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Post 40

Saturday, March 4, 2006 - 6:16pmSanction this postReply
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Phil,
"But the fact I'm not a filmmaker doesn't mean I can't comment on the quality of a film."

Of course you can. However, your comment on a film (or an artwork, a music piece, etc.) will be just as good as that of mine, a layman's opinion, and should be taken as such. And our opinions are in a quite different category than those of real experts'.

(Edited by Hong Zhang on 3/04, 6:18pm)


Post 41

Saturday, March 4, 2006 - 6:01pmSanction this postReply
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I believe Ayn Rand appeared three times on the Carson show in 1967. I had just returned from Vietnam and watched one of these from Tucson, AZ. I think a shot of the audience revealed Barbara Branden sitting in the front row.  AR was radiant. In response to one comment or question she said "That's a contradiction" to a lot of applause. I suspect there were a lot of students of Objectivism there.

--Brant


Post 42

Saturday, March 4, 2006 - 7:27pmSanction this postReply
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That is extremely interesting, Brant. I'm going to see if these are available anywhere. Maybe from NBC archives.  Thanks!


Post 43

Saturday, March 4, 2006 - 7:29pmSanction this postReply
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Sad to say those were among the first ten years - all wiped...
 but am sure someone somewhere has tapes of them.... and she was on 4 times, that I remember....


Post 44

Saturday, March 4, 2006 - 7:44pmSanction this postReply
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It's a damn crime, Robert!  I just found that out myself:

DISCLAIMER:
Unfortunately, in the early years of The Tonight Show, several episodes were erased. So if you are searching for a guest appearance that you are certain existed and it is not coming up in the search, you're not losing your mind. Most likely the footage no longer exists.


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Post 45

Sunday, March 5, 2006 - 12:46amSanction this postReply
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I never knew Ayn Rand personally, but I did attend 3 of her Ford Hall Forum talks and listen to her answer questions on a number of NBI lecture tapes.  Almost always, I thought that her ability to answer questions concisely, clearly, and incisively was incredible.  It was a pleasure I will always treasure to have heard her myself.  She was often very gentle with questioners who clearly had very bad premises and had often soaked up very bad ideas in college and earlier in their educations.  Every now and then she would answer angrily and it was often clear to me that she had some very real justification.  Sometimes when she was angry, it seemed a bit over the top to me.  But then, she was constantly beset by intellectual pretenders who attacked her ideas ruthlessly and meanly.  She was denounced almost everywhere.  She was the one who created The Fountainhead and had it rejected for publication over and over again.  Doesn't it seem understandable that after offering the world so much and being given so little respect and recognition, she might have had a little anger bottled up?  Now, noting this does not mean that I or others who have noted this do not love her and do not respect her work.

In one of the NBI lecture question periods, Ayn Rand said she gave Nathaniel Branden a blank check.  I groaned when I heard that and told the group listening to the tape that that was a big mistake.  From listening to tapes, I knew that Nathaniel Branden was an uncertain man, a man uncertain of who he was.  He was not at all John Galt or Francisco D'Anconia.  He was vain and weak.  On the other hand, he must have had many good qualities since Ayn Rand clearly loved him.  In the end, it appears to me that Nathaniel Branden was and is a very flawed man who nonetheless has many good qualities.  It seems to me that this assessment is also the one that is the most kind to Ayn Rand, who certainly deserves our kindness and our respect.  In view of her love of him and her being his lover, we cannot do her justice by judging him simply to be a monster.  If he was nothing but the monster that many Objectivists take him to be, then what are we to think of Ayn Rand's judgment?  No, I think he was essentially an immature man with a tendency to make tragically flawed judgments.  Tragically, Ayn Rand took a long time to understand this.


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Post 46

Sunday, March 5, 2006 - 12:50amSanction this postReply
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Teresa Summerlee Isanhart wrote:
ARI sells videos of Rand's television appearances.
Robert Malcom commented:
Sad to say those were among the first ten years - all wiped...

