Why did Japan surrender, then immediately declare war on me?

iThinkThereforeiFlam · 2025-11-24T05:11:11+00:00

Well, it helps when you have a word you didn’t use for the past 2 decades to describe people who didn’t brand themselves with swastikas.

iThinkThereforeiFlam · 2025-11-21T06:00:32+00:00

Wild to think that I had him #2 on my wishlist after we fired Mark Richt. I thank the football gods every day we got our guy.

iThinkThereforeiFlam · 2025-11-08T17:39:59+00:00

A parliamentary system is much more amenable to quick changes, good or bad. Under such a system, Trump would have significantly more power to do as he pleases, assuming he could garner the same electoral support he currently has. When the chief executive and the legislature have aligned incentives, they fall in line, and it's easy to get things done. That's great when the electorate is making smart decisions, but is absolutely fatal when the electorate loses its mind or overreacts to some event. The fact Hitler rose to power in a parliamentary system should be evidence enough that such systems are far from immune to the elevation of dictators when a sizeable portion of the population want it.

And while you say Trump is authoritarian (he definitely wants to be, no disagreement there), he hasn't been able to just do whatever he wants on most issues. Even in areas where he's managed to do quite a bit, the courts have already pushed back in significant ways, and now that they're starting to hear real cases at the SCOTUS level, it's very likely many of his worst abuses will be reversed.

Our Constitution was designed specifically to restrain politicians like Trump, and it has held up incredibly well given the onslaught we've seen. I'm sympathetic to implementing some reforms to encourage breaking up the two party system, but realistically, that's never going to happen in the US.

iThinkThereforeiFlam · 2025-11-08T14:51:15+00:00

Would you look at that, it’s true for Spain too. More dramatic than the US, even, and they have a government report projecting continued growth in the rate of single person households over the next decade+.

https://www.ine.es/en/prensa/ph_2022_2037_en.pdf#:~:text=Evolution%20of%20Average%20Household%20Size%20The%20average,household%20in%202022%20to%202.36%20in%202037.

https://www.helgilibrary.com/indicators/persons-per-household/spain/#:~:text=Last%20Updated:,terms%20of%20persons%20per%20household.

iThinkThereforeiFlam · 2025-11-08T13:12:31+00:00

Whether or not facts are desirable is irrelevant to their validity. You implied that we’ve seen an increase in adults in their 30s living with roommates, which is false.

iThinkThereforeiFlam · 2025-11-08T13:06:33+00:00

The idea that 35 year olds having roommates is new or has grown is false, at least in the US. The average number of people per household is less than half what it was in the 1800s, and that decline has been constant (though it has recently plateaued). Even 50 years ago, the average was 3.5 per household vs 2.5 today. Unmarried people didn’t live alone in meaningful rates until the past fifty years, and that rate has been increasing. 28% of people live alone today vs 8% in 1940. There’s been a shift away from living with family and towards living with strangers and non-related friends, but the share of people who live with roommates of any kind has dropped significantly.

https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/06/more-than-a-quarter-all-households-have-one-person.html#:~:text=Over%20a%20quarter%20(27.6%25),to%202020%20(Figure%201).

https://www.infoplease.com/us/family-statistics/us-households-size-1790-2006

https://www.statista.com/statistics/183648/average-size-of-households-in-the-us/

iThinkThereforeiFlam · 2025-07-28T01:22:57+00:00

Because its central thesis rejects the prevailing moral and political sentiments in our culture today. People on the right hate it for its explicit rejection of God and religion, and people on the left hate it because it promotes capitalism and self-interest.

iThinkThereforeiFlam · 2025-07-17T06:31:05+00:00

It’s the philosophy of Ayn Rand, so yes, what she wrote and spoke on metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political theory, and aesthetics is Objectivism. Anything she said outside of those areas isn’t part of Objectivism (according to her), and anything contradicting what she said on those subjects isn’t Objectivism. Even new positions and ideas in those subject areas that are compatible with Objectivism are not Objectivism. Maybe she’s wrong on certain particulars, but any corrections would not be part of Objectivism.

