but you aren't helping. please halp thx

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26935897)

sure sounds like "ignoring reality and making everything up" to me

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936073)

from Understanding Objectivism, you have to actually look at the material to understand the context but

[The �corrected� list, put in proper hierarchical order:]

1. Existence exists.

2. Consciousness as the faculty of perceiving that which exists.

3. A is A.

4. Reason as man�s only means of knowledge; reason versus mysticism.

5. The senses as valid.

6. Concepts as identifications of concretes with their measurements omitted.

7. Knowledge as objective (versus intrinsic or subjective).

8. The law of cause and effect.

9. Reason as man�s means of survival.

10. The integration of man�s mind and body.

11. Man�s life as the standard of moral value.

12. Rationality as the primary virtue.

13. The virtue of independence.

14. The virtue of honesty.

15. The evil of the initiation of force.

16. The validation of individual rights.

17. The proper functions of government.

18. Capitalism as the only moral system.

19. The nature of art, and its role in man�s life.

20. Romanticism as the conceptual school of art.

so first of all, A is A is not on top of this list, first Objectivist wants to deal with reality existing and there being a mind to know it. and ethics stuff comes after points like "5. The senses as valid."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936093)

If her ethics isn't a priori then how does she bridge the is-ought gap?

e: just saw ur edit about a citation. if I'm bored enough I may find one.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936115)

http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/is-ought_dichotomy.html

does not say "ethics is a priori"

if you'd learn objectivism it would CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936125)

"Rand's axiomatic concepts and her axioms are self-evident on the basis of the content of any particular experience. Thus, the Objectivist axioms are known by experience, but can be known from any experience. They cannot be known prior to or independent of experience, however. "

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936143)

(2) Moral principles can not be inferred from descriptive premises. This principle is just an instance of the general fact that you cannot derive a conclusion within one subject matter from premises in a different subject matter. Just as you cannot expect to derive a geometrical conclusion from premises in economics, or derive a conclusion about birds from premises that don't say anything about birds, you should not expect to derive a conclusion about morality from non-moral premises.

More specifically, (2) follows from two sub-premises:

(a) Moral principles can not be deduced from descriptive premises. (This is 'Hume's Law'.)

(a) is a trivial result in the Aristotelian theory of the syllogism (a syllogism requires a middle term), as well of the more modern systems of logic, provided that moral principles are identified with propositions having only evaluative predicates, and descriptive propositions are identified as those having no evaluative predicates. For a simple example, take an argument of the form

x is D.

Hence, x is good.

where D is any descriptive predicate. This argument, to be valid, requires the assumption that whatever is D is good. And then there will be the question of how we know that, major premise. To see the truth of Hume's Law, it is best to examine in particular some attempts to bridge the is/ought gap and see why they fail. This will best enable the reader to see how any such attempt should be answered, and therefore to see that all such attempts must fail:

(i)

Communism causes poverty, makes people miserable, and takes away people's freedom.

Therefore, communism is bad.

The premise is apparently a descriptive and empirical fact, while the conclusion is evaluative. Assume the premise is true. My question: Does the conclusion follow from that alone?

No, the conclusion also depends upon the suppressed premises that poverty and misery are bad, and freedom is good. No doubt these additional premises are both true and known to be such, but that does not affect the point. The point is that the evaluative conclusion of the argument rests in part on evaluative premises. The argument therefore does not bridge the is/ought gap.

(ii)

Freedom is necessary to our survival.

Therefore, freedom is good.

Again, assume the premise is true, and ask, Does the conclusion follow from that alone?

No, because the argument presupposes that survival is good, and that survival is good is an evaluative premise. If survival is bad, then the conclusion to draw is that freedom is bad, not good.

(iii)

I want to live.

Eating is necessary to live (and also will not interfere with anything else I want).

Therefore, I should eat.

This requires the assumption that I ought to act on my desires, and/or that my desire to live is a morally acceptable one. To see this, compare the parallel inference, which is of exactly the same form as (iii), "Adolf Hitler wants to exterminate the Jews. Sending millions of Jews to gas chambers will increase the likelihood of accomplishing this (while not interfering with anything else he wants). Therefore, Adolf Hitler should send millions of Jews to gas chambers." Assume that the premises of that inference were true. Does the conclusion follow? Keep in mind that we are not concerned herein with any non-moral sense of "should", if there is any such thing. The question is, does it follow that it was morally right of Hitler to send millions of Jews to the gas chambers, given that he wanted to kill them and sending them to gas chambers effected that end? Obviously not, since in fact what he did was morally wrong, and therefore he should not have done it. And the fact that he wanted to exterminate the Jews does not render the action justified; if anything, it only makes it the more reprehensible. What this shows is that inferences of the form that (iii) has require the assumption that the agent's desire is morally acceptable. Your merely wanting something does not by itself make the thing good.

