Interview with Ayn Rand (1964) | Hacker News Reader

Interview with Ayn Rand (1964)

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22 pointsTriinT16 comments

    Emotions are not tools of cognition. What you feel 
    tells you nothing about the facts.

We now know that this is not necessarily the case. There are specific mechanisms we have evolved for evaluating the health and fitness of individuals that predate written language. Many of us have an intuitive feel for when someone is lying, and there are many other examples. You can even assign the strength of such feelings to a number, and put that data into a Bayesian belief network and crank out a calculation. (Not that I recommend this particular method, just showing that there is a mathematical basis for integrating feelings with rationality.)

My sister lived out a rational fiction that she wanted to be a pediatrician for almost a decade. It just made so much sense -- there are so any doctors in our family, and working with kids, I think, was sufficiently "female" for her. She always hated my calling bullshit on her.

Today, she works as a consultant to make money so she can choreograph.

You can be informed both by intuition and rationality. Ignoring your feelings is like being a mechanical or electrical engineer who ignores his sense of smell.

Ayn Rand also ignores subconscious cognition. I've had the solutions to many problems I worked on the previous night pop into my head over breakfast. How do we know that "feelings" aren't the result of subconscious processing? I strongly suspect that many of them do. I think you can wisely use such data, so long as you use rational means to corroborate it.

EDIT: Ayn Rand also holds something like this position, which she mentions in this interview, but her estimation of the relative importance of rationality vs. intuition needs some tuning.

Again showing her outdated knowledge of biology:

    PLAYBOY: You attack the idea that sex is "impervious to
        reason." But isn't sex a nonrational biological instinct?
    RAND: No. To begin with, man does not possess any 
        instincts.

We now know that man possesses instincts. Has someone updated Objectivism with the new intellectual furnishings of evolutionary biology and recent neuroscience? If no one has, then this doesn't speak well of Objectivism intellectually.

EDIT: My objection specifically, no one can be perfectly rational, any more than someone can ride a bicycle and never fall. No one commands all of the relevant facts. Rationality is a powerful tool, unmatched in its potential for bringing us to understanding of the world. However, it has some serious failure modes. Where are the elbow pads and helmet?

I don't define myself as an Objectivists, but I tend to agree with a lot of Rand's philosophy (mostly about work ethics, individuality and productivity). Unfortunately, she has a rather lopsided view about emotions and human relationships. I'm sure if the following words were coming from someone who is not a bestselling author, that person could be loosely defined as "batshit insane":

> If they place such things as friendship and family ties above their own productive work, yes, then they are immoral. Friendship, family life and human relationships are not primary in a man's life.

In today's world, Rand would probably be suffering from burnout.

It is curious that a proponent of individualism like Rand advocated that her point of view on relationships, family etc is the only one that's moral.

I really fell in love with objectivism as a teenager, and am a very strong supporter of free markets (yes, despite all the 'misery' they bring to workers in out-of-date industries). But examining her work and everything she said as a whole, it's clear to me that she took her opinions to the extreme. Who is she to say what should be primary in my life?

There's a clear difference between dictating what someone else should have as primary in their life, and declaring something to be moral or immoral.

You may choose to take immoral actions, but those are actions that are not best for you.

>There's a clear difference between dictating what someone else should have as primary in their life, and declaring something to be moral or immoral.

Rand does both.

She declares putting family over work as immoral:

"If they place such things as friendship and family ties above their own productive work, yes, then they are immoral."

Then she says family and relationships are not (should not be) primary in a man's life:

"Friendship, family life and human relationships are not primary in a man's life."

So why is 'misery' in quotes? Are the workers bluffing?

Misery:a state of ill-being due to affliction or misfortune;

I don't think the problems workers face due to globalization are non-existent. I do think that they aren't unforeseen (which is the definition of misfortune). I would argue that as programmers, our skills become obsolete faster than those of factory workers in a particular industry. If we can foresee this and learn new programming languages, it should be possible for workers to do this as well.

In short I think any misery globalization brings is avoidable but it would take not just efforts by governments but also awareness on the part of individuals and a willingness to accept change.

an objective reality exists independent of any perceiver or of the perceiver's emotions, feelings, wishes, hopes or fears.

Couldn't agree more.

man exists for his own sake, that the pursuit of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose,

Couldn't disagree more.

And I in no way think that A implies B in this case.

I don't think A implied B either. B is implied through observing the behavior of simpler animals (which are easier to observe than human) and noting that it is generally self interested. Without any compelling reason to determine that man is somehow not an animal, it flows that humans also follow the same behavior.

In this case B != B prime. By that I mean that the evolutionary drive to pass on one's genes is not the same as a human's happiness.

Even natural self interest is more subtle then it would appear as there are corner cases where your genes work against you, like in many social insects.

But humans are self ware and capable of advanced tool use. I'd have to consider crack pipes a tool and smoking crack the shortest path to the greatest and most self contained happiness.

But objectivism isn't simply a repetition of natural selection, nor is it an argument for drug fueled oblivion. Franky I'm not sure what it is?

How do you define advanced? The whole 'animals' don't use tools seems to have been decimated by repeated findings over the last decade, the 'advanced' proviso is new to me.

Objectivism flows on from the idea that humans are self interested, that there is glory to be gained from achievement, that achievement is provision of something of unique value, and that money is the symbol of that unique value.

Though the language can be somewhat blunt, it's objectivism that holds dear the uniqueness you are awarded for providing in a successful startup, versus the hackneyed socialist 'money is the root of all evil' credo.

Now, for those who are curious what Rand and her disciples were up to during that period:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html

To those who modded this down: do you dispute any of the factual claims in Rothbard's piece? Or are you just reinforcing your image as mindless cultists?

Almost clicked on this. SFW? I'm guessing not.

No nudity on that page. Unless Ayn Rand's portrait is considered porn, this should be SFW. On the other hand, the IT guys in the company you work for might find it "amusing" that you're accessing stuff on the playboy.com domain. You decide if it's NSFW or not.

Thanks for posting this. Always nice to get a healthy dose of "A $ A" with my morning coffee! :-)

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