Yes of course I've read Rand.

Read it again. It is just as good the second and third time. It's like visiting an old friend.

I read atlas shrugged way too fast

Curi, you asked if anyone would want to discuss Atlas Shrugged in detail. I suspect most of us would. We are a group of many individuals with very diverse thoughts and opinions in many areas - some of us are pro-Trump while others oppose him, some of us believe in God while others are atheists, some prefer ketchup while others prefer mustard (YES! we even have fun while taking silly polls). Though we differ in various ways, I feel safe in saying we all are great admirers of Ayn Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism. For this reason, I suspect discussing Atlas Shrugged, line by line would be a source of enjoyment for most of us.

My one copy of Atlas Shrugged is highlighted much as your discussion does. I would read parts over and over, almost unable to believe Rand got it. I wanted to believe there was such thinking in the real world, my dad ran his business in such a manner.
As to discussions of politics, one cannot read Atlas, or Brave New World, or 1984, without making the connection to the leadership in our own real lives. We want to seek others who believe in the ideas of Objectivism, of self-responsibility, and living for our own sake. Novels inspire, but we must do the real work, not just leave it on the pages. In a little over 90 pages, Rand predicted where we have sadly coe, she knew if we did not value capitalism, this is where we would be - books abandoned or confiscated. Incandescent light bulbs locked up to control the masses, left in the dark The collectivism of the governing by elimation of the work "I" from that socie losing what Rand valued, and knew well how it would happen. She left us with a living philisophy, for us to take up and apply. She gave us novels, which would show us how. How different if every school student read just one Rand novel, and was taught to get it too. Sadly, most of our graducates could not even read her 1,000 plus page novel today, so dumbed down.

We have analyzed AS throughout over the years, and when warranted new aspects mandate to bring it up again.

However, to ignore the political frame we live in would mean living in a bubble that many of the elite chose to do and which we must fight against. Don't forget that AR dealt with politics in both AS and Fountainhead. The politics of terror that we are sinking deeper and deeper into day after day.

I studied philosophy in college and enjoy reading the greatest minds. However, I concluded since then that practicing philosophy for its own sake is a futile exercise. AR did not develop Objectivity for its own sake. To the contrary, she applied it to life, illustrating with solid facts the deviation attributed to politics and the damage caused by the ruling class being in power.

That is why we discuss politics and its detrimental effect on our society.

Welcome curi.
Have you familiarized yourself with Rand's , The Objectivist's Ethics"? I've found this to be the simplicity beyond complexity of Atlas Shrugged.
I perused your website under Morality / Good, and it brought the aforementioned essay to mind. This lecture was delivered in early 1961 at UW Madison.

I've been a paid member of this site for six years now (wow - didn't realize it was that long) and we've already done most of the book numerous times, so most people are looking for fresh material. You are certainly welcome to add your thoughts - just don't be too surprised if what you present isn't necessarily "novel". ;) (pun intended)

Politics is the expression of philosophy. The reason it comes up so often is because it is fresh material to analyze. It is always interesting to compare what happened in the book to what is happening in our world today, but of more import are the actual philosophical discussions. Yes, we love to poke fun at the absurd in politics - because everyone needs a break now and then - but I think if you look at some of the historical posts, we get into it here.

No

"So long as he can’t deliver it, nobody can blame us."
The way Jim cares more about blame than what actually happens stood out to me. I used to think of people like that as scheming to get what they want. AS and Fountainhead show how for some people reactions of other people are their goal, not a means to and end.

OK, well, as an expert on Popper, I can tell you that he's not what you think he is. If you decide to investigate personally, and have comments on passages or questions or something, we can talk about it. (Whether or not I still post at this forum, I'll post at my own forums and can be contacted by email.) Alternatively, if you know of a refutation of Popper which you think is correct and was written by someone who had read the relevant material and who criticizes quotes from that, then that could be discussed now. If you know of no such refutation, I think that says something bad about Popper's opponents – that they reject him without proper argument.

The only two that I read are The Open Society and Its Enemies and The Logic of Scientific Discovery.

Thanks for the Rand quotes on fallibility.

No block quotes here, just italics and bold.

> In fact, [Popper] clearly said that final knowledge is impossible, that we are always improving by correcting errors.