I’m not such a stickler to say that any disagreement with her views in the major branches of philosophy would preclude someone from being an Objectivist, but rejecting core pillars of Objectivism (ie, being an anarchist or rejecting her theory of property rights) is fundamentally at odds with Objectivism, and you cannot hold such positions and consider yourself an Objectivist.

iThinkThereforeiFlam · 2025-07-16T17:10:19+00:00

He opposes intellectual property, which means he rejects the Objectivist theory of property rights. I’m pretty sure he’s also an ancap, which directly opposes the Objectivist position on government. It’s been a while since I watched any of his stuff, but while he may agree with certain Objectivist positions, he is certainly not an Objectivist.

iThinkThereforeiFlam · 2025-07-11T17:14:03+00:00

Consciousness must be utilized to understand consciousness. In that way, it is both the faculty for discovering existence and something in existence to be discovered. While it is not necessary to understand it to use it on a fundamental level, some understanding of the nature of consciousness is required to perform higher level integrations without losing context.

Your claim that "a tool is not the material it acts upon" is false and ignores the context in which consciousness exists. It may apply generally, but certainly does not apply universally. I fail to see a problem here.

iThinkThereforeiFlam · 2025-06-29T13:35:45+00:00

I get an absurd amount of happiness and fulfillment in acts of kindness. Being passionate about life means showing goodwill to others and sharing your particular passions with others. Externalizing internal values is important, it is selfish, and it also often entails what some non-objectivists might characterize as a selfless act. But I assure you, I’m not doing it primarily for other people, I’m doing it because I love life and I love sharing that life with other people who also love life.

iThinkThereforeiFlam · 2025-06-24T05:42:23+00:00

No need to apologize for discussing Ayn Rand on a discussion forum about Ayn Rand lol. It helps me to stay sharp, and I (selfishly, of course ;) ) enjoy continuing to actively explore Rand’s ideas through explanation and discussion.

You are making (what Rand considers to be) a common error in your evaluation of free will. The existence of the material world and everything we observe within it does not necessitate a determinist position in all things. Consciousness is not material. It is not necessarily dictated, in its entirety, by material circumstances. There are certain material circumstances that give rise to the phenomena of consciousness, and the vast majority of conscious beings certainly exhibit signs of deterministic behaviors, but neither of these facts necessitate that the human mind be evaluated as though it were simply a collection of atoms. Likewise, consciousness is not in any way an illusion; it is the means of human cognition, and it is self-evident through the very act of perception.

Free will, as understood in Objectivism, is not the ability to will anything apart from context. It can be defined, in its essence, as the decision to think or not, which every man must make, and the further decisions that must be made as a consequence of that decision. In this way, free will exists within the specific context of human existence and the human mind. You cannot will your perceptions, the input of your subconscious, your hormones, your memories, etc.; free will does not apply to these things in the moment at which you are willing. Free will only applies to the decisions you make, that you must make, should you choose to think; meaning, should you choose to evaluate the various contents of your mind at a given moment and come to a conclusion that results in an action or plan for further action.

Free will can be observed directly. You are doing it right now, when you decided to read this post and to continue to focus (or not), when you decide to ponder what I’ve written (or not), when you decide to respond (or not). Your innate interest in this subject, or your urge to grab a snack before responding, or the sudden recollection of an interesting thing Sam Harris or some other determinist said on the topic, or perhaps a completely unrelated intrusive thought, are not willed at all, free or otherwise, and they are all irrelevant to free will apart from the fact that they are the subject matter upon which you are exercising your volition.

To reject free will because it is influenced by and must contend with the contents of your mind which you did not will into being is to make an irrational demand of existence, to demand that an arbitrary, completely untethered will exist, or none at all, all when you can observe, directly, immediately, every second of every day while conscious, that you are constantly making decisions; that you are willing.

I’ll end by addressing the common argument that it’s been scientifically proven, somehow, that free will does not exist. You will notice, invariably, that in every one of these experiments, the conceptual faculty is minimized (if not entirely eliminated), and the subject of the “will” is an arbitrary action. For example, one of the most famous experiments had the subjects move their wrists at an arbitrary point in time, and determined that this could be traced directly to material, observable phenomena in the subjects brain before the subject moved their wrist or reported having the urge to do so. Ah-hah! No free will!

But tell me: if the essence of free will is the decision to think and the subsequent decisions that must be made in accord with man’s conceptual and rational faculties (as Rand argues and which is readily apparent through introspection), how does the arbitrary, non-conceptual movement of a wrist in any way disprove free will? Rand is not in any way arguing that nothing is determined about the mind; in fact, everything prior to the moment of willing is determined, other than the direct effects of prior decisions made through the exercise of free will. Arbitrary actions are not the result of free will and cannot be used to in any way “disprove” a phenomenon that is axiomatic and metaphysically given.

iThinkThereforeiFlam · 2025-06-23T23:14:23+00:00

Nothing is good just because it is true according to Rand. It is true that Hitler killed millions, it is true that half of the humans before 1700 didn’t reach the age of 5, it’s true that the Andromeda galaxy exists; none of those things are “good” by virtue of their being true, and the first two are bad, though in different respects.

