| | In case it hasn't already been made clear, the question which Robert has chosen to repeat is a dishonest one. Unspecified charges are always wrong. They are epistemologically wrong because they are arbitrary. The questioner wants his unsupported words to be treated the same as statements for which actual evidence or other valid support has been provided. That amounts to the altruistic demand that the listener do the speaker's work for him. And it's personally immoral. Unspecified charges and unsupported accusations amount to smears, smears which, since they are unspecific, the accused cannot even answer, and should not need to answer without cause. Beside improper insults in the context of etiquette, such accusations can, depending on context amount to libel, slander, and criminal defamation as well as contempt of court.
Observe the motivation of the person above. Is it intellectually honest? When challenged we see that what was posed as an "intellectual" question was intended as an attack both on the subject of the question and the people to whom the question was addressed.
Unspecified charges and unsupported accusations are immoral smears at best and, in the end, the substance of show trials and lynchings.
They have no place within an Objectivist community.
That's funny stuff.
Here's some more funny stuff from Harry Binswanger:
I advise you to stay away from [Burns' book Goddess of the Market], for the reason I gave in an earlier post: it is almost impossible to keep all the false and slanted "facts" out of your subconscious "file folders." Not only would reading it, quite unjustly, tend to diminish your admiration for Ayn Rand, you are very likely, years later, to treat as fact that which is false or arbitrary.
(Rational subconscious premises might be tampered with by such E-vil influences as Kant or that Burns book.)
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