what do you think about the following opinion of Rand's?

I swear you meet the weirdest people, Kate. If you're ever looking for a new line of work you could sell tickets for people to follow you around and poke these martians with a stick or something.

Post 41

Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - 7:48am

Re:

I swear you meet the weirdest people, Kate.

I haven't even mentioned (and don't intend to discuss -- much) the weirdos who come to my attention for reasons related to matters other than Oism.

E.g., work-related concerns: as an educational consultant in a neglected field, from time to time I've actually received letters which, e.g., denounced me for teaching a "Satanic, commie, un-American form of penmanship."
That one actually bothered me far less than some of the stuff that comes my way: ask me sometime about the occasional calls and e-mails from parents/teachers who find me on the Net and who then [still, at the dawn of the 21st century]! ask me for effective ways to "cure" their left-handed children/students: "Dear Dr. [sic] Gladstone -- what is the most effective method to have my two-year-old daughter learn right-handedness? My mother did it for me by tying a pretty mitten on my left hand at all times, but this does not seem to be working effectively for my daughter. Do you feel that there could be some stronger and more effective treatment?"

I have an array of (fairly strong) letters of my own, that I send to people who ask this sort of question -- I'd appreciate some help writing (for use in such letters) a paragraph that would best educate those whose desire for a "cure" comes at least partly from their premise that "a newborn child is a completely blank slate, and therefore it must be possible to prevent left-handedness because there can be no such thing as being either 'naturally' left-handed or 'naturally' right-handed" (quoting the above from a correspondent who was philosophically inclined though not an Oist: she said she had "learned in college philosophy courses all about the complete malleability, and therefore the complete perfectibility, of man." !!! )

Re:

If you're ever looking for a new line of work you could sell tickets for people to follow you around and poke these martians with a stick or something.

My current self-employment pays adequately (which should increase later this month when my handwriting instruction software appears: ask via ROR's mail function, if interested).
Also, selling tickets for people to let me lead them to other, torturable people (who lack a certain level of intelligence , and/or who hold bad premises) would make me complicit in the initiation of force. (Further, it would remind me far too much of what some people did to me -- with pleasure, success, and teacherly approval/encouragement/assistance -- throughout my schooling until college.)

Post 42

Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - 7:59am

Kate, I'm kidding with you. I know I forgot to to apply my "silly" HTML tag but I'm not being literal.

Regarding the left handedness thing, my understanding is that this it has a neurological basis. Is that correct?

Is the handwriting software thing of use to calligraphers? I dabble in the art.

Post 43

Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - 8:55am

To answer your questions: Yes and Yes! (I'm also a semi-pro calligrapher.)

Post 44

Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - 10:02am

I guess me and Rand wouldn't see eye-to-eye on the first point of children not being exposed to the disabled (as she defined them), probably because many of my childhood friends were either mildly retarded or autistic (and a couple were paraplegic). For me, I saw little difference between them and myself at that age. Some were slower, sure, but on the whole they were happy (unlike myself at that age, which often I could barely get out of bed as I suffered clinical depression then... X_X). But I have to wonder if such folks are what Rand intended to be covered by the term disabled. They may have been handicapped, but disabled? It makes me wonder.

Post 45

Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - 10:28am

What part of tragic - "causing, characterized by or suffering extreme distress or sorrow" - don't you people understand? Happy handicapped children like Fred's son and Brede's childhood friends are by definition not tragic. Next, because she could not find an argument to justify animal rights, we will be discussing Rand the cat lover's attributed toward drowning puppies?

And Kate, I assume you must be one of the people who voted that on average Objectivists are less moral than other people? Where do you meet these folks? At rattlesnake roundups and the DMV?

Post 46

Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - 11:16am

Ted, I voted that Objectivists average *more* highly moral than other people -- and my average included the weirdos, so you can deduce just what it took to outweigh such folks when I computed the average.

