4 ms·

Your opinions regarding Rand are not a justification to be insulting. I enjoyed it as a novel, and find significant parts of the philosophy convincing, but I'm

Your opinions regarding Rand are not a justification to be insulting. I enjoyed it as a novel, and find significant parts of the philosophy convincing, but I'm not going to fill my comment with insults that apply to you. What would be better than insults is arguments. You haven't given any argument that someone who likes the book could find convincing. If you don't want to debate that's fine, then don't. But if you choose not to converse in a way that either side could change their mind, then you should at least be nice about it.

JCThoughtscream 17y ago
Hardly an insult, really, when the reviews of Atlas Shrugged of its publication period got far deeper into the thesaurus to describe how terrible the writing really is. Besides, that's his honest reaction to the text. Why throw a fit over somebody else's aversion to the novel?
- jrockway 17y ago
  Because we're going to become socialists if he doesn't like it!!11!
  - xenophanes 17y ago
    What was YC come to when !!11! comments are being upvoted? Somewhat ambiguously pro-socialist as well. YC used to be Rand-friendly, and had a capitalist slant since the start. Has the population changed? Or is it just the hostile original link coloring who comes here?
    - DanielBMarkham 17y ago
      I think the population has changed dramatically -- very slowly perhaps, but it definitely seems different than it was a couple of years ago.
    - jrockway 17y ago
      Wow, I speak for everyone on the site now? Awesome. Anyway, I don't get the anti-socialism arguments. Thanks to socialism, the US has a road network that allows anyone to drive from any one point in the country to any other. Everyone has Internet access. There is 3G service practically everywhere. You can ship a package today and have it show up anywhere else in the country tomorrow. (OK, maybe not tomorrow. Monday.) We didn't get that because of everyone looking to make a quick buck for their own personal gain, we got there because of capital influx from the government and from sane regulations. Capitalism works pretty well too. The financial industry gambled their own hard-earned money on risky securities, failed, and bailed themselves out. Oh wait, no. The government bailed them out. YC used to be Rand-friendly, and had a capitalist slant since the start. Has the population changed? Really? My account is 902 days old, and yours is 297. HN has a optimistic outlook. The reality is that you are as likely to get rich from your Twitter mashup as the banks were to profit from interest-only loans. The unifying factor is that "I am probably going to be lucky, unlike everyone else" attitude. That is not capitalism, though, just human nature.
      - xenophanes 17y ago
        My first account is 804 days old, plus I lurked a few months. Do you not remember the Rand-friendly threads of the past? I remember a number of long front page ones. > Anyway, I don't get the anti-socialism arguments. Thanks to socialism, the US has a road network that allows anyone to drive from any one point in the country to any other. Do you want to get them? Capitalism agrees that road networks are good. It says there are different methods of building them. Some are cheaper and more efficient, in particular voluntary methods. Capitalism claims that a less socialist road network (other things being equal) would have a better quality to cost ratio. This claim isn't easy to evaluate, and the current state of our road networks and the current amount of socialism is in Government is largely irrelevant to evaluating it. > We didn't get that because of everyone looking to make a quick buck for their own personal gain This isn't what capitalists in general, or Rand, advocates. (e.g., drop the quick). If you genuinely want to understand the other side you'll have to try harder.
- camccann 17y ago
  Why throw a fit over somebody else's aversion to the novel? Because it's often assumed that anyone who complains about the writing actually dislikes the politics and is bashing the writing as a disingenuous cover for that; and that anyone who claims to have enjoyed her novels for their own sake is actually promoting the politics and only talking the novels up to serve that end. In short, debating the quality of Ayn Rand's writing as fiction is a proxy battle for the associated politics, and we all know how enlightening political debates on the internet can be.
