| | I still get along with my ex-wife and have worked for her on projects over the years. I am on one now. She read Atlas Shrugged and the rest soon after we met. (She was 16; I was 20.) I know no one more rational and realistic than she is. As much as I love my current wife of 35 years, when you don't know the answer, your first guess is usually right. One time, I delivered a talk on Counterfeits to an ANA convention and they both were in the room. It was interesting...
If you look back in the Forums and see the posts and replies and tally them, it is clear that the more we agree, the less we have to say. Hegemony is entropy.
I wonder why it has to be that way. Perhaps it is because humans are more averse to risk than we are attracted to opportunity. So, we worry more about being wrong and argue the points of disagreement, rather than ignoring disagreements and expanding on regions of consonance.
The Random Past Article after that one was about the Vortrekkers who kicked Zulu butt after being massacred during a treaty negotiation. It generated a lot of heat and smoke about the morality and immorality of this group or that slaughtering each other. Everyone stated their case. No one changed their mind. ... or even amended an opinion... Maybe they did not need to. But the downside is that at some level, one at a time, tired of arguing without agreements, people drift off.
That opens the problem of what do with dissenters. No Objectivist board treats them well. MSK's OL is probably the most tolerant - but not unique to him, he has his limits. At some level, I consider it aggression to jump in on a group and start arguments about basic principles. ("How dare you discuss bowling? Quoits is the only game!") Somewhere in the broad range I can distingush between the person who says they liked Atlas Shrugged but still believe in God, and the "Gottfried Baruch Hume" who comes here to insist that Objectivism is just plain wrong. At some point, you have to say, "This is just not for you." But it is a judgment call, and after a few years of such calls, a pattern develops, and eventually, we have few questions about much of anything new and interesting. So, active posters find less payment for their efforts and go elsewhere.
And I am not even sure if that comes close being the reason... Of the discussion boards and Google Groups groups (formerlly Usenet groups) I have visted, RoR and OL meet my needs best, but I see that other people have made other choices. Betsy Speichers "Rand Fans" and the orthodox group at Objectivism Online seem denser, richer and more active, even though both of those are more restrictive and less tolerant of dissent than RoR or MSK's OL. (I stopped in at NoodleFood but it seemed a lot like Mars: cold, dry, and barren. On the other hand, Lindsay Perrigo's Solo Passion has a poisonous atmosphere.)
Sometimes I wonder if it the interface here, as the others are built on commercial products. But I like this. It is not supportive of my Macintosh, but I get around that, and it works great with my Windows machine. As the webmaster for the Michigan State Numismatic Society, I shopped twice in two years for discussion board software and rather than acquire any, I just asked one of the collector boards to start a secured Michigan area for us. I did not find a commercial product better than this.
I really have no thumbnail answer, no summary to pinpoint causal factors.
Do you remember when there was a SOLO meetup and a couple formed? These two online people met in person and, well, something happened, it seemed, or so they reported. I cannot see that happening now if only because rather than 50 regular posters, we have five.
I would have thought that the new news about Ayn Rand since the Bush-Obama bailouts, Atlas Shrugged Part I in the theaters, and now Paul Ryan's furious backpedalling would have brought some new entrants here.
"Hippie Republic of China say we threw I Ching ... out the window ... now we are unanimous." -- Firesign Theater Waiting for the Electrician.
(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 9/05, 8:01am)
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