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SimplifiedPrivacy.com Podcast | 6 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag +1 
 Yeah I agree ethics are hardwired for survival to be part of a group.  Yes I’d agree on the words “game theory” are a good way to frame it.

What do you think of Ayn Rand and Objectivism? With objective morality
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Mike Dilger | 6 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag +2 
 I read Atlas Shrugged and came away with the distinct impression that she is confused. Very firm and certain in her confused beliefs.

Like she was 90% there I think, and the 10% she didn't understand was so fundamentally different from her line of thinking that she could find and fix it.... it was foundationally wrong.

This reply is my impression of my feelings on objectivism. I haven't thought about it in years, so it would be hard to explain how I think she was wrong.
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BitBurn | 6 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag 
 AS was purely a fiction but I think Ayn did relate to Dagny Taggert in a personal way, but it was a misplaced relationship as she in no way resembled Dagny in real life.

As a work of fiction it was poorly written and yet still resonated.
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Mike Dilger | 6 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag 
 It is in the thousand page soliloquies that you get a sense for her morality. And much of it is very standard American Libertarian, which I mostly agree with. But then she attempted to take the ideas to a higher plane, to some unifying principles or something, and I think the attempt failed.

But I don't know for sure. I didn't read the fountainhead; I don't have her more direct statements on objectivity.
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BitBurn | 6 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag 
 I tried to read Fountainhead a couple of times but couldn't do it..

If you re-read Atlas Shrugged and insert Satoshi's name for Hank Reardon and Bitcoin for the "Engine of the World", it makes a great deal of sense. She was a pre-cog.
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Mike Dilger | 6 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag +1 
 I don't think morality is objective. I don't think it is absolute. Sam Harris does though. And argues for Israel killing Palestinians under his "my morals are absolute" rubrik, which would be funny if it wasn't so murderous.

There are three levels of moral relativism, so I need to be clear.

Descriptive: Of course this is true. People have different opinions about ethics. Nobody even argues this.
Meta-ethical: I believe this too. I don't believe in "right" and "wrong". I think those are high-level abstractions, outputs from the circuitry, not fundamental aspects of morality.
Normative: I don't believe this. Normative moral relativists believe that because different people have different ideas about what is right and wrong, we ought to tolerate the behavior of people with different moral systems.  I say nuts to that - fight for your own!