Every Rand groupie I have ever met is a total nimrod.
Sorry.
It's true.
Malcolm Gladwell versus Ayn Rand: Who is right?
121–130 of 137 posts
Re: Malcolm Gladwell versus Ayn Rand: Who is right?
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
As far as I'm concerned they're talking about two orthogonal subjects, and I think it takes a bit of cloudy thinking to conflate the two. Rand never posited that people are born productive. Productive people are productive by virtue of doing things, in Ayn's world...while a lot of other people are envious of the doing and stand in their way. People can become productive. Individualism requires that people can do what…
Rand never made her sociological understanding of how people become productive explicit because she sort of didn't have any. That's what enables her to view the highly productive and the less productive (or unproductive or even counterproductive) as good and evil, respectively. If she actually understood the subtle forces at work, she wouldn't have been so quick to judge.
Rand doesn't view those of lesser productivity as "evil", assuming they aren't leaching off of others when they could be providing for themselves. She simply viewed them as uninteresting: they aren't the people changing the world. She was admittedly quite harsh in her judgement of what constituted "productive". She described the character of Eddie Willers in _Atlas Shrugged_ as "a typical man of mediocrity", and he was a top-level exec in a large railroad company!
It's too bad, really. There is so much good in her philosophy that gets obscured by her personnal flaws and her limited (and self-admitted) lack of understanding of human psychology. _The Fountainhead_ is a great novel, raw and bitter and steeped in human struggle as few books are. It has a dozen flaws, but it's still one of the greatest books I've ever read. There is a scene in it where Roark and Dominique discuss the chemical properties of the different kinds of marble. Boring right? It has to be one of the greatest extended allegories ever written. (TASTE the dialog there. Slippery silibants suggesting sly secrets of the soul.)
Re: Malcolm Gladwell versus Ayn Rand: Who is right?
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh yes you are. You are being a rude asshole. Is that what they teach you in the Rand Club?
At least I'm not a Huxleyite. :-P 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 SkylerNovak and Robert something accounts have been created only a couple hours ago. They're just trolling. I think you're being perfectly courteous and upmodded you accordingly.
Re: Malcolm Gladwell versus Ayn Rand: Who is right?
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
At least I'm not a Huxleyite. :-P 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 SkylerNovak and Robert something accounts have been created only a couple hours ago. They're just trolling. I think you're being perfectly courteous and upmodded you accordingly.
Them, and AVC, and HugotheMongoose, and KimStarr, and Huxley78. It's baffling. I've never seen something like that happen before.
Re: Malcolm Gladwell versus Ayn Rand: Who is right?
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
The SkylerNovak and Robert something accounts have been created only a couple hours ago. They're just trolling. I think you're being perfectly courteous and upmodded you accordingly.
Them, and AVC, and HugotheMongoose, and KimStarr, and Huxley78. It's baffling. I've never seen something like that happen before.
So what? I signed up to post.
Re: Malcolm Gladwell versus Ayn Rand: Who is right?
#126Every Rand groupie I have ever met is a total nimrod. Sorry. It's true.
It's like a religion for them.
Re: Malcolm Gladwell versus Ayn Rand: Who is right?
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Them, and AVC, and HugotheMongoose, and KimStarr, and Huxley78. It's baffling. I've never seen something like that happen before.
So what? I signed up to post.
I didn't mention your name, so entering right now is only slightly suspicious. :-)
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.
Re: Malcolm Gladwell versus Ayn Rand: Who is right?
#128Reading this has me realize that i didn't miss anything by skipping Rand books.
Re: Malcolm Gladwell versus Ayn Rand: Who is right?
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
So what? I signed up to post.
I didn't mention your name, so entering right now is only slightly suspicious. :-) 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 th…
I flagged a ton of them too, so it's not just you.
Re: Malcolm Gladwell versus Ayn Rand: Who is right?
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
and what do you think? Please elaborate.
You first!
In the comment you first replied to I did just that: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=359751
EDIT I see now you were part of the sockpuppet trolling rampage. Now defeated and deleted: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=360128