Again, my aim is not to doubt or deny any of the suppressed premises involved in these inferences. My aim is only to point out that they exist and therefore that none of these arguments bridges the is/ought gap.

(iv)

Social cooperation increases our evolutionary fitness.

Therefore, we should cooperate.

This presupposes that evolutionary fitness is good. One could try to prove this like so:

(v)

The process of evolution tends toward the survival of the fittest.

Therefore, fitness is good.

But this presupposes that survival is good and/or that what evolution tends towards is good.

Hopefully, the pattern is clear enough by now, so that it is unnecessary to multiply examples further. If one tries to show that x is good because it produces y, one must presuppose that y is good. If one tries to show that some thing, x, is good because it is a y, one must then presuppose that y's are good. If one tries to show that x is good because it has some characteristic, F, one presupposes that having F is good, and one will be called upon to prove that.

Rand tries to give some kind of argument, or explain how one can give arguments, bridging the is/ought gap in "The Objectivist Ethics". I have not tried to reproduce that argument here, unless (ii) or (iii) is it, because I can not understand it clearly, and because expositions of it that I have heard from Objectivists have varied widely. Most attempts to derive an 'ought' from an is depend upon either equivocation or suppressed premises, all depend on some fallacy, and Rand is no exception. I think that her exposition depends upon the suppressed premise that life, or existence, is good. This, again, is an evaluative premise, so the is/ought gap has not been bridged.

One might try to reply by saying you simply choose to live, and then the other conclusions follow. But this would just be a variation on (iii) above:

(vi)

I choose to live.

Eating is necessary to live.

Therefore, I should eat.

And this fails because it presupposes that my choice is correct. To see this, again, compare the parallel inference that begins, "Hitler chooses to exterminate the Jews . . ." and ends "Hitler ought to send the Jews to gas chambers," which is invalid. The difference between the two has to be that your choice to live is a right choice, while Hitler's choice to exterminate the Jews is a wrong choice.

Note that the problem here is not to show some way in which you might come to want to follow the principles of ethics. The problem is to explain your knowledge that the principles of ethics are true, based upon some other knowledge. If, as the Objectivists and I both accept, moral principles are genuine items of knowledge, then if they are going to be based on something else, they must be validly inferred from some other item of knowledge. It is not enough to show that you could simply choose to follow the principles of ethics, or make some other choice that commits you to following the principles of ethics, etc. That would not explain your knowing the principles to be true, in the manner in which you know something like the law of gravity. That would just explain your choosing to follow them. And I take it that it is essential to Objectivism that moral principles are genuine knowledge. They are not just things that we choose to believe, in the manner that William James suggested one might choose to believe that God exists - for that sort of thing does not constitute knowledge.

(b) Moral principles can not be inductively inferred from descriptive premises.

The reason for this is simple. Induction is generalizing from experience. It enables you to know general truths. But you could only be led by induction to general moral truths, if the premises of the induction were particular moral truths. If you can not ever recognize a particular good thing in the first place, then induction will be no help to you either. If your premises are particular descriptive facts, then your inductive conclusions are just going to be a bunch of descriptive generalizations.

To take stock, then, we have this argument:

(1) Every observation is descriptive in content.

(2) No evaluative propositions are known on the basis of descriptive propositions alone, for

(a) No evaluative proposition is deduced from descriptive propositions; and

(b) No evaluative proposition is induced from descriptive propositions.

(3) Therefore, moral knowledge requires an a priori basis.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936226)

"(2) Moral principles can not be inferred from descriptive premises. This principle is just an instance of the general fact that you cannot derive a conclusion within one subject matter from premises in a different subject matter."

so his idea is to argue using field categorizations, not reality or anything objective, as his premise. because people labelled a bunch of different ideas into fields to help organize them, he thinks that somehow logically separates them.

the Objectivist view is some of these different subject matters aren't so separate after all and actually philosophy is a totality and stuff like politics and ethics are related to epistemology.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936256)

a moral lifestyle (ought) is one that works in reality (connects well with what is). morality is practical and reality-based; what else would be the point?

morality is knowledge about how to live in reality. people created an is-ought gap by trying to just make up rationalist preftigiouf moral systems.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936235)

cuz our plan isn't to deduce morality from observation.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936391)

Objectivism would bring up induction here.

i disagree about that though, i got the Karl Popper route on this. you don't need a foundation or a basis or any of that crap. what you do is you guess ideas and then if they suck you criticize them and get better ones. you don't have to justify them or create them in a certain way (like deducing from some foundations you consider to have authority), you just deal with criticism.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936431)

but second you can use empirical criticism in relation to moral issues and people do, e.g. all those dead russians get brought up when people try to defend communist morality. they are an is that is used in criticism of some moral claims.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936476)

Also communism isn't a system of ethics so not sure what you're smoking here.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936504)

karl popper is about conjectures and refutations (guesses and criticism) like i talked about. you're just going by a 5 page summary you read somewhere, whereas i read all his books and know the field.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936522)

good flame up until now.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936532)

Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, p. 95

"He asserted that if a statement is to be scientific rather than metaphysical it must be falsifiable [...]. He then based his philosophy of science on the hypothetico-deductive method, claiming that enumerative INDUCTION is invalid, and indeed does not in fact occur, while verification and CONFIRMATION (as opposed to his own ‘corroboration’) are impossible. As his philosophy of science said we should aim to eliminate the false rather than establish the true, [...]."

