How I learned to stop worrying and pick up Atlas Shrugged

[eyrei]

Obviously not.


Nice try, some of the intellectual contortion I referred to.Allegory or not, I still prefer political tract.
I read said book about 15 years ago. I am not going to read it again, and indeed some of the best passages seems to be about persistence, hard work anddoing something well instead of just doing it, but the fact remains that it is basically about Brave Capitalists struggling against the whining mediocrities of statism, collectivism and altruism. Now you can go on about how "allegoric" this is, but it is not accidental what we use in our allegories, and when I compare it with ms. Rand's political credo, I realize that you have to do better to convince me, I am afraid.
And I also notice that I don't have to feel like the condescending one. If I haven't understood the subleties of for instance the virtues of selfishness, this can be due to the facts that pseudo-philosophy is frequently more difficult to understand than real philosophy, and for those of us who deal with the real thing it can be a bit too time consuming once in a while.
By the way, where did I call her any names? I did indeed critise her writing style, for that I don't need your permission, and I did describe her novel in an unfavourable way. But that is surely something different.
I prefer now to discontinue this discussion, but I can't help for feeling that I may not be the one who suffers from misunderstandings here.

Thank you for saving me a reply.

 

[WillJ]

at Fred for mentioning what has always seemed to me to be a rather crucial flaw of Objectivist philosophy.

Another important flaw would be a lack of a good explanation of what "self-interest" (and similar terms) is supposed to mean. Is giving to charity in my self-interest, if it makes me feel good? If so, well then what in the world is the point of saying I should act in my self interest, and thinking that that is anything more than a truism?

...Then again, I have yet to actually read any of Rand's works. But I see no reason to do so when Rand's ethics seem to not hold up to a rather minimal amount of critical thinking. [@anyone: feel free to demonstrate what I'm missing, if anything]

The same reason people in Rand's society don't attempt to forge the currency - it's not in anyone's best interest.

But what if it is in your best interest? You honestly can't imagine any sort of situation where killing someone (and not in self defense), or even stealing something, is in your self-interest?

I suggest you go do some Wikipedia searching on "The Prisoner's Dilemma", "Tit for Tat", the evolution of ethics, and vampire bats. Perhaps that would give you a better understanding of ethical behavior in general and the significance of Rand's emphasis on enlightened self-interest.

The whole significance of the prisoner's dilemma, as I understand it, is that it is a perfect illustration of individual self-interest conflicting with the interest of society. I'd have to say this would be the type of thing to ignore or shrug off when defending Rand.

 

[Melendwyr]

First of all, thank you for making me look at this, I ended up reading the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy's entry on this, and it was very illuminating (link for others who might be interested). And indeed, I was quite wrong.

It's very rarely that I come across someone not only willing to admit that he was wrong, but be thankful for being corrected - and virtually never on the Internet.

Congratulations, sir. You've made my week.

Which is not to say that we ought to unquestionably accept its contribution; game theory still suffers inevitably from the assumption of the individual utility-maximizing homo economicus and there's no room for individual psychology.

Well, that depends on how you look at it. Humans frequently make irrational choices. The forces of evolution are always consistent. Unpleasant and sometimes downright cruel from a human perspective, but consistent.

You're right that it's pointless to attempt to validate a moral system by using another moral system. But that's what's so important to realize about natural selection - it's totally amoral, impersonal, and fair (at least as far as the immutable laws of reality are concerned).

There may be no moral difference between a preference for a strategy that leads to the perpetuation of that strategy, and a dislike for it. But eventually the dislike will cease to exist, and the preference will spread.

 

[jonatas]

But that's what's so important to realize about natural selection - it's totally amoral, impersonal, and fair (at least as far as the immutable laws of reality are concerned).

Disclaimer: I haven't read Ayn Rand, and from the sounds of it I would prefer Plato anyway on literary merit, but I just want to pick up on some thoughts being expressed in this thread.