And Teresa responded:
It's a damn crime, Robert!  I just found that out myself:
DISCLAIMER:
Unfortunately, in the early years of The Tonight Show, several episodes were erased. So if you are searching for a guest appearance that you are certain existed and it is not coming up in the search, you're not losing your mind. Most likely the footage no longer exists.
If it weren't such a loss to the rest of us, I would cheer the fact that ARI is (apparently) unable to cash in on some of Ayn Rand's appearances on The Tonight Show. Why? Because they are among the most egregious "wipers" of audio taped lectures and discussions in the business. They airbrush the truth and re-write reality to suit themselves and sell the highly butchered results to us as though it were the straight stuff. Be very wary of people who do this, while professing to be seekers of truth and champions of reason. I.e., keep your critical faculty handy at all times when dealing with materials sold by ARI and its affiliates.

REB


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Post 47

Sunday, March 5, 2006 - 12:55amSanction this postReply
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Hi Charles!

Long time no see.

For the record, I agree with you about Nathaniel Branden's good qualities. I disagree with your assessment that he is a flawed man (except to the extent that we all have are small shortcomings). I have gotten to know him through correspondence.

Nathaniel is a magnificent human being with one hell of a body of work behind him. His achievements speak for themselves. I hold it high honor to know him.

Michael


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Post 48

Sunday, March 5, 2006 - 1:16amSanction this postReply
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Phil Coates wrote:
Can anyone who has read the Brandens' two books or other sources say if the issue of ***how she grew mentally and what her working and thinking processes were which helped her*** has been done...without "going off" on the Brandens or on other side issues besides the one I just raised?
I commented:
Sure, Phil. Just read Chris Sciabarra's Ayn Rand: the Russian Radical. You don't have to agree with his perspective, but it makes a helluva lot of sense to me in explaining Rand's particularly effective methodology. He traces it back to her college training, and his followup research articles in JARS show that she was exposed back then to a lot of methodology similar to her own approach.

Phil reacted:
That's it? His whole explanation? Many people had the same college training she did and didn't turn out to be Ayn Rand. Moreover, it would be grossly simplistic (if this is what Chris says or implies) to attribute all of AR's genius to 'dialectic'. To fully explain Ayn Rand's mind requires much, much more than a single event or period like college training.
I didn't realize, Phil, that you were looking for a complete, tied up in ribbons kind of explanation of how Rand got to be such a great thinker. You asked "how she grew mentally" and "what her working and thinking processes were which helped her." That suggests that you would be interested in -- perhaps even appreciative of -- any even partial lead to understanding where Rand "came from." Yet, you instead dismiss what I have offered because it does not "fully explain Ayn Rand's mind" or "all of AR's genius."

Well, for those who are not ready to dismiss my suggestion because it does not offer an omniscient, all-encompassing explanation of Rand's brilliance, here is some more background to what I noted above:  in his Russian Radical book, Chris Sciabarra establishes that the opportunity was there, as it is for many college students, for Rand to "grow mentally" a great deal. College is a crucial time of intellectual growth for many people, and Chris's great service was to document the professors she studied under and the courses she took and why these contributed toward her unique perspective on the world and her way of tackling intellectual problems.

As for understanding even part of Rand's methodology and perspective in terms of dialectics, Phil is far from the first skeptical Objectivist on this issue. The best defense of this connection is in Chris's book, so I won't belabor that point here. But I just want to state for the record that the way in which Rand identifies and deals with false alternatives and false dualisms of all kinds, especially the mind-body dichotomy in all of its variants and the false dichotomy of the intrinsic and the subjective, is very dialectical. And by dialectical, I mean in the best sense, the Aristotelian sense (though Chris's modifications and purifications of it seem closer to Rand's approach than even Aristotle's was).

Objectivists who value their independent minds owe it to themselves to read Chris's book, rather than allow the skeptic non-readers and the outright bashers to scare them away from his book. The worst that can happen is that you will spend a few dollars and a few hours in reading about something that you ultimately think is incorrect or misguided. More optimistically, you might just learn something positive that others don't want you to know.