  - tptacek 17y ago
    Respond to what he wrote, not to what you've inferred him to have thought.
    - camccann 17y ago
      To read any text is to attempt to infer its meaning. This is English, not C. I was mostly trying to suggest that, just maybe, it'd be a good idea to not turn the whole conversation into one about politics, but apparently that's inevitable. There seem to be a lot of people on HN whose feelings about libertarianism (either for or against) are a core part of their self-image, and that makes discussing anything related perilous. See also: http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html and http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/ In the future I think I'll just flag any article that mentions Rand and I encourage others to do the same, regardless of what they think of her ideas.
      - xenophanes 17y ago
        Do you also plan to flag every article mentioning Marx, socialism, Chomsky, environmentalism (for or against), etc, etc? I don't think flagging is the answer. Just don't read it.
        camccann 17y ago
        Sure, thanks for the suggestions. I guess I might give Chomsky a pass if it was purely about linguistics and didn't involve his politics at all. Look, I'm not out to push my politics here, if that's what you're thinking. I read HN because of the high-quality discussions about technology and related matters. If I want to see flame wars over libertarianism, environmentalism, or whatever else there's an entire internet full of that dreck, and the amount of political content usually has a pretty direct negative correlation to the quality of discussion at a site.
- xenophanes 17y ago
  "a more tedious, sermonizing, simplistic and unconvincing ... poorly disguised" You don't see any insults? Well I guess you wouldn't: you're the one who considered it appropriate to demean my comment as "a fit". In any case, your argument about "honest reactions" being good defends my comment just as much as his. Yet you don't seem to be considering our comments equally valid. And I don't either, since it's just not true that all honest reactions make good comments.
rauljara 17y ago
Rand herself was famous for being insulting and dismissive, which I think is the main reason people react so strongly against her. In the introduction to anthem, she basically states that if you don't agree with her views on capitalism, then you are in favor of gulags and concentration camps. She, herself, leaves no room for middle ground, nuance, or civilized discussion. That isn't an excuse to resort to insults when talking about her, but if you are honestly wondering why people react so emotionally against her, it might have something to do with her assaulting other people's beliefs on such an emotional level.
- tptacek 17y ago
  He didn't say anything about her beliefs. He said the book sucked. For all you know, he's a libertarian.
  - xenophanes 17y ago
    I have performed a side-channels attack on the original comment, and have determined it is unintentionally leaking information about the author's political views. It turns out he's not a libertarian.
    - tptacek 17y ago
      We're now talking about the author of the comment and not the comment itself. Can we stop?
      - xenophanes 17y ago
        Maybe you were. I was talking about how comments contain inexplicit information, and drawing an analogy to the computer security field (which I figured is more on topic). It's also a field which, IIRC, you know a lot more about than I do. Perhaps you can improve the analogy.
  - adriand 17y ago
    I'm not a libertarian, but your point stands - it wasn't her philosophy that bothered me, it's the book and how poorly it is written. To use an example from the book I mentioned, The Name of the Rose has long sections where people argue over obscure religious matters (such as whether or not God has a sense of humour). As an atheist, if I reacted to books simply on the basis of my beliefs, I'd hate it, since what's more pointless than reading dialogue about a non-existent entity? But I found it fascinating, because it's well done, well-written, and intellectually rigorous. That said, the quality of her writing did impact my opinion of her philosophy. I was open-minded about Rand and her ideas until I started reading Atlas Shrugged, at which point I decided that if her writing was that poor, I really didn't see how I could embrace her ideas, especially since so many of her supporters seem to think it's a really fine novel.

