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The Straw Rand Fallacy – Article by Bradley Doucet

The Straw Rand Fallacy – Article by Bradley Doucet

The New Renaissance Hat
Bradley Doucet
September 13, 2014
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MythsRandMany critics of Ayn Rand have a maddening tendency to take her to task for ideas she did not defend and in fact explicitly rejected. They would rather score cheap debating points, it seems, than actually think about her challenging vision of the possibilities of human life. Disagree with her all you want, but as Laurie Rice puts it in the introduction to Myths about Ayn Rand: Popular Errors and the Insights They Conceal, “If you value your argument, you do it a disservice by misrepresenting its opponent.”

This slim volume of essays, published by the folks at The Atlas Society (for whom I have written) does a good job of dispelling some of the disinformation you may have come across regarding the author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. And when the Kindle edition is available for a buck and can be read through in one sitting, critics have no excuse for getting it wrong.

David Kelly kicks things off by showing that Rand was not an elitist. Yes, the heroes of her novels are high achievers, which is what makes them so inspiring, but she explicitly rejected the notion that such people were morally superior to others and should rule over the rest of humanity. On her vision, Kelly writes, “It isn’t for the privileged, but for the productive. It isn’t against the poor, but against the irrational, the slothful, the envious, and the power-seeking—whatever their origin or social status.”

Will Thomas takes the baton for myths two to five, explaining why Rand was not a conservative, was not for dog-eat-dog selfishness, and was not simply pro-wealthy or pro-business, and arguing also that she was indeed a serious philosopher. On this last point, Thomas tells us that although she was not an academic scholar, her views have come to have some influence on academic philosophy, especially in the realms of ethics and political philosophy, but also increasingly in epistemology as well.

Yet her philosophy, in very non-elitist fashion, has admittedly had more influence on ordinary people, and indeed, Rand argued persuasively that philosophy is for everyone, that it is something we all need. As Thomas writes, her novels are not just popular because of their entertainment value—though they are entertaining, despite another widespread myth not explicitly addressed in this collection. “When people read Rand, they are inspired, and challenged, and made to rethink what they’ve been taught. That’s because Rand offers them timeless and compelling ideas about human life and the world we live in. It’s her philosophy that keeps readers coming back.”

In the postscript, Alexander Cohen takes up this theme in an open response to President Obama’s implication, during the 2012 election campaign, that Rand is for teenagers. Cohen writes, “If you’re the sort of teenager who wants an uplifting moral vision, a vision of joy and achievement rather than suffering and sacrifice […] then Ayn Rand is for you.” But if you didn’t happen to discover her as a teen, and if you’re the sort of adult who also wants to be uplifted and inspired, then Ayn Rand just might be for you, too.

Bradley Doucet is Le Québécois Libre‘s English Editor and the author of the blog Spark This: Musings on Reason, Liberty, and Joy. A writer living in Montreal, he has studied philosophy and economics, and is currently completing a novel on the pursuit of happiness. He also writes for The New Individualist, an Objectivist magazine published by The Atlas Society, and sings.
The Victory of Truth is Never Assured! (2009) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

The Victory of Truth is Never Assured! (2009) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
Originally Published February 4, 2009
as Part of Issue CLXXXVI of The Rational Argumentator
Republished July 22, 2014
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Note from the Author: This essay was originally published as part of Issue CLXXXVI of The Rational Argumentator on February 4, 2009, using the Yahoo! Voices publishing platform. Because of the imminent closure of Yahoo! Voices, the essay is now being made directly available on The Rational Argumentator.
~ G. Stolyarov II, July 22, 2014
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Many advocates of free markets, reason, and liberty are content to just sit back and let things take their course, thinking that the right ideas will win out, by virtue of being true and therefore in accord with the objective reality. Sooner or later, these people think, the contradictions entailed in false ideas – contradictions obvious to the free-market advocates – will become obvious to everybody. Moreover, false ideas will result in bad consequences that people will rebel against and begin to apply true ideas. While this view is tempting – and I wish it reflected reality – I am afraid that it misrepresents the course that policies and intellectual trends take, as well as the motivations of most human beings.

