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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (24498)	5/13/2009 10:50:04 PM
From: average joe	Respond to of 36918

"Ayn Rand thought she understood the fundamental nature of mankind. Which I might point out is stone cold nuts-lol!! Even today we know next to nothing about the human brain." Please provide a reference for this. "Irrational altruism!" Ayn Rand was against altruism at the point of a gun. She was also against Noblesse Oblige by the state at the expense of the taxpayer. "We have brains and can make logical and compassionate decisions." Be compassionate to whoever you like. Don't expect me or others to pick up the bill. "I have always thought Any Rand was a sociopath so if I am right she had no idea what compassion was." All that counts is what you achieve (or don't) in your own life. It makes you look more foolish attacking someone successful.

To: koan who wrote (24498)	5/13/2009 11:26:08 PM
From: Maurice Winn	2 Recommendations Respond to of 36918

Oh yes we are: <And we are not rodents which live deterministic lives.> Apart from fundamental principles of physics, from which there's no escape [as much as has been found so far], we are so much like rodents it's embarrassing. You are surely aware of the old jokes about experimenters and their rats. The rats are notoriously "misbehaved" and seemingly bent on training the trainers and experimenting on the experimenters. As one rat said to the other, "Watch this. Every time I push this lever, that guy drops in some food". It's true we bring more cerebral horsepower to bear than a rat can do, but it's not much different on the scale from 0 to 1,000,000,000,000. People [the less rat-like] are at about 10 [say] and the rodents are at about 9. Chimps fit between. Google is heading for 10,000 already. Cyberspace in entirety is heading north of 100,000. [My numbers are illustrative] Mqurice