The fact that Ayn Rand is being recognized is an indication of how important she is to her critics. It makes no difference what is said about you so long as you are the one being talked about. Her influence is contagious and this government school educated dunce will not do her any harm, but probably give some cause to find out about Ayn Rand which will be in their best interest.

Maybe now we'll see if @scottgdvm's question will be answered. Does anyone want to bother engaging this person that bases his or her life on myth and superstition?

Yes, Objectivism came after the Bible. So did virtually all of modern science and human knowledge. The understanding of electromagnetism and the harnessing of electricity also came after the Bible, so what does that prove? Fortunately for mankind there have been many advances in science and philosophy in last 2000 years so we can abandon all that which we have learned is false.

My engagement is now terminated.

"Jason Brennan fully understands Rand"
A typical false statement.

Might as well say, Jason Brennan fully understands life, the universe.and everything.

42!

Only two things might be gained that I can think of.

1) It might amuse me, for a time, to engage this person. I admit that such amusement might derive from a character flaw :)

2) It is possible that others will realize the absurdity of the other person's position and join you in appreciating reality - or at least become curious enough to dig further.

Other than the above I can't think of any benefit of such an engagement.

[I've never read a word written by Jason Brennan. I only know what I read here.]

If Jason Brennan fully understands Rand then he is simply a liar, then. If a colorblind man says a blue car is brown he can be forgiven. If a man knows a car is blue and still insists that it's brown he cannot be forgiven.

People are stupid.

the Bible, tame?

As so many have already mentioned, virtually every comment I read about Ayn Rand or Objectivism describes the opposite of what she really said (except here, of course).

Even on this site, on the topic of a solar storm, "flanap" declares that an earth-destroying storm can't happen until "Jesus Christ returns." What is this person doing hanging around an Objectivist forum? We all know that it is impossible to be an objectivist without being an atheist.

BLEEDING HEART LIBERTARIANISM is a false concept. It simply does not exist...

I was curious what a bleeding heart libertarian was. Wikipedia describes 3 types.

Weak/contingent BHLs: This is just your standard libertarian. There isn't any reason for this category to exist or for a person that would fall into this category to call himself a BHL; the benefits of social justice are a consequence of what they already believe.

Anarchist Left-BHLs: This is just your average anarchist/minarchist libertarian. I don't consider these people to be libertarians, really, because libertarians believe that the state has a valid but limited role in society. In any case this is also not any kind of BHL because the benefits of social justice are a consequence of what they already believe.

Strong BHLs: Jason Brennan is specifically mentioned as being an example of a strong BHL. "Strong BHLs believe that libertarianism is justified insofar and to the extent that [libertarian institutions] are compatible with the requirements of social justice. Insofar as certain elements of standard libertarianism are found to be incompatible with the requirements of social justice, Strong BHLs hold that those elements should be abandoned. Thus some Strong BHLs argue that the state might be justified in providing a universal basic income."

In other words, the only reason to call oneself a Bleeding Heart Libertarian is if you're a Strong BHL. The other two categories are meaningless because the benefits of social justice are just a consequence of what they already believe.

However, there is absolutely no such thing as a Strong BHL because their beliefs are completely incompatible with libertarianism. Those people are simply collectivists. Libertarianism shares beliefs with conservatives and collectivists, such as no social welfare and no corporate welfare, respectively. I used those two examples on purpose because Libertarians believe in *both* of those while conservatives and collectivists each abhor one or the other.

Therefore, since neither of the terms weak BHL nor anarchist left BHL differentiates the members of those two "groups" from others that share their beliefs the terms are without meaning. And since the term strong BHL describes a person who holds many beliefs that are at complete odds with libertarianism, the Libertarian part of "Bleeding Heart Libertarian" is a complete falsehood.

Types 1 and 2 are meaningless and type 3 is a lie, so Bleeding Heart Libertarian is a false concept.

It makes one yearn for a world where a declaration like that could be reflected in reality.

Jason Brennan: "I am a Bleeding Heart Libertarian."

The Universe: "Ooops, Jason just vanished into nothingness because he declared that he does not exist."

Alas, we're stuck with a reality in which we have to try to cope with people who declare "1 = 2" and demand that we believe it.

The “rape” scene is described from the woman’s point of view.
The “murder” scene is described from a third person point of view, and there are no murders, just consequences.

These were a couple of fictional events from particular points of views, which are tame compared to events in the Bible and so many other books.

"valuing normal over exceptional; opposing helping people categorically; fear of outsiders; putting politics ahead of hard work; opposing some mutually-agreed trades; denying science; blaming failures on others."
wow, pretty damning there to "half of the forum" without any evidence

The two parts of her novels which suggest that Rand was OK with rape or murder are:
1.The rape scene in the Fountainhead and
2.The train scene where folks get killed because of their wrong beliefs.
Objectivists can point out that this was all fiction. That the rape scene was Rand's fantasy, not a real life sanction of rape. That the train scene was simply about her point that ideas have consequences.
The opposition will reply that such negative scenes in her book indicate *something* was wrong with Rand and/or her philosophy.
I suspect that many of the opposition like Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings." Yet they are never accused of criticizing Tolkien for liking battles too much because there are battles in the book.
Fiction is fiction. This includes fiction that makes philosophical points!