I don't frequent the DMV because I don't drive a car (never having managed to pass a road test -- I wouldn't drive even if the DMV and all its works disappeared tomorrow, because any attempt by me to operate a car would probably violate the first half of the John Galt oath) -- and I certainly don't frequent "Rattlesnake Roundup," whatever that name may signify, unless the name refers to the reptile area in a zoo or pet-store: I enjoy looking at (and, where possible, touching) snakes and other reptiles.

Post 47

Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - 11:46am

IIRC a rattlesnake roundup is an event where lots of people get together and slaughter as many rattlesnakes as humanly possible. It's kind of odd in a "running of the bulls type of way".

I have to say I'm suprised that you voted a high opinion of Oists, Kate.

Post 48

Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - 12:10pm

I don't plan to add any Rattlesnake Roundups to my social schedule.

As for your surprise, Ryan -- check your premises (and please let me know which of those premises my voting "more moral" disprvd).
(Edited by Kate Gladstone on 9/22, 12:11pm)

Post 49

Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - 1:06pm

I don't think I'll be attending any roundups either.

As to my guess about what your opinion might be, no premises involved aside from "watch what people say and evaluate". I'm certainly comfortable with guessing in error in this case. I enjoy unexpected similarity among the intelligent.

My opinion was based on noticing that many posts you initiate seem to be in the "post x article or Rand quote for discussion", with the articles involving a perceived invalidation of some Oist principle and quotes being easily casting Oism or Rand in a terrible light when taken out of context. I'm not saying that I'm right, you know you a lot better than I do. This has been my observation though.

Post 50

Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - 1:32pm

What?? Never eaten rattlesnake?? Delicious [especially in stews and chilies]... ;-)

Post 51

Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - 1:48pm

Ted:

What part of tragic - "causing, characterized by or suffering extreme distress or sorrow" - don't you people understand?

I agree with the way you are interpreting her words, and on that basis, I agree with the point being made.

But...her words were:

A]

"Children cannot deal, and should not have to deal, with the very tragic spectacle of a handicapped human being. When they grow up, they may give it some attention, if they're interested, but it should never be presented to them in childhood, ... "

...not...

B]

"Children cannot deal, and should not have to deal, with the spectacle of a very tragically handicapped human being. When they grow up, they may give it some attention, if they're interested, but it should never be presented to them in childhood, ... "

Those are not equivalent.

If she meant to say B], she said A].

You're interpretation is that she meant B], and I would basically agree with B], that children are not equipped to deal with "the spectacle of a very tragically handicapped human being" and there is not much to be gained -- by anybody -- by presenting children with that spectacle, by design.

Most of the time, she was a very careful wordsmith. In this instance, I'd hope she wasn't.

regards,
Fred

Post 52

Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - 2:56pm

I'm sure it is, and I would try it. A roundup is a different matter. I like beef, but I don't run wild through patures beating cows to death. If cows could poison me to death I would be even less inclined to do it.

Clarification on the quote isn't forthcoming. I know which interpretation can be integrated with my other information regarding Objectivism and doesn't offend my sense of life, which I have attempted to apply Objectivist themes to as well. Put another way, I can form an educated opinion backed up by the subconscious compass of my sense of life. Nothing else is necessary.

Post 53

Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - 4:29pm

I'm starting to wonder if Kate finds anything valuable in Objectivism at all. By every indication, Objectivists are all whack. That has to be the point, right?

Post 54

Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - 4:32pm

To Ryan -- and anyone else needing the reason --
I ask about those -- and ONLY those -- very few things in Oism that leave me /a/ curious to know the reason or cause for them, /b/ dubious, and/or /c/ wondering whether others here share my curiosity and/or doubt.

Until and unless I question something, assume I agree with it.
(Edited by Kate Gladstone on 9/22, 4:33pm)

Post 55

Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - 6:32pm

Hey Kate!

I just recalled something that I hadn't thought about for a long time. In the early '90's I bought a copy of Commodore's official Amiga LOGO and immediately, as my first learning project, wrote a mini-program called "Jaggies." What Jaggies did was to take your handwriting via the mouse and, as you were writing, generate fractal jagged points shooting off from the sharper angles of the text. I included all kinds of parameters that one could set to get different effects, and some of the results were quite spectacular, and could have easily been the basis of advertising text.

