4 ms·
The "readers" are obviously not well read. Two Ayn Rand books and the ever popular "Dianetics" in the top three? Laughable.
by run4yourlives 18y ago
The "readers" are obviously not well read. Two Ayn Rand books and the ever popular "Dianetics" in the top three?
Laughable.
- nazgulnarsil 18y agoyou'll find most "best of" lists of this sort include a lot of heavily ideological stuff. this is because these are the works that have the most memorable impact and actually change people's opinions. Whether you find such works valuable depends largely on where you're coming from when you read it. for example dianetics: the kind of person who will read and recommend it is the kind of person who was already against psychology to begin with. people use popular non-fiction for confirmation bias and appeal to majority bias.
- electromagnetic 18y agoI studied psychology, I guess thats why I see dianetics as a laughable farce.
- unalone 18y agoYou should never assume that mass opinion knows anything. Even when it does, it tends to be shallow and misguided.
- cchooper 18y agoI suspect it's more because these books have a fanatical following, the kind of people who want to deliberately manipulate 'Best Of...' lists to give their beliefs more publicity.
- asdflkj 18y agoNor is the "The Board", if they have to include books that obviously none of them have read. Has anyone read Principia Mathematica in the last 70 years? Should anyone have?
- latortuga 18y agoMy first thought was actually "how does Dianetics even qualify for a nonfiction list?"
- GeneralMaximus 18y agoI really want to know why people dislike Rand's work. I read Atlas Shrugged and Anthem a few weeks back, and I really liked both of them. Am I missing something, or is it just a matter of opinion?
- unalone 18y agoPartly it's because people read them, decide they know all they need to know about philosophy, and stop right there. Then they get arrogant in conversations and denounce people who disagree with them. They use Ayn Rand as an excuse to justify their own lack of worth under the excuse that society doesn't understand them or that most people don't appreciate their work. Rand also gets very preachy, especially in the end of Atlas Shrugged. It's a terrific climax, but it's not at all a balanced finale. When she condemns people who live in society to a death by train explosion, she's getting a leetle bit heavy-handed. Rand changed my life when I read her, and I still agree with most of the tenants of Objectivism. That said, I do not like her followers and I think that her works need to be taken with at least a slight sense of perspective; otherwise, you'll start acting foolish.
- run4yourlives 18y agoI'm not judging the value of what she says; merely the fact that in no way are her books 2 out of the top 3 from the last century.