Are you implying Social Darwinism? Forget natural selection, what about state sponsored Eugenics? What difference does it make if it's personally instrusive and collectivist, as long as it works? Haven't we reached the point now where it would be more effective to socially engineer it and eliminate the individual? How real is the individual anyway, and how far can we separate an individual from society?

What difference does it make if something is "just" according to the immutable laws of reality, (and I would be interested to see how you determine that), if it is simultaneously "unjust" according within the context of a social contract. Or, who cares if something is "unjust" according to everyone else, as long as I benefit Of course, you could say the purpose of the social contract is to ensure that no action is performed to anyone's detriment, but what if I can cheat the social contract and benefit myself? Does that make me a bad person? Do I have apriori duty to myself, or a social contract?

 

[Taliesin]

I suggest you go do some Wikipedia searching on "The Prisoner's Dilemma", "Tit for Tat", the evolution of ethics, and vampire bats. Perhaps that would give you a better understanding of ethical behavior in general and the significance of Rand's emphasis on enlightened self-interest.

And yet, practical experiments with actual people demonstrate that human decisions in games are not reducible to self-interest. I'll give two examples:

Game 1: Fair shares
Person A is given $100. He is told that in order to keep the money, he must come to an agreement with Person B about how to divide it. The catch is, A can make only one offer, which B either accepts or refuses, without any other conversation. If B accepts, the money is divided between them as agreed; if B refuses, the experimenter keeps the money.

Now, rational self-interest would dictate that B would accept a 99-1 share, because $1 is better than nothing. Therefore, A should offer $1 and keep the rest for himself. However, almost nobody offers less than $30, and generally B rejects any offer less favourable than 60-40. Why would this be, if self-interest really governed decisions?

Game 2: Revenge at cost
Four players are given $20 each. They are told that each game "round", they may put some dollar amount into the pot; the amount in the pot will be doubled and then split evenly between the players, who can reinvest it. If everybody donates the same amount, then everybody doubles his investment. However, of course, if only one person pays in, then he loses half of his investment. The catch: any player may pay the experimenter $2 to steal $3 from another player. This means that the players can punish deadbeats, though at cost to themselves.

The point: when met with shirkers, players usually make personal sacrifices to enforce fairness. No individual wins, because the experimenter takes all the money. However, group fairness is preserved, which will ensure modest gains for all participants.



This clearly suggests that people simply are not fundamentally self-interested, at least not in the sense used in game theory. A sense of fairness and social good is hard-wired into all of us, with the probable exception of sociopaths (which causes one to wonder about Randians...).

 

[Archer 007]

What annoyed me most about that book was not the writing, but the length.. Vehicles for political philosophy tend to be written badly, but they're usually not a thousand pages.

Anthem hands it just as well IMO, and its only like 125 pages.

 

[aneeshm]

The whole significance of the prisoner's dilemma, as I understand it, is that it is a perfect illustration of individual self-interest conflicting with the interest of society. I'd have to say this would be the type of thing to ignore or shrug off when defending Rand.

The prisoner's dilemma is not applicable if you follow Objectivist principles since the very beginning .

 

[Melendwyr]

The Prisoner's Dilemma has nothing to do with the goals or needs of society.

Why don't vampire bats hoard their food supply instead of sharing it with group members in need? For the same reason humans don't immediately try to maximize their short-term goals by screwing everyone else over.

 

[Ayatollah So]

I read a few chunks of Atlas Shrugged way back when, looking for the philosophical parts. Hole-y logic, Batman!

But I do have to admit that Rand's epistemology, what little I know of it, is fine with me. Direct realism; with concepts arising from the knower-known interaction: spot on. The problems lie elsewhere.

@ Taliesin: thanks for that psych experiment data.

@ Melendwyr: vampire bats are parasites. Parasitism is a successful evolutionary strategy. Is this really a source from which you want to draw moral lessons?