
Erik Naggum on Atlas Shrugged - beza1e1
http://open.salon.com/blog/kent_pitman/2010/01/08/erik_naggum_on_atlas_shrugged
======
grandalf
As I was reading this I noticed that Erik makes the same logical mistake that
is often made when people contemplate evolutionary theory... the notion that
natural selection happens to the group rather than to the individual.

It came as a sort of entertaining surprise, then, to read a bit further and
notice that Erik explicitly attempts a metaphor about group selection to
underscore his comments about how a human social system ought to work.

To those who haven't read the book in question: I recommend reading it for
yourself before you waste much time reading essays like Erik's.

~~~
gojomo
Since groups also self-perpetuate, why wouldn't selectionist pressures apply
to both individuals and groups?

~~~
enki
selection doesn't even apply directly to the individual, but to the survival
of individual genes through individuals.

if a gene establishes itself within the genepool of a group, that is because
it has been beneficial to every individual (and the genes that survive through
that individual), by it's own merit - not by merit of being widespread in the
group already, along the way.

~~~
byrneseyeview
Some form of "Group Selection" works, with stuff like the Green Beard Effect.
There can be subgroups where sexual attraction is influenced by something like
that. If group selection can work with a pair of traits in two halves of a
population, it seems like it could work for a single trait in both halves of a
population.

If you treat "race" as a word meaning "extended families that reproduce to
some extent," then you have a great evolutionary argument for in-group
altruism. By being slightly sensitive to race, you allocate slightly more
resources to your own set of genes, meaning that people who share your genes,
in turn, have more resources they can allocate back to you. In conditions of
scarcity, that really helps. However, I don't know if it helps enough to deal
with defectors (i.e. if there's a group that allocates lots of resources to
group members, someone born with a "mooching" gene could afford lots of kids.
It is basically the same math that wrecks cartels, just on a longer timeline).

~~~
grandalf
You are making a narrow statement about human social groups and extrapolating
backwards to the much more general case of evolution in all species.

------
samh
I was inspired by Erik's 'no prisoners' extreme rationalist writings on
usenet.

I was very surprised to find out how young he was and very saddened to hear
about his death.

------
akkartik
Really hard to read, like all of his writings.

A version with my edits as I read: <http://akkartik.name/blog/naggum-atlas>

My surgery likely butchered the original. Errors in where I inserted paragraph
and section boundaries will correspond to limitations in my understanding. I'm
putting it up partly so you can tell me what I've totally missed.

------
dmfdmf
Erik Naggum wrote a piece about Atlas Shrugged that is rife with errors and
confusions regarding Ayn Rand and her ideas. Most, if not all, of his errors
are addressed in Rand's non-fiction work. At the end of the article Erik wrote
"It is just as impossible to become a contributor to a free, humane society
without having read Ayn Rand as it is to become one having only read Ayn Rand"
which I agree with. Read Ayn Rand's works (and other thinkers) and judge for
yourself.

------
grandalf
No offense to Erik, but he seems to have interpreted the purpose of Atlas
Shrugged as a recipe for building a society.

On the contrary, the book is intended only to shed light on some moral
distinctions about capitalism that people are inclined not to appreciate.

~~~
rinich
And it sheds that light by portraying a scene where a bunch of people critical
of aspects of capitalism are sent by train into a tunnel and killed.

~~~
Padraig
The scene you are referring to is pretty blunt alright, but you're twisting
it.

The train enters the tunnel at hands of the 'baddies' (the irresponsible
incompetents). And the passengers are not 'people critical of aspects of
capitalism' (Though we are led to believe that they weren't entirely innocent)

This is different to the 'people critical of aspects of capitalism are sent by
train into a tunnel and killed.'

~~~
rinich
It's not. It's a slightly more complex setup than I wrote, but the end message
is the same.

The passage in question opens with this:

 _It is said that catastrophes are a matter of pure chance, and there were
those who would have said that the passengers of the Comet were not guilty or
responsible for the thing that happened to them._

It then gives a list of the people on the Comet, and lists in effect their
sins. It ends:

 _These passengers were awake; there was not a man aboard the train who did
not share one or more of their ideas. As the train went into the tunnel, the
flame of Wyatt’s Torch was the last thing they saw on earth._

So, quite explicitly, it debunks the idea that "the passengers of the Comet
were not guilty or responsible", and concludes with "There was not a man
aboard the train who did not share one or more of their ideas."

It's not _just_ sentencing these people to death, it's supernaturalism. It
makes the claim implicitly that catastrophes only happen to people that
deserve them — a claim that's repeated at several points in the novel.

