This, to me, is a cop-out. Most proponents of Objectivism never make something excellent, they just talk a lot about how they could, maybe, if only things were different. Or, in an amusing variation, they can just declare themselves to have achieved excellence (Ayn Rand once declared herself "the best writer today") in spite of the opposition.

Both of these approaches seem to sidestep the very real challenges of making something great and enduring. While I think the comparison to Gladwell is apples to oranges, I much prefer his attempts to quantify what make someone exceptional to Rand's ineffable "greatness".

The world has a history of cocky jackasses who succeed because they're entirely certain that they're right, because they are. Rand tapped a few of them to write her novels, actually.

Rand is rude when she dismisses some of her critics because she often refuses outright to admit that any of them have valid points.

Hence the blogger's comment:

"Atlas Shrugged is a similar story. In it a group of scientists and tycoons decide in equally petulant fashion that they will "simply take their ball and go home", when society refuses to capitulate to their capricious demands. So what happens? Well, according to Ayn Rand everything in the world grinds to a halt. In her bizarre world view, no replacements are available amongst the rest of humanity to rise up to the occasion and take over from the cry-babies who have gone home in a snit."

Yes, in real life others would have stepped up to the plate.

In real life as it stands today, Atlas Shrugged is not a plausible scenario. The trick to reading it without casting it aside in horror is realizing that Rand knows that, and that she's drawing things to their extremes to make a specific point about how she thinks human beings work. People who mock Atlas on that point are missing the point of the book.

It's like reading Asimov, who judges most of his characters by their approach to logic. There's an advantage to illustrating a single facet of a human being. It lets you focus and create characters that revolve around a theme. If Rand had made her books more involved, they'd have lost the focus on the attributes that she writes about.

I don't think she is the end-all be-all. I voted Obama, who will expand the government in many ways and demand some altruism from everybody. But I think that compromise is a necessity: that altruism is a necessary evil rather than an end unto itself.

The immature one is the one who dismisses somebody's argument because they choose to support a flawed person. Frankly, I'd much rather talk with an Objectivist than a Nihilist - that despite Nietzche's being a much more influential and agreed-with writer. I'm trying to argue my points expressively, and to respond to people who disagree. You're either being immature or a troll.

Is that what they teach you in the Rand Club?

But seriously. What am I doing that's rude? I said that I thought that Rand was misread, and that I thought it wasn't necessarily bad that she writes in black-and-white terms. I also said that I think it's a mistake of the people who follow her more seriously to assume that the world really is black-and-white. I don't think I was being rude or an asshole. Am I wrong?

The fact that you use similar phrasing in all your posts, comment in unsimilar threads with quick, brief responses, and have similar disregards for things like two-way, interesting debates, tend to make me a little suspicious. I could be wrong, but with all due respect, at this point I rather doubt I am.

My question is: why? Are you the blog's author/submitter? I've noticed junk accounts pop up more when I mention my distaste for the article this was written about. You make similar comments to KrisZolar, who submitted this article. Every single response defending this post appears to be made from a spam account: KeshRivya also seems to be in this category. And every single one has the same anti-Rand stance as the original post, and writes in the same style.

The one thing that fascinates me is that a lot of these seems to have been made months-if-not-years ago. That takes a lot of effort. And I wonder why go to all the effort.

I'm sorry if it does turn out I'm raving and wrong, but I flagged this post. I don't know if there's a way of matching IPs, but the evidence all seems to point to a massive amount of throwaway accounts.

Not sure what profession has to do with a comparison of beliefs.

Gladwell opposes Rand. But they still hold fast in certain things. The opposite of Rand is not the person who says that people aren't responsible for their success. It's the person who says that civilization isn't a success, that human beings are beasts, that the solution to our problems is to go back to being savages. Similarly: I think Rand would disagree with Gladwell's claim that nobody is responsible for their life, but she wouldn't dispute his findings. She would just argue that they aren't as relevant as Gladwell thinks they are.

The post contributes to an important societal debate over whether or not the successful owe anything back to society, such as taxes.

Obviously it's stimulated a lot of heat.

I read the NYmag article. Gladwell in that article does appear to be Rand's favorite villain. However, the blog post doesn't use those points. It doesn't contrast Gladwell's "cutting down the great man" to Rand's points. It brings up Rand, attacks her, brings up Gladwell, draws no conclusions whatsoever, and then says that the author can see a connection. The fact that a good argument as come up is because of the various Hacker News factions, not because of any merit that article had whatsoever.

That claim is not backed up.

If I asked the question "Who is our savior: George Bush or Boy George?", then I would be making a specious claim: that either is a savior. Or, if I ask "Who is right: George Carlin or Lewis Black?", the specious claim is the two oppose themselves. In that case, my follow-up post to the question needs to explain exactly how the two oppose one another. In this case, there is somewhat of an argument to be made, but it's not one that the blog post makes.

The guy simply asked a question. A question which then led to this long tirade by Rand groupies.

Well, according to Ayn Rand everything in the world grinds to a halt. In her bizarre world view, no replacements are available amongst the rest of humanity to rise up to the occasion and take over from the cry-babies who have gone home in a snit.

Then, citing Gladwell out of context:

Then there's the question of why so many Asian students excel at mathematics:

And then there are the math geniuses who, as anyone can’t help noticing, are disproportionately Asian. Citing the work of an educational researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, Gladwell attributes this phenomenon not to some innate mathematical ability that Asians possess but to the fact that children in Asian countries are willing to work longer and harder than their Western counterparts. That willingness, Gladwell continues, is due to a cultural legacy of hard work that stems from the cultivation of rice. Turning to a historian who studies ancient Chinese peasant proverbs, Gladwell marvels at what Chinese rice farmers used to tell one another: “No one who can rise before dawn 360 days a year fails to make his family rich.”

Elsewhere in this thread was an argument from somebody who saw this and assumed that Gladwell was being racist and saying that working in rice paddies make Chinese people hard-working.

Then it sums up:

So the question is then: Are the successful truly independent of the society within which they grew up or do they owe their success, at least in part, to the benefits, attitudes, and advantages it bestowed upon them?

Read the entire article, Why Success Is More Circumstantial Than Personal.

Who is right? Malcolm Gladwell or Ayn Rand?

It doesn't add anything of interest. It doesn't make an initial comparison. It doesn't argue about how they're opposed in any way. We the commenters did that.