potentiality" does not alter the biological fact that the nature of those protoplasmic cells is, in fact, that of human embryo cells right down to their DNA, or that those cells, invariably and inevitably, will in fact grow to a fully-formed human being - as a natural, causal process under normative conditions. The fact that that process is not complete and can be forcibly interrupted, cannot just magically wipe out - "Nothing to see here folks, move right along" fashion - the very nature of the entity itself. Or obliterate the causal fact of its ultimate development - or the fact that its nature remains its nature, A is A fashion, regardless of at which point in that process the entity happens to be sitting while being evaluated by others.

To put it a little more concisely, I do not agree with the idea that the mere fact of an entity - which exists and which has a particular, factual nature - being situated at a very early stage in its development, can thereby negate that entity's factual nature altogether. A thing is what it is, by its factual nature, no matter where it sits on the timeline of its existence.

/ 0.2¢

Cool! Was wondering if you had misspelled "beasties." Me dino is more into Western art and mythology.
If someone bet a million dollars that I could not name all the deities on Mount Olympus by both their Greek and Roman names, I'd be a millionaire.

So self awareness is any resistance to harm ( seems a concept requiring some notion of possession). That would indicate that there is no difference for other members of the animal kingdom which fight to keep living against being dismembered which happens millions of times to animals. Fighting against harm is built into all life. Humans do painful actions against new born babies all the time, such as circumcision with the knowledge that until remembering self is mature enough, the pain is not harmful and will not be remembered. A fetus is incapable of consciously suffering from dismemberment. In the modern world the act of infanticide has been mostly stamped out. I would say that removing a potential should be a choice just as it is a choice to birth a baby. Life force is not a ghost in a machine but just the biological machine itself and nothing separable from it. When the machine dies there is no life left to exist, so don't fear ghost stuff or afterlife.

I certainly hope that nurse never goes into either neonatal or gerontology care. If awareness of self is a necessary precursor to a right to life -- such that the lack of such means that you could get rid of a child who wasn't turning out satisfactorily -- then does that extend to adults in comas? Adults with cognitive difficulties? The onset of dementia? Of course, it also begs the question of why a child wouldn't be turning out in an acceptable fashion -- poor or toxic parenting comes to mind.

To a reductionist mindset, we are all just a clump of something, whether it be chemicals or cells. Myself, I cannot reconcile an objective formulation of individual human rights with a notion that an entire class of persons, easily the most vulnerable persons among the family of all humans, has their very right to any recognition being entirely dependent upon the whims of one female individual. We recoil in horror when a woman murders her child or allows them to suffer and die from neglect or from the violence of her boyfriend, but we shrug when she aborts a child because carrying a child to term would be inconvenient. I understand the rationale for the difference in reaction, but I do not agree with it.

Best friends. Cranes and dragons respect each other's important roles in Eastern art and mythology.

Besties?

She used several types of amphetamines such as Dexamyl. But she wasn't who she was there would not be her great works.