Seasons

My knowledge of Ayn Rand is not deep.
Actually, she speaks of herself as an "Objectivist", and in that I agree.
But if she is a hedonist, I would have to disagree.
Also, she appears to espouse Competitive Individualism, which I consider to be a recipe for Hell.

Let's suppose that an immensely powerful being, let's say an angel, someone you can't defy, gives you the following choice:

I refuse to choose a pill. Even if the angel tells me that the result of my refusing to choose is eternal agony and damnation for all sentient beings who have ever been and will ever be, I refuse to choose a pill.

You would trust this angel to keep his word anyway? He can't be resisted, you say. I could try second guessing his future actions, but that is always a gamble on unknown odds - indeed, strictly speaking indeterminate odds. Foolish and willful, when dealing with another self. All I can do is defy him, and hope that his failure to corrupt me is at least a tiny reduction of the overall evil - that is all I (not being blessed with angelic powers,) can salvage from the situation. My self is the only moral domain I have power over.

All I can know is that if I choose a course of action that inflicts an evil on (an)other sentient being(s), there is more evil than there was in the world before I made the choice. The end utility of that choice, like any action, is completely unknowable to anyone within spacetime - as is the serious intent or honesty in complying with the terms of the bargain of any such agent, angelos or not, prior to him honouring the pact. Such Hobsonian choices are the moral equivalent of the Cretan paradox - mildly entertaining chewing gum for the intellect (I don't mean that disparagingly - I like chewing gum sometimes, but I rarely worry about its semiotic implications.)

There's no need for 10 commandments, or 4 noble truths, or 57 varieties - the inevitable path to maximize good is first "do no evil".

I think everyone believes this fundamentally. They just have difficulty agreeing on a definition of "evil". You will not be surprised to learn that I have little truck with "relativists" and "utilitarians", though their arguments are always entertaining.

I could never make myself read one of Ayn Rand books straight through, though I tried. I have them on tape, but I seem to fall asleep once the story drones on (even when working out). Here's a cut and paste quote of her description of her own philosophy: "My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."

Lately, I've been reading a little about the inventor Tesla (about a hundred years ago he gave us AC electricity, robotics, radar, X-rays and a lot of really cool stuff). He was given a patent for radio, but had it mysteriously taken away after he started working on a wireless power transmission facility, which was opposed by JP Morgan and those who brought us the power grid we use now. Tesla built a working wireless power station on Long Island but in 1917, it was seized and torn down by the Marines, because it was supposedly suspected that it could be used by German spies. He died penniless.

What does this have to do with Ayn Rand? Sometimes when I try to make myself read her books (she is very influential here) I keep getting some fuzzy recollection of Tesla (who I think was a contemporary or close to it). Howard Roark is a character with vision who looses his case in court and gets screwed over by the system, but is saved by selfish enlightenment (I am not sure Tesla mirrors the later part). She also wrote of Galt's motor, a perpetual motion machine running on static electricity that is discarded. I am not sure why she thinks the character who created such a motor would be such a proponent of her philosophy, given that destroying Galt and his machine is in the self interest of those who oppose Galt. I see some sort of factual reflections to Tesla, but I feel a philosophical disconnect with Rand's interpretation of the facts and conclusions. Oh, and I still want free energy :-)

I don't really have a point here, Irina, I guess I'm hoping someone will take these things that pop up in my head and connect the dots for me. Maybe I'm not enough of a rugged individualist to put it together myself just quite yet.

do no evil

Larry Page? Is that you?

No wait-- Google says it's motto is "You can make money without doing evil." or something. We'll have to see on that one.

Google, it must be said, appear to have a rather different definition of "evil" from mine. Though I do believe that social (and eventually individual) coalescence into a higher sentient structure of some sort is inevitable in the end. Whether that's the Borg or civitatis Dei only time will tell. The internet is one step along the way (though whether google have anything like an accurate roadmap remains to be seen!)