From what I could grasp (theoretical mathematics NOT being my forte), it looks like you are performing mathematics using vectors as the primary unit of computation rather than discrete numbers. I am only guessing, but it appears that whereas in a digital computer, you must represent magnitude and direction in two separate quantities (and therefore two separate attributes of the same element), in quantum physics this may be rendered as a single element composing the actual identity of that vector (definitional). What it would allow for is the elimination of all the linking steps being performed in a binary computer that involve tracking and maintaining the two elements of the identity, resulting in significant reduction in overhead. Of course the practicality of such would be restricted to the sphere in which the computations involved required vector analysis.

"I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."

Like the idea of individual rights is a "Johnny come lately" to royal or supernatural rulership.

I suspect students of Objectivism will fight this battle forever. This is a prize example of Josef Goebbels' Big Lie.

When my eyes first struck the verbs "rape, dismember and murder," I thought the object of those three verbs would be "the earth." Then he revealed his true object: "others." In other words, those who will not let a gang with guns take their substance to buy the votes of those others with it, have rapacious, violent and murderous intent toward anyone but themselves.

That we are seeing this more often today, s a major indicator of the *failure* of the collectivist governing philosophy, and the urgent *search* by average human beings for an *alternative.* Objectivism is one alternative, and one of the most explicit alternatives advocating liberty. The collectivists know this. They also caught it when the first Tea Party demonstrators, five years ago, started carrying posters vaguely threatening a true-to-life enactment of the Strike of the Men of the Mind.

I suspect as time goes by and technology improves we will figure out more and more about why tiny things appear to do what they do as we do in non-quantum physics.
We don't say that because a solid stick appears to bend in water that physics is wrong or that a stick is a straight stick and a non-straight stick at the exact same time. No, we scientifically figure out why the stick “appears” to bend.

Jason Brennan fully understands Rand, he is just the typical philosophy professor who feels compelled to criticize at least something from all philosophers, to justify continuing to explore philosophy rather an just teach what predecessors developed. For example my reading of his article is not that he is criticizing Objectivism as Rand developed it but he is saying that the implication of calling Objectivism the same thing or a subset or super-set of ethical egoism leads to contradictions.

That is what Maphesdus is driving at, and on the one point that Newtonian models of physics break down at the quantum level, he is correct.

The problem that AR had a hard time grasping (and I do to some extent as well) is something called superposition. Read the section on bits vs. qubits in

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_com...

AR would have appreciated quantum physics much better after seeing a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) image, but she died too soon.

Jason Brennan is a polymythofrenic You won't find this in any dictionary or medical dictionary. About 30 years ago, my wife took a medical terminology class and had to learn medical names of body parts, orientation, and diseases, not to mention the pharmaceutical preparations for treatment. In this quest, we had to break down disease names into prefix, word, suffix. It was hilarious and we spent lots of time with flash cards making up disease names, drugs to treat, and anatomy names. I came up with this:
Poly (many) Mytho (fiction,lie) Frenia (manic compulsion) When words fail you, make them up.

I have been hearing that kind of crap since the 1960's. I have read just about everything Ayn Rand has written including most of her news letters that I subscribed to at the time. I have even heard this kind of junk from people who call themselves libertarians. One college professor "libertarian" at a meeting of libertarians actually said that no one could read all of John Galt's radio speech. One "conservative" radio talk show host said that Ayn Rand was "ok" until she was proven to be a fraud. Of course he never said why but the implication was that she accepted Medicare when she was dying from lung cancer. There is nothing inconsistent with that and the Objectivist Philosophy she advocated. Of course she paid for her Medicare benefits through taxes but aside from that she advocated self-preservation not suicide. I am 72 and collect Railroad Retirement, Medicare and unemployment compensation until I get a job or it runs out. I would vote against all of them but am not going to deny them to myself when I am entitled to it because I paid for them through taxes in one way or another. Critics forget that we are forced at the barrel of a gun to participate and contribute.

I think that what Maph is getting at is that under the laws of Quantum physics, many of the traditional (i.e. Newtonian) models break down. A sub-atomic particle can be in two places at the same time, or exhibit two other such contrary attributes - confusing the notion of identity.

What he overlooks is that these do not happen (as far as we know) on a macro level, where A = A actually matters.

Perhaps the better question is to ask if there is anything to be gained engaging with someone who is clearly attempting to mask his real political affiliation :)

"Looters have been prevalent in our history since..."

I think that was precisely his point. He's not arguing that "might makes right" is the best societal philosophy - quite the contrary. What he is pointing out is that history is quite replete with tyrants and dictators (and their cronies) who value force as a method of control. And if the current United States population (or Europe) is any indicator, there are few who actually value their minds and ability to exercise them freely enough to do anything about it.

That being said, I disagree with the last statement. I find it difficult to believe that AR missed this dichotomy coming from communist Russia where it was in such full force. She was promoting something she believed in, but I highly doubt she was not cognizant of the opposition.

Ayn Rand stated that Objectivism takes a long period of study to internalize.
I think that there are too many "add water and stir" "objectivist observers"...and this writer, Jason Brennan, is one of them.