Hacker News Reader

Comment by thrownaway2424 | Hacker News Reader

After you turn 14 you'll realize there is actually never an appropriate moment for an Ayn Rand quote.

And at another point, possibly later, you realize that blind rejection is just as intellectually lazy as blind acceptance.

Blind rejection is a useful heuristic, and avoiding effort is not necessarily laziness.

I drive rather than walking everywhere because I have better things to do with my time. I ignore, rather than specifically evaluating Ayn Rand quotes because I have better things to do with my time.

Oh sure, she might have accidentally said something both true and interesting every once in a while. And Mathgen[0] might accidentally produce a valid proof, if you run it enough times.

[0]: http://thatsmathematics.com/mathgen/

Avoiding effort with respect to transport gets you to work faster, which is most instances is the point of transport. Avoiding effort with respect to discussing ideas gets you bias, which is the opposite of the point of discussion.

So you're basically openly saying that you are willing to comment here, without considering the perspectives being put forth that you're replying to, which at the very least seems against the spirit of HN, and more realistically is against the process of rational thought in general.

>Avoiding effort with respect to discussing ideas gets you bias, which is the opposite of the point of discussion.

Avoiding effort with respect to discussing ideas that I can broadly (and efficiently) classify as not likely to be worthwhile gives me time to think about and discuss other ideas that are more likely to be worth my time. Does it "get me bias" if I ignore the rantings of a crazy person I see on the street?

>So you're basically openly saying that you are willing to comment here, without considering the perspectives being put forth that you're replying to, which at the very least seems against the spirit of HN, and more realistically is against the process of rational thought in general.

I didn't reply to the Ayn Rand comment. I replied to the comment about blind rejection, the perspective behind which comment I did consider.

"That's not a reply worthy of HN because it is mean and doesn't give any consideration to the topic under discussion" would have been a reasonable reply to thrownaway2424. "Blind rejection is intellectually lazy" was not.

It's bias if you decipher a logical point, and continue to believe something that is counter to it, without providing countering logic.

Deciphering a logical point may or may not happen depending on the context. It's more likely to happen in an HN thread than by listening to a crazy person.

Efficiency would necessitate not blind rejection, but a decision to simply not judge. Rejection is a judgment. Judgment without logic is a bias.

The "blind rejection" comment you originally replied to, was pretty clearly referring to judgment without logic. This is something different from intellectual efficiency, which would simply be deciding to not form a judgment at the time, if one reasonably decided that there was not enough information available at that moment to do so, and the importance doing something else outweighed the importance of judging the idea in that moment.

So, while I agree with a concept of efficiency or temporary non-judgment, I disagree that it's the same thing as auto-rejection, which is judgment.

By countering a counter to a comment advocating auto-rejection of ideas, you seemed to be advocating auto-rejection of ideas, as opposed to advocating non-judgment.

I guess auto-rejection is also technically an "efficient" approach, but it is definitely intellectually lazy. Non-judgment is not intellectually lazy, if actually used for the sake of efficiency and not avoidance.

Now I see that our disagreement is over definitions. To me, "blind rejection" of a quote is "I don't care what this quote contains because of who said it. I have stopped listening." Maybe that's what thrownaway2424 and jrajav meant, respectively, or maybe not. By the principle of charity, that's what jrajav should have considered thrownaway2424's comment to mean, but of course it is also possible that jrajav didn't consider that interpretation.

In any case, by "blind rejection" I meant "automatic disregard", not "automatic disagreement". I certainly agree that automatically disagreeing with a person, regardless of what they say, is a losing strategy except in the very specific case that you've encountered and conclusively identified the fabled Omniscient Lying Labyrinth Guard.

After you become an adult you'll realize that being smug does no one any good.

Any quote has an appropriate moment when it directly relates to the topic at hand, despite where it originated from.

After you turn 30 you realize that not everyone will believe what you do or be right about everything, but when they are right about one thing and you disregard it 'out of principle', you look the fool.

