"Man's ego is the fountainhead of human progress." -Ayn Rand

Her books make the case that individuals working in their own self interest are the best thing for "human civilization." Disagree if you will, but you'll have a tough time coming up with a definition of "advancement of human civilization" that everyone can agree on. In the end you fight for your own vision of what the world should be and ignore the rest.

Might is right. Ignore that at your own peril. Especially if you're in a startup.

>you'll have a tough time coming up with a definition of "advancement of human civilization" that everyone can agree on

No, I think it's easy, we've got a great way to measure progress. We call it "power." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale

Where does Brittany Spears fit in the Kardashev Scale? There a millions of people that think she is more important than energy consumption. Should we put them all in the gas chamber?

Even if we let them live, Kardashev, brilliant though he may be, has hardly come up w/ a universal set of values that everyone is, should, or will eventually strive for.

The best you can do is to absorb his ideals, spread his word and create technology that furthers his goals. And in doing that you become an Ayn Rand follower.

> Where does Brittany Spears fit in the Kardashev Scale? There a millions of people that think she is more important than energy consumption. Should we put them all in the gas chamber?

Only if we can use them as fuel.

(You guys do get that I'm joking, right...?)

These crazy Rand zealots have no sense of humor.

:P

You're probably right. By definition we take ourselves too seriously. But I think what you're seeing has been a long time coming. The Rand Zealots in the tech world have been lurking in the corners of Slashdot, Digg and Reddit listening to a cacophony of post modern, no up or down, no left or right emotional bullshit. I for one am sick of armchair socialists, open source evangalists and peddlers of western guilt. We like our one's and zeros but there is a lot we have to put up with to hang. I think this thread has released the Ayn Rand hounds.

Political disagreements stem from philosophical disagreements. If two mathematicians were arguing about geometry and one assumed that parallel lines never met and the other assumed they did they would not have a meaningful conversation. The problem with most conversations is they mostly deal with surface issues. Clinton or Obama. Bush or Kerry. Blah or Bleh.

Amen to Hacker news for getting to the heart of the matter. And to the the non-Rand-ers, apologies for our intensity and contrarian views. But this conversation will be good for everyone...

Admittedly it wasn't a very good joke. I could have put it a lot better.

I took it as an irreverent answer to uuilly's ridiculous question.

I don't see a conflict of interest.

OK, there isn't one. I lost here, I forgot that Objectivism ends up encompassing any rational belief so it's hard to argue against it.

Well, it doesn't. The exact rational beliefs that Objectivism encompasses were very carefully laid out by Rand before her death, and all other opinions, beliefs or perspectives were explicitly denounced as irrational. It's hard to take anything seriously that on the one hand says "reject irrationality, think for yourself, reach your own conclusion!" and on the other hand says "but the only way you'll know, and we'll accept, that you're being rational is that you'll reach these conclusions here".

And of course, her primary error is that humans are rational beings. We're not. We're evolved animals, and one of the things we've evolved is the ability to rationalise behaviours that stem from thoroughly irrational sources. That a whole bunch of bright self-made and aspiring individualists who prefer doing to theorising have a lot of time for someone who essentially gave them a way to feel just great about both means and ends which have caused pain to other people+ is hardly surprising; but it's correlation, not cause. Indeed, I suspect that the people who readily accept Rand would basically have thought and acted that way anyway, but would have found an alternative, less satisfying, justification for doing so (for example, the economical justification of the Austrians). The importance of Rand to such people is the moral justification she crafted for them.

+ Note, I'm not passing moral judgement here; what makes us feel guilty about our actions is the combination of empathy with knowledge of the pain we have caused someone else - but we can alleviate that guilt if we can convince ourselves it's for a greater good; and there is no greater good than to have done what is morally right.

Actually, I was thinking about this on the way into Sheffield, and I was wrong to use the term "the pain we cause"; I think what I actually mean is "the pain we have the means to prevent", which does encompass cause, but also covers things like survivor guilt as well. Rand's work allows people to admit that they do have the means to prevent the suffering of others (rather than pretending that they don't, which is dishonest), and yet to maintain that preventing that suffering would in fact be immoral, rather than merely impractical, unhelpful or counterproductive.

Hmm. It looks as though someone's systematically downed every comment of mine they could get to in this thread. If so, that someone should be ashamed of themselves.

If there is no response to this post in 48 hours, I declare you winner of this thread with an honorable mention for Paul Bucheit's South Park quote.

The way you've phrased that makes it sound as if you're telling people to be irrational.