JCThoughtscream 17y ago

Hardly an insult, really, when the reviews of Atlas Shrugged of its publication period got far deeper into the thesaurus to describe how terrible the writing really is. Besides, that's his honest reaction to the text. Why throw a fit over somebody else's aversion to the novel?

jrockway 17y ago
Because we're going to become socialists if he doesn't like it!!11!
- xenophanes 17y ago
  What was YC come to when !!11! comments are being upvoted? Somewhat ambiguously pro-socialist as well. YC used to be Rand-friendly, and had a capitalist slant since the start. Has the population changed? Or is it just the hostile original link coloring who comes here?
  - DanielBMarkham 17y ago
    I think the population has changed dramatically -- very slowly perhaps, but it definitely seems different than it was a couple of years ago.
  - jrockway 17y ago
    Wow, I speak for everyone on the site now? Awesome. Anyway, I don't get the anti-socialism arguments. Thanks to socialism, the US has a road network that allows anyone to drive from any one point in the country to any other. Everyone has Internet access. There is 3G service practically everywhere. You can ship a package today and have it show up anywhere else in the country tomorrow. (OK, maybe not tomorrow. Monday.) We didn't get that because of everyone looking to make a quick buck for their own personal gain, we got there because of capital influx from the government and from sane regulations. Capitalism works pretty well too. The financial industry gambled their own hard-earned money on risky securities, failed, and bailed themselves out. Oh wait, no. The government bailed them out. YC used to be Rand-friendly, and had a capitalist slant since the start. Has the population changed? Really? My account is 902 days old, and yours is 297. HN has a optimistic outlook. The reality is that you are as likely to get rich from your Twitter mashup as the banks were to profit from interest-only loans. The unifying factor is that "I am probably going to be lucky, unlike everyone else" attitude. That is not capitalism, though, just human nature.
    - xenophanes 17y ago
      My first account is 804 days old, plus I lurked a few months. Do you not remember the Rand-friendly threads of the past? I remember a number of long front page ones. > Anyway, I don't get the anti-socialism arguments. Thanks to socialism, the US has a road network that allows anyone to drive from any one point in the country to any other. Do you want to get them? Capitalism agrees that road networks are good. It says there are different methods of building them. Some are cheaper and more efficient, in particular voluntary methods. Capitalism claims that a less socialist road network (other things being equal) would have a better quality to cost ratio. This claim isn't easy to evaluate, and the current state of our road networks and the current amount of socialism is in Government is largely irrelevant to evaluating it. > We didn't get that because of everyone looking to make a quick buck for their own personal gain This isn't what capitalists in general, or Rand, advocates. (e.g., drop the quick). If you genuinely want to understand the other side you'll have to try harder.
camccann 17y ago
Why throw a fit over somebody else's aversion to the novel? Because it's often assumed that anyone who complains about the writing actually dislikes the politics and is bashing the writing as a disingenuous cover for that; and that anyone who claims to have enjoyed her novels for their own sake is actually promoting the politics and only talking the novels up to serve that end. In short, debating the quality of Ayn Rand's writing as fiction is a proxy battle for the associated politics, and we all know how enlightening political debates on the internet can be.
- tptacek 17y ago
  Respond to what he wrote, not to what you've inferred him to have thought.
  - camccann 17y ago
    To read any text is to attempt to infer its meaning. This is English, not C. I was mostly trying to suggest that, just maybe, it'd be a good idea to not turn the whole conversation into one about politics, but apparently that's inevitable. There seem to be a lot of people on HN whose feelings about libertarianism (either for or against) are a core part of their self-image, and that makes discussing anything related perilous. See also: http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html and http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/ In the future I think I'll just flag any article that mentions Rand and I encourage others to do the same, regardless of what they think of her ideas.
    - xenophanes 17y ago
      Do you also plan to flag every article mentioning Marx, socialism, Chomsky, environmentalism (for or against), etc, etc? I don't think flagging is the answer. Just don't read it.
      - camccann 17y ago
        Sure, thanks for the suggestions. I guess I might give Chomsky a pass if it was purely about linguistics and didn't involve his politics at all. Look, I'm not out to push my politics here, if that's what you're thinking. I read HN because of the high-quality discussions about technology and related matters. If I want to see flame wars over libertarianism, environmentalism, or whatever else there's an entire internet full of that dreck, and the amount of political content usually has a pretty direct negative correlation to the quality of discussion at a site.
xenophanes 17y ago
"a more tedious, sermonizing, simplistic and unconvincing ... poorly disguised" You don't see any insults? Well I guess you wouldn't: you're the one who considered it appropriate to demean my comment as "a fit". In any case, your argument about "honest reactions" being good defends my comment just as much as his. Yet you don't seem to be considering our comments equally valid. And I don't either, since it's just not true that all honest reactions make good comments.

rauljara 17y ago

Rand herself was famous for being insulting and dismissive, which I think is the main reason people react so strongly against her. In the introduction to anthem, she basically states that if you don't agree with her views on capitalism, then you are in favor of gulags and concentration camps. She, herself, leaves no room for middle ground, nuance, or civilized discussion. That isn't an excuse to resort to insults when talking about her, but if you are honestly wondering why people react so emotionally against her, it might have something to do with her assaulting other people's beliefs on such an emotional level.

tptacek 17y ago
He didn't say anything about her beliefs. He said the book sucked. For all you know, he's a libertarian.
- xenophanes 17y ago
  I have performed a side-channels attack on the original comment, and have determined it is unintentionally leaking information about the author's political views. It turns out he's not a libertarian.
  - tptacek 17y ago
    We're now talking about the author of the comment and not the comment itself. Can we stop?
    - xenophanes 17y ago
      Maybe you were. I was talking about how comments contain inexplicit information, and drawing an analogy to the computer security field (which I figured is more on topic). It's also a field which, IIRC, you know a lot more about than I do. Perhaps you can improve the analogy.
- adriand 17y ago
  I'm not a libertarian, but your point stands - it wasn't her philosophy that bothered me, it's the book and how poorly it is written. To use an example from the book I mentioned, The Name of the Rose has long sections where people argue over obscure religious matters (such as whether or not God has a sense of humour). As an atheist, if I reacted to books simply on the basis of my beliefs, I'd hate it, since what's more pointless than reading dialogue about a non-existent entity? But I found it fascinating, because it's well done, well-written, and intellectually rigorous. That said, the quality of her writing did impact my opinion of her philosophy. I was open-minded about Rand and her ideas until I started reading Atlas Shrugged, at which point I decided that if her writing was that poor, I really didn't see how I could embrace her ideas, especially since so many of her supporters seem to think it's a really fine novel.