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What are you reading?
211–220 of 222 posts
Re: What are you reading?
#212. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig . Programming Clojure . Little Schemer (re-reading) . Evidence-Based Technical Analysis: Applying the Scientific Method and Statistical Inference to Trading Signals by David Aronson
+1 on ZAMM, very interesting book...do you plan on moving on to Lila, the "sequel"? I've read that very few have a full understanding of the point of the second book...I never got around to reading it after the first...
Actually I don't know :), I usually avoid reading a lot of books from the same author, but, who knows :)
Re: What are you reading?
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you know if baby size at birth is correlated to higher intelligence later in life? Also, what about the amount of hair a child is born with? Any correlation there?
This is a paper by an eminent researcher in the discipline (I have read one of his books and have another at hand) that I Googled up: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi...
Thank you! Through your link, I gathered a few keywords and found this: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/322/7280/199
Birth weight was also associated with education, with those of higher birth weight more likely to have achieved higher qualifications, and this effect was accounted for partly by cognitive function at age 8.
Small size at birth is associated with a range of adverse health outcomes, including poor cognitive development, an effect that is largely unconfounded by features of the family environment, such as socioeconomic status and birth order.
Re: What are you reading?
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would be consistent if everyone who was fit to inherit actually did inherit. But that is not the case. Some of those who are fit do not inherit and others do. What is the basis for this inequality? Birth. She destroys the idea of meritocracy that she herself presented so eloquently and discredits libertarianism as yet another excuse for those born wealthy to keep their wealth. If an hair is not equal to his money…
I don't think you would enjoy reading Rand (either you haven't yet read any of her work and are going based solely on what you read in this thread, or you just completely didn't understand her work). As she argues, money is a means of trading human production and value. To be equal to your money is to provide production and value to society equal to the value of your money. According to Rand, if one who is barely cap…
How does that explain why it is consistent that some get the opportunity to start out wealthy and some do not?
You don't seem to get what I'm saying at all. Among those who are willing and able to provide production value are some who get a boost from inherited wealth and some who do not.
Do you consider that fair or consistent with a merit based society? I do get perfectly well what Ayn Rand says in her books, and based on that her stance on inheritance is grotesque.
Re: What are you reading?
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
I took her meritocratic stance seriously until I heard her defend inherited wealth, which is ridiculously inconsistent.
Her defense of inherited wealth amounted to the right of the creator of the wealth to dispose of it as he/she chooses. If he leaves it to his children, fine, if he gives it to a house for stray cats, fine,it's HIS choice because he earned it.
That's self defeating. It's like saying that a democratic society has the right to democratically abolish democracy.
Re: What are you reading?
#216"How to Get Rich" by Felix Dennis ( http://www.amazon.com/How-Get-Rich-Felix-Dennis/dp/009191265... ) THE best get rich how-to guides that I've read (not that I've read too many of them, though :)
Best advice: "If it floats, flies or fornicates, better to rent it than own it." I wonder how Dennis would feel about the fractional ownership model for each of those items.
In other words: Never own ducks.
Re: What are you reading?
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was an amusing anecdote that started with a harsh indictment of anyone who likes Ayn Rand's writing. Are you sure you didn't expect people to be offended at what you said? Are you, perhaps, being a little disingenuous here?
Ah, but if one aspires to an ego the size of Howard Roark's, he wouldn't be offended by anything whatsoever.
What does that have to do with liking Ayn Rand's writing?
Re: What are you reading?
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think you would enjoy reading Rand (either you haven't yet read any of her work and are going based solely on what you read in this thread, or you just completely didn't understand her work). As she argues, money is a means of trading human production and value. To be equal to your money is to provide production and value to society equal to the value of your money. According to Rand, if one who is barely cap…
How does that explain why it is consistent that some get the opportunity to start out wealthy and some do not? You don't seem to get what I'm saying at all. Among those who are willing and able to provide production value are some who get a boost from inherited wealth and some who do not. Do you consider that fair or consistent with a merit based society? I do get perfectly well what Ayn Rand says in her books, and b…
I think that according to Rand, fairness is a moot point when it comes to this situation. She is saying that if you are capable of achieving wealth, then you will achieve it no matter where you start from in our society. She also explains that those who are capable of achieving are concerned only with their own achievements and awards, and those of others only so far as they help to achieve their own.
If you put all of this together, you end up with the person of achievement not caring where others started (or what they inherited) in relation to themselves. Fairness only holds value when the person getting shafted cares enough to give it value.
Besides, Rand's argument is that over the long run, it really doesn't matter, as the person who is capable of producing great wealth will do so, with or without an inheritance. The person who is not will quickly squander it all and end up right back where they started. Her point is simply that an inheritance does not change one's ability to produce.
Re: What are you reading?
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
Her defense of inherited wealth amounted to the right of the creator of the wealth to dispose of it as he/she chooses. If he leaves it to his children, fine, if he gives it to a house for stray cats, fine,it's HIS choice because he earned it.
That's self defeating. It's like saying that a democratic society has the right to democratically abolish democracy.
Ayn Rand's philosophy is that of a free economy that stresses the importance of the individual. A democracy is a political institution that stresses the rule of the majority. Rand idealized the self-sustaining individual. A democracy by definition cannot be sustained by one individual. So, it's a difficult analogy to make.
A better analogy would be like saying that a king has a right to abolish his monarchy.
Also, it is only self-defeating if the original goal was only to amass the wealth.
To continue the analogy to this point, a king abolishing his monarchy would only be self-defeating if his only goal was to be a king. However, if his goal as king was to make life better for his country, then abolishing his monarchy in favor of a democracy would be a very good move and not self-defeating at all.
Likewise, if the person's original goal was to produce and then dispose of the rewards as he wished, then doing so is not self-defeating. It's only self-defeating if his original goal was to simply have wealth.
The other part of Rand's argument is that the individual has the right to dispose of their wealth however they please, because they produced it and they own it. A democracy would only have a right to dispose of itself provided it was the democracy that created itself in the first place.