

Interview with Ayn Rand (1964) - TriinT
http://www.playboy.com/articles/ayn-rand-playboy-interview/index.html

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stcredzero

        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Again showing her outdated knowledge of biology: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?

------
GeneralMaximus
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.

~~~
ajju
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?

~~~
maggie
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.

~~~
ajju
>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."

------
biohacker42
_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.

~~~
nailer
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.

~~~
biohacker42
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?

~~~
nailer
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.

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

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

~~~
asciilifeform
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?

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

~~~
TriinT
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.

------
Allocator2008
Thanks for posting this. Always nice to get a healthy dose of "A $ A" with my
morning coffee! :-)