Sure, and Rand said that, too. E.g.:

Do not say that you’re afraid to trust your mind because you know so little. Are you safer in surrendering to mystics and discarding the little that you know? Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life. Redeem your mind from the hockshops of authority. Accept the fact that you are not omniscient, but playing a zombie will not give you omniscience—that your mind is fallible, but becoming mindless will not make you infallible—that an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error. In place of your dream of an omniscient automaton, accept the fact that any knowledge man acquires is acquired by his own will and effort, and that that is his distinction in the universe, that is his nature, his morality, his glory.

> [Popper] advanced falsifiability as a standard for the establishement of truth.

He didn't. And neither your blog post nor your comment contains a quote from Popper. If you're going to claim to know things about him that I don't, and change my mind about what his views are, you'll need quotes. Could you also tell me how many or which of the Popper selections I recommend that you've personally read? I want to know if the situation is we are interpreting those passages differently, or that's not what's going on. http://fallibleideas.com/books#popper

PS This forum doesn't appear to support quotes, only italics and bold. Please tell me if I'm missing something.

Thanks, also for your close reading of Atlas Shrugged. Personally, for my frequent re-readings, I found some different interpretations of certain lines. At some level, how you interpret a painting depends on where you stand and where you came from to get there. That is not to say that it is all subjective or arbitrary, of course. Generally, you do have a good understanding of what Ayn Rand intended by what she wrote.

I will point out that Atlas Shrugged is a novel. It depends on philosophy - as all works of art do - but it is not a philosophical treatise and surely not an encyclopedia. I mention that because of the apparent tension in the portrayal of Eddie Willers, Cheryl Marsh, and others, as "average" people versus the assertion by Dr. Akston that Galt, Ragnar, and Frisco are just "ordinary" people whose thinking is not cluttered with errors.

Thanks for your insights and outlook. I read your blog, the two available articles analyzing Atlas Shrugged and some of your other papers. I downloaded "Why Fallibility is Important" last night and read it this morning. I also found Karl Popper's ideas to be interesting and important to consider. Popper does offer isolated truths. However, generally, he is wrong. (See my blog here: https://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/2... )

And I am not alone among Objectivists in that. You attempted to sell this on the Rebirth of Reason site and were limited to posting in the Dissent forum. See here: http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/Diss...
The moderators found your thesis to be markedly inconsistent with Objectivism.

The reductio ad absurdum of Popper's philosophy is post modernism, the claims by Paul Feuerabend, Jacques Lacan, and others, that ultimately, we can know nothing; reason and reality are illusions; science is a fraud; and so on.

I know that Popper did not claim that at all. But neither did he establish an objective basis for knowledge. In fact, he clearly said that final knowledge is impossible, that we are always improving by correcting errors. He advanced falsifiability as a standard for the establishement of truth. In that, I agree, to the extent that falsifiability is a test for truth.

But Objectivism does not assert - in fact denies and disproves - that failing to be falsified is the same as discovering necessary facts.

I agree. The Gulch should be about obtaining as much knowledge about Objectivism as possible not about politics. I also spend too much time posting and replying to political content on the site. However, if one ignores the political environment, one ignores the preeminent threat to individual liberty. Do you think the AOC would give a rats behind about any of this except to brand it as reactionary and ban it from public discourse?
I have been reading and studying Ayn Rand for approximately 60 years. I'm just starting to truly understand some of her basic ideas and getting a semisolid grasp of her philosophy. It takes much effort and much thinking to grasp what she is talking about. not an easy task in todays environment.
So, Lucky, give us political junkies a small break.

Yes there is too much politics here, even tho' I often indulge.

The AS Close Reading chapter 1 is what the Gulch site should be about. It shows how dense, packed with ideas, Rand's writing is.

Comment 1- main character Dagny has a position which, certainly in those days, would be described as a man's job. Yet she does not disguise herself, she dresses like a woman but does not put on an act.
Comment 2- You have analyzed very well the scene of Dagny in her brother Jim's office. As you say it takes several readings to get the nuances of meaning. In my first reading of AS I had a different reaction, I could hardly stop ROFL, Jim trotted out excuse after excuse for inaction, he was utterly squelched on each one.
Comment 3- You mention the sentence early in the story where the bus is described as expertly driven, this is the first clue that Rand respected the working man when work was performed with skill and dedication.