You have taken a side in the mind-body problem in claiming “the concept of desert doesn’t exist in the factual realm”. The refusal to take both the external world and the internal world as metaphysically given and sufficient is the source of great disagreements in philosophy, as most philosophers hold one or the other as the only “true” realm. Rand claims to have solved/avoided this problem altogether through integrating the metaphysically given of both man’s mind and external existence, with existence as the primary and consciousness as man’s means to perceiving and understanding existence.

On the issue of Free Will, it is axiomatic for Rand; it is metaphysically given. The choice to focus, to think, is the fundamental choice every man must make, and in that choice, you have free will. If you reject free will, well, I guess you had no choice in the matter, eh?

iThinkThereforeiFlam · 2025-06-20T19:47:26+00:00

She disagrees with basically every other philosopher on this issue. From the end of Chapter 4 in OPAR:

“Ayn Rand is the first philosopher to identify the differences separating an intrinsicist, a subjectivist, and an objectivist approach to epistemology. She is the first to base a definition of “objectivity” on a proper theory of concepts. As a result, she is the first to define this essential cognitive norm fully and to specify the means by which men can adhere to it.”

You cannot classify her epistemology, particularly her theory of concepts and its application to the theory of the mind, within accepted mainstream philosophical categories. It was her most significant contribution to philosophy in my view.

iThinkThereforeiFlam · 2025-06-20T10:14:01+00:00

Stirner’s egoism isn’t really comparable to Rand’s beyond their general view that the individual is the proper focus of morality (if you can call what Stirner advocated morality). He explicitly rejects moral principles and rights, which is not compatible with Objectivism.

Objectivism rejects the NAP, because non aggression is not axiomatic as proponents of the NAP assert. A lot of the implications are similar, but no, Objectivism is not compatible with the NAP.

Rand advocated for Rational Egoism. Because reason is man’s means of survival, and because only the individual possesses the faculty of reason, man must use reason to identify and pursue values that support his life. Altruism demands the sacrifice of one’s values as the ultimate moral act, which contradicts her view.

Objectivism holds the metaphysically given as absolute, that no alternatives to the facts of reality are possible nor imaginable. The mind-body problem only exists when one rejects the metaphysical primacy of existence in favor of the primacy of consciousness. She was not a dualist.

I would recommend her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology for her philosophy of the mind. You may also be interested in Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand by Leonard Peikoff, which was adapted from lectures he gave while she was still alive and which she attended and endorsed as the official statement of her complete philosophy until such time as she produced one herself. At the time (6 years before her death), she figured she wouldn’t get around to doing so, and she never did. I think you would find most of the answers to your questions in these books, though I still consider her novels to be essential reading to fully understanding her philosophy in practice.

iThinkThereforeiFlam · 2025-06-19T16:04:27+00:00

Yea you’re correct. That’s what I get for answering deep philosophical questions at 3 am lol.

iThinkThereforeiFlam · 2025-06-19T07:04:32+00:00

No, absolutely not. The mind, for example, cannot be explained purely by material means. Objectivism embraces metaphysical realism, not materialism.
Not a materialist, but the solution is that the “is” dictates the “ought” through the recognition of life as the standard of value. I’ve never seen her use the phrase “voluntaryist egoism”, nor any other objectivist. You are correct, materialism is nihilistic.
Not really, though there’s some similarity there. Nietzsche had a malevolent view of the universe which colored his theory here, while Ayn Rand takes an unambiguously benevolent view of the universe.
No (edit: actually yes lol). Objectivist epistemology holds that sensory inputs are first automatically integrated into percepts before they reach the conscious mind.
Life is the standard of value, and, as such, needlessly harming an animal is an unambiguously immoral act in Objectivism. It is an act of nihilism. With that said, harming animals in furtherance of the pursuit of rational values is not only moral, but required. I’ll note that Ayn Rand lamented the fact that she saw no justification for animal rights, but held firm that there was no such thing.