I'm an optimist - BJ says we "share one Self in God", and I'm not one to argue. As you say, we'll just have to wait and see.

BJ says we "share one Self in God", and I'm not one to argu

If BJ is right, the division between 1 and 100 is an illusion, and the angel is offering a cruel mind game God plays on herself. If one suffers, the whole suffers somehow, because one is God and God is one. Maybe that supports your choice not to decide. Maybe the proper answer is to look up at the angel and say "Wu!" and hope the angel is enlightened.

Even if the angel tells me that the result of my refusing to choose is eternal agony and damnation for all sentient beings who have ever been and will ever be, I refuse to choose a pill.

Well, that's an option, of course. If some such angel does appear, however, I hope it chooses someone other than you to make the experiment on!

Irina: This is a response, not a contact. As Professor Klato used to say, "survival is always good, as long as it's my own".

"But I'm inclined to say that pleasure is in itself neither good nor bad. Klato's Darwinian argument suggests that it is good that we have had pleasure in the past."

I was with you until I got here. It also says nothing to negate the proposal that it will be good in the future. If Mother Nature didn't want us to have pleasure, we wouldn't have it. Is it always good or bad? It depends on individual preferences and culture (maybe even religion).

"IMHO, survival is not always good, and certainly not the sole good. As Spikebot might well agree, it might have been better if Hitler had died a lot earlier in the game."

That survival is good or bad is itself a moral question and has nothing to do with Darwinism. I think we can agree on that. Mother Nature did not provide a means to eliminate crooks and tyrants naturally. That is for us to decide. [Ruthie! You always come in at the wrong time!] We think the same way today (in some quarters) about the elimination of tyrants as we did in WWII. How many people didn't want S.H. to hang and how many did? That's a moral question. If it were a Nature question the solution would have been provided.

IMHO, our morals regulate our sense of pleasure, sometimes unnecessarily, and in many cases we are absolutely right to do so. Examples: child and woman molestation and killing, You would be shocked at my solution. In others, I'd say that the decision rests with the individual and that individual interpretations are going to abound and vary. The issue of whether survival is always good will vary from person to person and even generation to generation.

In closing, I agree with what you say, but not 100%, but I respect your opinion. Just don't try to force it on me. :-)

And I am not obscene and perverse.

You would trust this angel to keep his word anyway? He can't be resisted, you say. I could try second guessing his future actions, but that is always a gamble on unknown odds - indeed, strictly speaking indeterminate odds.

Well, if you simply found yourself confronted by an angel offering the deal, I described, it would indeed be rational to question its veracity. [I sometimes wonder about the story of Abraham and Isaac - did Abraham think to himself, "No way is he going to let me go through with this!"] But the point of the example is to pose a hard question for hedonists. So, unrealistic as it may be, I hereby add to the presuppositions of the question that you somehow know that the angel will do as he says. Or perhaps, instead of an angel, there is a very powerful robot; you are able to scan the robot and find out that it is indeed programmed in exactly that way.

And I am not obscene and perverse.

That's a pity. Sometime Irnia seems to like that.

Just Kidding! Irinia is a normal person, please don't sick the weirdos on her.

You're still my buddy, right Irinia?

Right?

Pal?

Amiga?

I am afraid I am no good using this editor.

Klato:

How many people didn't want S.H. to hang and how many did? That's a moral question.

I'm not sure I understand you here. Are you saying that the question, "How people didn't want S.H. to hang and how many did?" is a moral question? I would rather say it was a historical question. Or were you saying, that the question, "Should SH be hung?" is a moral question? I would say that depends on the "should". In English, "Should" can express moral obligation, as it presumably does in "everything else being equal, you should be kind to others", but sometimes it merely expresses instrumentality or prudence, as in, "If you want to get home by sundown, you should leave now". But simply for someone to want SH to be hung does not in itself constitute a moral judgment. Alas, we often want things that w know very well it would be immoral to have.