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Monday, December 21, 2009 - 3:00pmSanction this postReply
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Thank you, Ted.

I will now go and buy this book.

Ed


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Monday, December 21, 2009 - 3:29pmSanction this postReply
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No question this will be compared with Peikoff's...

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Monday, December 21, 2009 - 3:51pmSanction this postReply
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The book is on Amazon, where you can see and, if you like, sanction my review.

You should buy the book at the publishers' Laissez Faire, where it is five dollars cheaper. I have already bent the spine of my paperback. If that bothers you, you should consider the hardcover.

I gave away my copy of OPAR. OPAR is more polished as a written document. The only part of OPAR that struck me as original when I read it was his treatment of the Arbitrary. It's quite obvious that the section on the arbitrary is just a rework of Branden's chapter which is entitled The Concept of God.

Post 3

Monday, December 21, 2009 - 6:56pmSanction this postReply
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I look forward to adding this to my library.  Having attended the Basic Principles lectures, it will be interesting to relive them.
TK:  That it is a spoken rather than a strictly scripted lecture is evident from the occasional run-on sentence and awkward or inappropriate word choice.
True though that may be, these were not ad hoc speeches or professiorial lectures without preparation.  I have a story from my experience. 

In my school system (Cleveland) we had well-developed "tracking" of students based broadly on "general" or "business" or "college preparatory" outcomes.  Within that last, we had three subdivisions in rank order: academically talented; advanced placement; and major work.  In other towns what we called "major work" was "The Cleveland Program."    Understand that I was classed "academically talented" and by going to summer school to get ahead, I made the advanced placement classes in history, physics, and calculus.  No way was I "major work."  I lack(ed) the IQ as measured in the third (rarely sixth) grade to enter the program.   

So, I was in high school, taking the Basic Principles lectures.  We could bring one guest once (or else pay a fee and/or sign them up for the series) and I took this major work girl.  As we sat there, listening to Nathaniel Branden, she put her notes into outline form.  On the break, I asked her how she knew that would work.  She said, "I hope you didn't drag me here for <something or other I don't remember> but the point was that she expected any serious speaker on such a topic to be working from an outline.

The point is, again, that however spontaneous these might look in print, Nathaniel Branden was not preaching to the choir.

TK:   It's quite obvious that the section on the arbitrary is just a rework of Branden's chapter which is entitled The Concept of God.

 
Do you still believe that the universe had a creator, or have you come to accept the facts of reality?

TK:   It suffers from a stilted overuse of Objectivist jargon such as "mystics" and "looters."

Those words have meanings.  We need to be clear on that and not shy away from them or what they identify. 
Muscle-mystic.
Social metaphysics.
Moocher.
Psycho-epistemology.
Bootleg Romanticism.

Words have meaning.

TK:  And much of the work overlaps with subsequently published material.

As Nathaniel Branden did not believe in the predictive power of tea leaves and crystal balls, it is entirely possible than he did not know what would be published in the future.  It is also highly likely that presentations that would become the later publications were, indeed, developed early on as lecture material, which is, for instance, the very same process as Richard Feynman's famous Lectures on physics.


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Monday, December 21, 2009 - 8:17pmSanction this postReply
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Why do you have this sorry need to object for the sake of objecting? If you had any decency you'd at least try to base your complaints on reality.

I said that the work is stilted, not by the use, but by the overuse of Objectivist cliches like mystic. Read this single paragraph, p 98:

The concept of "omniscience" is the secret wish fulfillment of every mystic. To acquire one's knowledge by a process of struggle and effort is abhorrent to the mystic.But to know everything, to know it instantaneously and without effort, to know it causelessly, without any specific means of knowing it, or acquiring one's knowledge — this is the mystic's passionate dream. The concept of omniscience is a psychological monument to the mystic's hatred of effort.

Words have meanings? Well, that counts as overuse.

"Do you still believe that the universe had a creator, or have you come to accept the facts of reality?"

Don't presume to speak on behalf of what I believe, you liar. I have been an explicit atheist since the first week I read Rand. You cannot provide one quote to support this absurd accusation.