Why does the truth not always – indeed, virtually never, up until the very recent past – win out in human societies among the majority of people? Indeed, why can one confidently say that most people are wrong about most intellectual matters and matters of policy most of the time? A few reasons will be explored here.

First, the vast majority of people are short-sighted and unaware of secondary effects of their actions. For instance, they see the direct effects of government redistribution of wealth – especially if they are on the receiving end – as positive. They get nice stuff, after all. But the indirect secondary effects – the reduced incentives of the expropriated to produce additional wealth – are not nearly so evident. They require active contemplation, which most people are too busy to engage in at that sophisticated a level.

The second reason why truth rarely wins in human societies – at least in the short-to-intermediate term – is that people’s lifespans are (thus far in our history) finite. While many people do learn from their experiences and from abstract theory and recognize more of the truth as they get older, those people also tend to die at alarming rates and be replaced by newer generations that more often than not make the same mistakes and commit the same fallacies. The prevalence of age-old superstitions – including beliefs in ghosts, faith healing, and socialism – can be explained by the fact that the same tempting fallacies tend to afflict most unprepared minds, and it takes a great deal of time and intellectual training for most people to extricate themselves from them – unless they happened to have particularly enlightened and devoted parents. If all people lived forever, one could expect them to learn from their mistakes and fallacies eventually and for the prevalence of those errors to asymptotically approach zero over time.

The third reason for the difficulty true ideas have in winning is the information problem. No one person has access to all or even a remote fraction of the truth, and certainly no one person can claim to be in possession of all the true ideas required to prevent or even optimally minimize all human folly, aggression, and self-destruction. Moreover, just because a true idea exists somewhere and someone knows it does not mean that many people will be actively seeking it out. Improving information dispersal through such technologies as the Internet certainly helps inform many more people than would have been informed otherwise, but this still requires a fundamental willingness to seek out truth on the part of people. Some have this willingness; others could not care less.

The fourth reason why the truth rarely wins out is that the proponents of false ideas are often persistent, clever, and well organized. They promote their ideas – which they may well believe to be the truth – just as assiduously, if not more so, than the proponents of truth promote their ideas. In fact, how true an idea is might matter when it comes to the long-term viability of the culture and society whose participants adopt it; but it matters little with regard to how persuasive people find the idea. After all, if truth were all that persuaded people, then bizarre beer ads that imply that by drinking beer one will have fancy cars and lots of beautiful women would not persuade anyone. The persistence of advertising that focuses on anything but the actual merits and qualities of the goods and services advertised shows that truth and persuasiveness are two entirely different qualities.

The fifth reason why the truth has a difficult time winning over public opinion is rather unfortunate and may be remedied in time. But many people are, to be polite, intellectually not prepared to understand it. Free-market economics and politics are not easy subjects for everybody to grasp. If a significant fraction of the population in economically advanced countries has trouble remembering basic historical facts or doing basic algebra, how hard must economic and political theory be for such people! I do not believe that any person is incapable of learning these ideas, or any ideas at all. But to teach them takes time that they personally are often unwilling to devote to the task. As economic and technological growth renders more leisure time available to more people, this might change, but for the time being the un-intellectual state of the majority of people is a tremendous obstacle to the spread of true ideas.

It is bad enough that many people are un-intellectual and thus unable to grasp true ideas without a great deal of effort they do not wish to expend. That problem can be remedied with enough material and cultural progress. The greater problem, and the sixth reason why the truth has difficulty taking hold, is that a sizable fraction of the population is also anti-intellectual. They not only cannot or try not to think and learn; they actively despise those who do. Anti-intellectualism is a product of pure envy and malice, much like bullying in the public schools. It led to the genocides of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union under Stalin, Communist China under Mao, and Communist Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. In Western schools today, it leads to many of the best and brightest students – who know more of the truth than virtually anyone else – being relentlessly teased, mocked, suppressed, ostracized, and even physically attacked by their jealous and lazy peers as well as by some egalitarian-minded teachers.