REB


Post 49

Sunday, March 5, 2006 - 6:51amSanction this postReply
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At the risk of doubling up, I want to heartily endorse Roger's statements about Ayn Rand, The Russian Radical by Chris Matthew Sciabarra.

His greatest achievement is not only putting Rand's thinking into a historical context, he put the whole Objectivist philosophy there too. (It's also a good read if you're a footnote freak, since he documents the living daylights out of everything he says.)

This is one of the all time greatest books about Rand and Objectivism ever written.

Michael


Post 50

Sunday, March 5, 2006 - 6:57amSanction this postReply
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Roger, I'm not any kind of banner waver for ARI, but:

If it weren't such a loss to the rest of us, I would cheer the fact that ARI is (apparently) unable to cash in on some of Ayn Rand's appearances on The Tonight Show. Why? Because they are among the most egregious "wipers" of audio taped lectures and discussions in the business. They airbrush the truth and re-write reality to suit themselves and sell the highly butchered results to us as though it were the straight stuff.
Can you give me an example of the kinds of things they've brushed over?   Are you saying ARI did some heavy editing to the Phil Donahue episodes Rand appeared on?  


Post 51

Sunday, March 5, 2006 - 7:59amSanction this postReply
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> College is a crucial time of intellectual growth for many people, and Chris's great service was to document the professors she studied under and the courses she took and why these contributed toward her unique perspective on the world and her way of tackling intellectual problems...the way in which Rand identifies and deals with false alternatives and false dualisms of all kinds, especially the mind-body dichotomy in all of its variants and the false dichotomy of the intrinsic and the subjective, is very dialectical...in the best sense, the Aristotelian sense

Roger, I'm not suggesting college would have been unimportant in the making of such a great mind, just that it is enormously incomplete: much more needs to be said. Much more of how she developed -before-...and, crucially, how she developed -after-: People are feeble, half-formed things when they emerge from the chrysallis of college or graduate school and blink in the harsh light of reality. Ayn Rand's early writings are nowhere near as powerful, precise, knowledgeable, or sophisticated as they would become, especially in the decade-plus when she was developing Atlas Shrugged, Galt's speech, and her fleshed-out philosophy.

As for the method I would call "contrast and compare" (from English composition and rhetoric classes) of opposites (is that 'dialectic') to expose false alternatives - something which you mention Chris discusses - again, I'm not trying to belittle any insights he makes. (I couldn't finish his book because it was written in LWG and I have a constitutional inability to read that.)

Post 52

Sunday, March 5, 2006 - 3:45pmSanction this postReply
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TOC has available a number of Ayn Rand's videotaped interviews, with Mike Wallace and others.

Visit The Objectivism Store and browse the offerings.


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Post 53

Sunday, March 5, 2006 - 7:19pmSanction this postReply
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Teresa Summerlee Isanhart wrote:
Can you give me an example of the kinds of things they've [i.e., ARI] brushed over?   Are you saying ARI did some heavy editing to the Phil Donahue episodes Rand appeared on?
Yes, and no. But rather than repeat a bunch of examples here, I will point you to many of them, as chronicled at the following locations:

http://wheelerdesignworks.netfirms.com/Objectivism/nfphpbb/viewtopic.php?t=218

http://wheelerdesignworks.netfirms.com/Objectivism/nfphpbb/viewtopic.php?t=334

http://wheelerdesignworks.netfirms.com/Objectivism/nfphpbb/viewtopic.php?t=341

Just for the record, I am not peeved about how ARI (and affiliates) have marketed Phil Donahue episodes on which Rand appeared. I am highly aggravated about the many different instances in which they have rewritten reality, airbrushing out of existence FACTS ABOUT THE HISTORY OF OBJECTIVISM that they find embarrassing or rankling. I have heard a long list of excuses for the deletions and voice-overs and re-writes, and none of them holds water. These people need their asses kicked, and it's just too bad that Rand isn't around any more to do it.