After you're 50, you'll be wishing they gave you enough time to make it through a crosswalk before the lights change...

like a rapier.

What age do you have to turn before you realize that "right" is a function of power, not facts?

The first time you hear the words 'because I said so'.

I have never read Ayn Rand, but I have heard of her before.

Why are such quotes inappropriate?

People object to Ayn Rand quotes because they believe her politics to be naive, or her fiction to be heavy-handed. I cannot speak to either of those things one way or the other.

Even giving these things, these are of course no reason to never quote her. Hell, there is a time and a place for quoting even Himmler.

I believe that many left-leaning political types strongly dislike and attempt to discredit Ayn Rand because they vehemently disagree with her political philosophy. A common criticism is that her philosophy sounds good when you are a child, but when you grow up you realize it doesn't work in the real world.

For myself, I'm a 40 year old that leans Libertarian so I tend to agree with some of her political philosophy. I even tried reading Atlas Shrugged but it was so boring I put it down after about 100 pages.

They make some people's head 'splode, others generate kneejerk responses. For an otherwise obscure writer, that that she is so well known to have detractors everywhere is itself telling, but you'd have to judge for yourself what it is telling about.

There are several problems with Ayn Rand.

One is that her ideas were not particularly original, and not particularly well-expressed. Self-centered philosophies are far from new, and actually are pretty well-trod ground, but her work does little to address already-existing critiques and, as literature, is not particularly good (her characters tend to be one-dimensional, plots lack good development/tension/resolution, etc.).

Another is that she has become a frankly cult-like figure, with people approaching her work the wrong way around: rather than "this statement is correct, and Ayn Rand said it", too often there is a seeming attitude of "this statement is correct because Ayn Rand said it". The Objectivist movement (people who follow her work and philosophy) is particularly infamous for this, having an established history of venerating her and doing some rather extreme turns when she was alive and particular people from her circle fell out of her favor.

Finally, most of her work is easy to critique with only very basic reasoning/argumentative skills, despite presenting itself as a solid, rationally-justified framework. More realistically, Rand's philosophy consists of appeals to emotional responses, based on the idea of self-evaluation of one's own greatness and the notion that this greatness exists more or less in a vacuum (one of the famous examples is "going Galt", wherein all of the great people who produce value simply retreat and form their own separate society, to spite the "parasites" who "leeched" off their work).

To continue with the fiction theme, one of Heinlein's stories ("The Roads Must Roll", 1940) anticipated and harshly criticized the type of philosophy Rand ended up promoting. One of the asides there is to a philosophy of "Functionalism"; the founder of the philosophy advocates evaluating people -- and giving them power and prestige -- based on what "function" they can perform, and how valuable it is to society.

The result is large numbers of people who do not really make any unusually-significant contributions, but who all come to the conclusion that whatever they do is the one truly indispensable thing, and if they stopped doing it the whole society would fall apart, so they should be given more power or prestige over others in recognition. As Heinlein puts it, "With so many different functions actually indispensible, such self-persuasion was easy." Heinlein also offers a description of the founder of "Functionalism" which critiques the philosophy and in many ways critiques Rand's later work as well, when he says:

The complete interdependence of modern economic life seems to have escaped him entirely.

(see Wikipedia for a summary of the story, or look it up -- it's been republished/anthologized: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roads_Must_Roll)

Many thanks for providing sources and context. I'll ad this to my Amazon Wish List.

It's essentially the equivalent of quoting Karl Marx. They are both so blinded by adherence to a since-discredited world view that their positions are laughable at best and at worse provide excuses for destructive behavior. Those who quote either typically haven't bothered to branch out beyond a simplistic, falsifiable perspective. Such an approach supports the smug self-satisfaction of dogmatic certainty over actually being correct.

Or, more succinctly, "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers

Reply on news.ycombinator.com