~~~
spamizbad
Thanks for pointing this out. I recall reading Rand's work years ago and
thinking there appeared to be some element of "cosmic justice" leaking into
her allegedly rational world. Perhaps the name _Comet_ eludes directly to
this, as it certain fits into Rand's heavy-handed and often clumsy way of
story-telling.

~~~
grandalf
You may be right. Her storytelling is free of the sort of opaque language that
lets people interpret it any way they like... such language is sometimes
poetic and inspiring, but would not be a good fit for Rand's novel. Thus it is
not a weakness of the novel that she avoided it.

The passengers on the train symbolize the unwitting half-participants in the
travesty that led to the train's malfunction. Surely none of them would have
expected that their half-hearted support of the system that led to the crash
would result in their own deaths.

The reader is intended to focus on the thoughts of the passengers and the
consequences of their prior beliefs. The point being that few would expect
there to be _any_ consequences, which is why the train crash is an effective
plot element. The crash is not intended to symbolize the killing of those who
oppose capitalism but to show the folly of loose, whimsically held beliefs.

~~~
rinich
_You may be right. Her storytelling is free of the sort of opaque language
that lets people interpret it any way they like... such language is sometimes
poetic and inspiring, but would not be a good fit for Rand's novel. Thus it is
not a weakness of the novel that she avoided it._

Opaque language, or simply shallow? Not everything lacking depth ought to be
commended for the fact.

 _The reader is intended to focus on the thoughts of the passengers and the
consequences of their prior beliefs._

That's because the reader of Atlas Shrugged is intended to either think very
small, very simple thoughts, or to be semipsychotic. Indeed, this idea that
people with "whimsically held beliefs" should deserve to die unwittingly in a
train crash is _exactly_ what Erik Naggum was writing about in this thread! So
we've come full circle.

Naggum writes that his interpretation of freedom has to do with an acceptance
of risk, which is an interesting way to look at the concept. In Rand's
society, as he notes, there _is_ no acceptance of risk. Either you do things
exactly how Rand would like you to, or you die in a fiery train crash. Or you
die like Eddie Willers, who supports Dagny the entire time but isn't _quite_
special enough to avoid dying with the rest of society, as Dagny instantly
forgets about him and goes whimsically on her way.

Look, I know what Rand was _intending_. I had my phase of thinking she wasn't
a deluded psychopath too. My point was that her _intent_ led to her thinking
it was perfectly okay to write a scene featuring people dying in a train crash
for thinking bad thoughts, and that furthermore it was okay to found an entire
"school" of philosophy around the concepts laid out in the same book, which,
for all its strict observances of "objective" reality, also has a scene where
scientists build a torture device that miraculously doesn't work on John Galt.

A rational philosophical assault on that scene might proceed as follows: How
much control did the people on that train have over their beliefs? Is it
possible for somebody to believe wholesale in something harmful, without ever
having a chance to doubt themselves? Then we can actually look at how people
act in real life and realize that, in many cases, our inbred beliefs aren't
entirely under our control. So when those people are killed for their
whimsical beliefs, perhaps it's not their beliefs that they die for. Perhaps
it's the beliefs of their parents, who raised them not to question certain
things and so blinded them to the future. These people might be rehabilitated,
but no, in Atlas Shrugged they will die without a questioning of their
motives.

It's one of those scenes that's suspiciously close to Christianity — these pop
up everywhere in Rand's writing. She believes that people are born evil or
born good, that their character just pops out of the womb, that there's no
chance to change. No character has a change of heart in the entire book. So by
her logic it's _okay_ to sentence evil people to die — not just in the train
scene, but when Dagny shoots a guard, or when Ragnar destroys ship after ship
because not a single talented captain on the planet will argue with him so
he's just killing off virtual retards. It's the world ending in fire, with
John Galt delivering the good people into salvation — and, let's remember,
_nobody_ is as pure as Galt in this story, and all of them would have died
were it not for his brilliant idea.

It's not worth further arguing here. Atlas Shrugged is a brittle enough novel
that a sharp tap crumbles it. It's certainly not the sort of writing that
deserves to be taken seriously.

~~~
grandalf
I think you are reading way too much into that scene.

There are lots of characters who have changes of heart, just not the abrupt
kind you are used to. Rearden starts out serving and appreciating his family,
but finally realizes that they hate and resent him... Painfully, he decides to
pursue his dreams even though his mother and wife are profoundly hurt by his
decision. What began as a guilty pleasure turned (appropriately) into a great
labor of love.

The book is full of exaggerations and is intended to portray an unrealistic
world ... and it works to illustrate Rand's philosphical concepts.

If you look at the world as you seem to, then you might as well defend
murderers and genocidal dictators, for they are just innocent holders of
beliefs, etc.

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dsspence
Not well written, like Atlas Shrugged.