REB


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Post 54

Sunday, March 5, 2006 - 11:54pmSanction this postReply
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Michael Stuart Kelly,

Hi.  It is good to be in discourse with you again.  I had to go on a sabbatical with respect to this very addictive forum that gobbles up time as though there were nothing else to do in life!  The Fall season was impossibly busy at the labs.  In addition, I was very discouraged by the lack of objectivity of Objectivist scientists in recognizing that chemistry and biology are sub-fields of physics!

But to return to the topic, I do not know Nathaniel Branden.  He has said that he was a very troubled man when he was younger, which accords with my more modest sense of his problems in the early days.  He has done much interesting work and he is an interesting man to listen to in talks such as some of those he has given at TOC events.  I not infrequently disagree with him, but at the same time, he has become fairly wise on some things.  I still find that I have to sort very carefully through his ideas and chalk them up as good or bad.  In comparison, while I also evaluate David Kelley's ideas very carefully, I find that they all pass muster.  David is a consistently sound thinker.  I also find Ed Hudgins and Robert Bidinotto falling in the sound thinker regimes.  Nathaniel Branden can be very bright and interesting, but also sometimes a bit flaky.  While I am at it, Leonard Peikoff can be interesting and bright, but is too often a flake.  Not understanding the nature of and the need for tolerance and benevolence are pretty serious problems for the man who would be the authoritative Objectivist.


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Post 55

Monday, March 6, 2006 - 8:24amSanction this postReply
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In reading through this cacaphony, one thing strikes me as curious.  It is the notion that one becomes a genius. 

Genius is an accident of birth, of genetics.  One is either born with a high IQ or one is not.  It should also be noted that a high IQ is not a ticket to automatic success.  Many genius' never live up to their potential; if you doubt it, attend a Mensa meeting.


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Post 56

Monday, March 6, 2006 - 10:46pmSanction this postReply
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I disagree that genius is simply the result of genes and exists from birth.  It is true that genius requires a fortuitous set of genes, but it also requires that one learn how to think.  This requires a consistent attention to focus and to solving problems.  The genius has a fantastic ability to solve problems, but this ability is developed by practice.  I know this from introspection and my personal history(at whatever level of intelligence I may have).  We also have good evidence for it in that people who study hard and well substantially improve their IQ scores.  Finally, IQ tests do a very poor job of measuring creativity and it is especially creativity that requires development.

Post 57

Thursday, March 9, 2006 - 7:25amSanction this postReply
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I disagree that genius is simply the result of genes and exists from birth. 
It is true that genius requires a fortuitous set of genes, but it also requires that one learn how to think.

Not what I said.  That is why I talked about living up to one's potential.

  This requires a consistent attention to focus and to solving problems.  The genius has a fantastic ability to solve problems, but this ability is developed by practice. 

Practice improves any ability, but if you are born with an average IQ no amount of practice will make you a genius.

  We also have good evidence for it in that people who study hard and well substantially improve their IQ scores.  Finally, IQ tests do a very poor job of measuring creativity and it is especially creativity that requires development.

Here is a contradiction:  study improves IQ scores, but IQ scores are inadequate.


 


Post 58

Thursday, March 9, 2006 - 9:24amSanction this postReply
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Here is what Ayn Rand said about genius (within the context of talking about NB):
… From intelligence alone, it’s not yet enough for the title genius. You know what’s necessary there? It’s a creative intelligence, it has to be an initiating intelligence, not merely philosophical or abstract or quick to understand or being able to deal with abstractions… When you conclude that someone is really a genius, it’s total independence, the first hand look of a creative mind, a mind that is constantly active on its own power.
Michael


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Post 59

Thursday, March 9, 2006 - 9:41amSanction this postReply
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Genius is a slippery label too easily applied these days. It has become shorthand, and is used too liberally. IQ is a necessary but not sufficient part of the equation. *Achievement* is the other, perhaps more important piece.

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