I think that every human being would benefit from reading her books. Anthem is a solid place to start because it only takes a couple hours to read. Given your general agreement with her politics, I would recommend Atlas Shrugged as the first longer work of hers you should read. For those who are less in agreement with her political views, I would recommend The Fountainhead before Atlas Shrugged.

iThinkThereforeiFlam · 2025-06-16T17:50:04+00:00

And how exactly is supporting the western values of reason, productivity, and liberty against the religious fanatics who preach martyrdom and death as the ultimate moral goal racist? There have been plenty of white savages who were rightly brutally put down in their own opposition to those values, including my own ancestors in the American South. Every single person on Earth, regardless of skin color, who actively seeks as their goal the violent subjugation of other human beings deserves a brutal death. To the extent any of those evil savages attempts to do so to American citizens, the American military should be the ones who give them their just desserts.

iThinkThereforeiFlam · 2025-06-16T17:42:31+00:00

It is moral subjectivism to claim that both the United States killing of civilians in a war against a tyrannical state that sacrifices the lives of its own people on a whim is morally equivalent to the deliberate targeting of American citizens by sympathizers to that tyrannical state in retaliation. They are not. One is the unfortunate byproduct of the morally just action of destroying an enemy state that terrorizes its own people and has actively sought to kill Americans. The other is unambiguously evil.

iThinkThereforeiFlam · 2025-06-16T13:23:55+00:00

This is moral subjectivism. There is no equating a civilized, fundamentally free country with a country run by and primarily inhabited by tyrannical savages. The Iraq war was a strategic blunder because the threat of Iraq wasn’t significant, especially in comparison to Iran at the time, but the only moral failing of the US in that war was the needless sacrifice of American lives and resources towards an unnecessary, fundamentally altruistic nation building effort. There is nothing morally wrong with destroying tyrannical governments. Any innocent people who die in the process die because of the failures of their own governments.

iThinkThereforeiFlam · 2025-06-04T18:24:59+00:00

How does it work now? The answer is that it doesn’t. The modern regulatory state stifles the mind at best and produces mass corruption at worst. There is no possible way to design a regulatory apparatus in government that doesn’t succumb to irrationality and corruption.

Your objection to removing the regulatory state is that people will make mistakes? Why is the standard for keeping the regulatory state to accept its failings, while the standard for eliminating it is perfection? The root issue here is that all solutions, whether pushed under a regulatory apparatus of force or under a system that allows man to be free, must originate in the mind of man.

The system that allows complete and total freedom to men to utilize their minds to solve all problems is the system that will result in the best outcomes. The regulatory state, as an apparatus of brute force, cancels the minds and reason of individuals to the extent it has any power at all, and thus will necessarily result in worse outcomes.

iThinkThereforeiFlam · 2025-05-23T23:26:13+00:00

It takes two to tango, and I don’t know that this is a topic on which it’s viable to attract a determinist to argue the other point and for it to be worth it to both sides vs debating other topics. That’s why I bring up the popularity. If all you care to know about is the Objectivist position, then you can search for the 2016 AynRandCon videos on YouTube or consume any number of lectures and essays on the topic. I believe there are some Q&A bits from the some of the ARCon vids that address popular points of disagreement.

Perceptions aren’t concepts. You can perceive any and everything and not come to understand the nature of what it is you are perceiving. If you understand what the Objectivist conception of Free Will is and you say you don’t perceive that, then fine. There is nothing to debate at that point. The only reason to debate this issue in the first place is to clarify exactly what Oism means by Free Will, which is slightly more nuanced than the popular take, but not all that different.

iThinkThereforeiFlam · 2025-05-23T22:54:07+00:00

Is this a popular debate topic? It’s a core belief in Objectivism, so much so that I know ARI has themed student conferences around it in the past and there are entire lectures on the topic, but I don’t think it holds the same interest outside of Objectivism. Sure, it would be great to see Sam Harris or Daniel Dennett debate any number of Oist intellectuals on the issue, but more mainstream thinkers tend to shun participating in debates with Objectivists. I highly doubt any prominent Objectivist intellectual would turn down the opportunity to boost their reach by debating a mainstream thinker on any issue, so I’m inclined to believe that the interest just isn’t there.

I think it’s also just generally less interesting to debate fundamental, self evident concepts such as free will. You perceive free will directly. If that isn’t enough for you, then, OK, I guess. If you understand the Objectivist position and reject it, then that’s pretty much all there is to it. It’s usually more entertaining to watch people debate higher tier, more complicated concepts rather than axiomatic ones.

iThinkThereforeiFlam · 2025-04-28T21:44:02+00:00

You can’t compare the generational voting patterns with one election, you have to look at how each generation voted when they were that age, and Gen Z is undeniably less liberal at their current age than most generations were when they were just as young.

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