In response to my true statement that "much of the work overlaps with subsequently published material" you respond sarcastically that Branden, without "tea leaves" and "crystal balls" possibly "did not know what would be published in the future." You fool. Read the next two sentences I wrote:

"There has been a troubling history among supposedly 'facts-first' Objectivists of rewriting history and rewriting the essays of former associates of Rand who were at some point expelled from her orbit or that of her heir, Leonard Peikoff. Publication of this work shows just how derivative and secondhand is Peikoff's own manual, which was written to supersede it in the catalog once, after the end of their affair, Branden was "permanently repudiated" by Rand."

I made no criticism of Branden for his lack of omniscience. The criticism is that others rewrote his words out of their wish to write him out of Objectivist history.

Words do have meanings. You don't care what those meanings are. You drop context whenever it suits your miserable secondhand need to try to prove your superiority. Your focus is not reality, it is the regard of others. Well, I have none for you. Find someone else to stalk.



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Monday, December 21, 2009 - 8:54pmSanction this postReply
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Misquoting from Hamlet - "...me thinks thou dost protest too much..."

Post 6

Monday, December 21, 2009 - 9:50pmSanction this postReply
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You are right, Robert, I should, and would, simply ignore him.

I would prefer that liars like him simply be moderated.

The problem I have is that he just made three false and arbitrary personal claims; first, that I am or have been a deist in the last twenty years, second, that I argued that one shouldn't use such words as mystic, and third, that I criticized Branden for not knowing his writing would be copied. Not one of these claims is based on reality. If it were he could support it with a full accurate quote.

And if you don't want me to explain his behavior as based on a twisted secondhandedness, what would you have me attribute it to, stupidity? I don't think he's dumb. I think he works hard at it.

Silence is fine when you don't have to put up with such vandals or the authorities take them away.

I put a lot of effort into that review and I chose to publish it here first. How would you deal with such unworthy nonsense on one of the galleries you started, Robert?


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Post 7

Monday, December 21, 2009 - 10:31pmSanction this postReply
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Ted,
Excellent. Thanks.

Post 8

Monday, December 21, 2009 - 10:54pmSanction this postReply
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It's neat how much that word "thanks" means.

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Tuesday, December 22, 2009 - 5:29amSanction this postReply
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Ted, I apologize if I have misidentified your full range of beliefs.  I am not going to go back over everything you have posted here. Nevertheless, I have long accepted (wrongfully, it seems) that you believe in God because you were a Catholic, a creed from which you did not fully divorce yourself when you started writing here.  Apparently, I misunderstood you on that point. 

As for all the rest, ad hominem arguments speak to the man.

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 12/22, 5:34am)


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Tuesday, December 22, 2009 - 12:11pmSanction this postReply
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At least he didn't say "I sincerely apologize".

Post 11

Tuesday, December 22, 2009 - 12:43pmSanction this postReply
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I don't think it's too much to ask people to pay attention to what I actually say. I have never once said that I am a Catholic. I said I was raised Catholic. I have also repeatedly said I was a free thinker; that I explicitly rejected the authority of the priests when I was 13, and that I converted to Randian atheism when I first read the indestructible robot argument in Virtue of Selfishness in the 11th grade. To mention that you were raised Catholic begs the obvious question of your current status. Frankly, the unsupported innuendo from him and others is insulting and not what one expects of careful thinkers.

While I have my opinions of MEM's motives, I am concerned primarily with his actions. I don't crap on his movie reviews and other galleries with questions that amount to whether he has stopped abusing his wife. Since he doesn't defend his comments on use/overuse and the psychic Branden, I assume he realizes their inaccuracy as well. I can accept him apologizing for the post.


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Post 12

Tuesday, December 22, 2009 - 3:45pmSanction this postReply
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Great review, Ted. 

Older friends still talk about the NBI series like it was yesterday.  




Post 13

Tuesday, December 22, 2009 - 4:19pmSanction this postReply
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Yes, listening to the recordings brings back a lot of memories of those heady days... am sure the book will do much the same...

Post 14

Tuesday, December 22, 2009 - 5:20pmSanction this postReply
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Robert, a Facebook friend inquired about you today. Said he would very much like to borrow your old NBI notes. Donovan A., ring a bell?

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