I'm thinking that a similar program, let's call it "Stylist," could offer all kinds of options for the style-challenged handwriter. Imagine a Style that emulated a dancer, with little images of a dancer doing the high kicks as the exclamation points. Or, generated flames from the text. Or simply smoothed unruly curves to bezier spec.

The Amiga also supported something called color fonts, meaning that you could buy or create fonts that contained color shading, embossing, embedded pictures, etc. The bit-mapped fonts and the unique way that the Amiga handled color made possible many such innovations that were nearly impossible on a Windows platform, such as color cycling animation, which could also be applied to text, so that complex colors could flow through text, for example.

With color cycling, sections of your pallete would shift their values systematically at a controlled pace. Setting a pallete range of say 24 colors would allow you to bounce a ball accross the screen, with trails if desired. You just set 23 colors to the background and one color to the ball, and then you dropped the ball into each succeeding color on the palette. You could actually do some very nice mini-animations that were simply one page images that would have been perfect for web design, using a fraction of the bandwidth of the typical gif animation - if the vultures hadn't sold out the Amiga and destroyed it, anyway.

I'm guessing that the cell phones, in many cases, anyway, may support this kind of stuff, as they are much more innovative and competition driven than MicroSloth has ever been. In fact, there are people running Amiga emulations on cell phones, as there are tens of thousands of Amiga programs freely available, and they run SUPER fast on the same modern hardware that bogs down on Windose. The latest and greatest version of the Amiga OS emulation for Windose or Linux was only a couple Megs total, and the typical Amiga program is under 50K, meaning that an entire application can be embedded for less bandwidth cost than most simple web pages.

The Amiga OS is a 32-bit realtime multi-threaded, multi-tasking, object-based (note Objectivists), OS, supporting interprocess communication and online device installation without reboots.

Just a thought...

Post 56

Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - 6:40pm

For the benefit of Kate -

That's a curious method, because:

a) Bringing some of this stuff up implies a great deal of disagreement (like the only reference to Objectivists you can think of are the kooks, as if the kooks define what it means to be an Objectivist).

b) Dissent should be honestly presented. "I read/heard this and disagree because...." is an honest approach, as opposed to, "Ignore 99% of what Rand wrote, and look at this potentially disparaging comment she made! Doesn't it imply this and that?? How could it not imply it??" isn't an honest approach. Loaded inquiry isn't honest. Ignoring context is never honest. Introducing an out of place context is dishonest (like paying back a "stolen" train ride.)

c) Dissent belongs in the Dissent forum. Disguising dissent as honest inquiry isn't passing the smell test on this end.

That said, carry on with the charade, but know I will call this out again, if I feel so inclined.

im-watching-you-focker

Post 57

Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - 7:38pm

I'd give Kate the benefit of the doubt, both on her saying that if she agrees with it she doesn't question it, and about whether to post in dissent. But yes, this belongs in dissent.

Fred, again, it's an off the cuff remark, not one Rand edited herself. I think its absurd to imply that Rand thought seeing a handicapped person caused horrible suffering in the viewer, regardless of the suffering of the person with the disability. It implies a total lack of understanding of her theory of emotions. You are right that tragic spectacle is ambiguous, and spectacle of tragic suffering would have been better. But given that it is ambiguous, and that it is absurd to think, knowing the rest of Rand's philosophy, that seeing someone else suffer is horrendous for the viewer (Rand would call such a person an emotionalist) I will take my interpretation.

And remember, Rand is selfish. Your interpretation is too generous, you make of her a sympathy-paralyzed altruist. She is not so concerned about how sorry people will feel for others. She is worried that a child, seeing the horrible fate of someone else, will worry the same might happen to himself.

(Edited by Ted Keer on 9/22, 10:02pm)

Post 58

Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - 9:43pm

Okay, and thanks -- future comments of this kind, if any, will appear in Dissent.

Post 59

Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - 9:44pm