But enough about why most people are unreceptive to true ideas. Even those who are receptive have substantial problems that need to be overcome – and most often are not overcome – in order for the truth to win. The seventh reason why the truth rarely wins is that most of the people who do understand it are content to merely contemplate it instead of actively promoting it. They might think that they are powerless to affect the actual course of affairs, and their sole recourse is simply the satisfaction of knowing that they are right while the world keeps senselessly punishing itself – or the satisfaction that at least they are not an active or enthusiastic part of “the system” that leads to bad outcomes. This, I regret to say, is not enough. Knowing that one is right without doing anything about it leads to the field of ideas and actions being wholly open to and dominated by the people who are wrong and whose ideas have dangerous consequences.

Everyone who knows even a shred of the truth wants to be a theorist and expound grand systems about what is or is not right. I know that I certainly do. I also know that theoretical work and continual refinement of theories are essential to any thriving movement for cultural and intellectual change. But while theory is necessary, it is not sufficient. Someone needs to do the often monotonous, often frustrating, often exhausting grunt work of implementing the theories in whatever manner his or her abilities and societal position allow. The free-market movement needs government officials who are willing to engage in pro-liberty reforms. But it also needs ordinary citizens who are willing to write, speak, and attempt to reach out to other people in innovative ways that might just be effective at persuading someone. To promote the truth effectively, a tremendously high premium needs to put on the people who actually apply the true ideas, as opposed to simply contemplating them.

Read other articles in The Rational Argumentator’s Issue CLXXXVI.

A Rational Cosmology – Treatise by G. Stolyarov II – Third Edition

A Rational Cosmology – Treatise by G. Stolyarov II – Third Edition

A Rational Cosmology - Third Edition - by G. Stolyarov II

A Rational Cosmology – Third Edition – by G. Stolyarov II

Contemporary science does not make as much progress as it could, due the fallacy of empiricism-positivism – the idea that no knowledge is certain beyond refutation and that every claim is contingent on highly narrow, particular, and expensive experiments. A Rational Cosmology, however, provides a thorough refutation of prevalent empiricist-positivist fallacies, both in content and in method. It shatters some of the erroneous philosophical interpretations of theories such as Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. Moreover, it refutes the ex nihilo origin of the universe – including its manifestation in popular views of the Big Bang and Big Crunch – the particle/wave view of light, and a host of other fallacious ideas, using the proper, axiomatic-deductive methodology of identifying those theories’ conceptual flaws and internal contradictions.

As constructive alternatives to these fallacies, A Rational Cosmology presents objective, absolute, rationally grounded views of terms such as universe, matter, volume, space, time, motion, sound, light, forces, fields, and even the higher-order concepts of life, consciousness, and volition. The result is a system verified by ubiquitous observation and common sense, the underpinnings of objective science which demonstrate a knowable, fathomable reality and set the stage for unfettered progress, confidence in reason, and full-scale logical investigation of just about everything existence has to offer.

The Third Edition of A Rational Cosmology has been enhanced and edited, with augmentations and revisions to several of the previous essays. There is a new, beautiful cover design by Wendy D. Stolyarov. Furthermore, there are two additional numbered essays and more recent writings within the Related Essays section.

For the first time, A Rational Cosmology is available for free download in the form of unified files. There are four options to choose from.

Download the PDF version.

Download the MOBI version.

Download the EPUB version.

Download the AZW3 version.

The Rational Argumentator welcomes your reviews of A Rational Cosmology. You can submit them to TRA by sending them to gennadystolyarovii@yahoo.com. You are also encouraged to spread the word by reprinting the information on this page or your own comments concerning the book on other media outlets.