Lacey (1996)

Leaving now. Not a particularly good flame but I'm a sucker for Ayn Rand.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936553)

it's also unclear what your point is. that says a theory is falsifiable if it could be contradicted by any empirical statement. i'm saying criticism is a superset of falsification, which Popper said and knew too.

the second one is about how science is empirical. morality isn't science.

the Lacey quote is pretty misleading b/c Popper claimed ALL induction is invalid.

i'm a philosopher and Popper and Rand are my specialties. don't get what you think is flame.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936568)

u goddamn idiot

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936129)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936137)

–_–

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936148)

5.3.5. ARE THERE CONFLICTS OF INTEREST BETWEEN RATIONAL PEOPLE?

I do not understand how Objectivists are able to maintain that there are no conflicts of interest in a rational society, but they seem to regard it as a fundamental point in their ethics. I suspect they so regard it because they think this principle enables their ethical system to 5.3.4 and 5.3.2.

Suppose I own a store, a small market. Across from the street there is another store of the same kind, owned by Bill. When a customer comes down the street, it is in my interests for the customer to enter my store. It is in Bill's interest for the customer to enter Bill's store. The customer will not enter both stores; if he goes to my store, he will not go to Bill's, and if he goes to Bill's store, he will not go to mine - a conflict of interests, pure and simple.

Since the result that Bill's and my interests have come into conflict follows from just three propositions, there are only three ways for an Objectivist to counter this argument. The Objectivist would have to argue:

(1) That it is not in my interests for the customer to enter my store.

But this is highly implausible. If it isn't in a store-owner's interests for a customer to enter his store, why do they spend money on advertising, try to offer a wider selection or lower price than competitors, et cetera?

(2) That it is not in Bill's interests for the customer to enter his store.

This is implausible for the same reason.

(3) That the two prospective events named in #1 and #2 are not in conflict.

And this is implausible also, on a reasonable construal of "conflict" - namely, if one occurs, the other does not occur. Normally, a customer will enter one or another store but not both. Therefore, not both Bill's and my interests can be satisfied in this case - i.e. they are 'in conflict.'

I do not see how one can hope to avoid this conclusion. Please note that there are no other possible responses to this argument. Any response to the argument that does not argue either (1), (2) or (3) above must be irrelevant, since my conclusion that Bill's and my interests conflict follows strictly from the three premises that it's in my interests for the customer to patronize my store, it's in Bill's interests for the customer to patronize Bill's store, and the customer's patronizing my store conflicts with his patronizing Bill's store. In particular, to point out that I recognize Bill as having property rights, that I shouldn't attack Bill, that it is in my interests to have a free, capitalist society, and so on, is irrelevant. Nothing along those lines refutes (1), or (2), or (3).

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936156)

note he as an ANTI OBJECTIVIST says ethics are a priori. TAKE NOTE BRO.

he's just wrong tho. what's moral depends on what will work in reality which depends on things like the laws of physics. what sort of lifestyle gets what results depends on what situation you're in and what the laws of physics are (including derivative stuff like what processes do and don't create knowledge, resolve conflicts, etc). you have to look at reality and see what kinda actions get what results in reality to be able to understand ethics well.

anyway about your pasted stuff

> Suppose I own a store, a small market. Across from the street there is another store of the same kind, owned by Bill. When a customer comes down the street, it is in my interests for the customer to enter my store. It is in Bill's interest for the customer to enter Bill's store. The customer will not enter both stores; if he goes to my store, he will not go to Bill's, and if he goes to Bill's store, he will not go to mine - a conflict of interests, pure and simple.

this is just plain not understanding Rand. did you read the VoS chapter i pasted? it gives an example of two people applying for the same job. i think the example is comparable, same sort of issues are raised, so just read that. Rand explains this specific thing.

http://www.xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=2756810&mc=71&forum_id=2

it is not in my interests to get a job or customer or other value which i don't deserve. i don't want the unearned. i can earn plenty, what good will the unearned do me and how would i propose to get it without losing my soul?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936223)

Of course the question of whether an act counts as moral depends on certain relevant facts about that act, jfc. He doesn't deny that.

"it is not in my interests to get a job or customer or other value which i don't deserve."

lol are you high. RSF didn't deserve that settlement money but it sure as hell benefits him.

more to the point, a customer buying shit from a dude's store benefits that dude. This is clear. Huemer considers this point above.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936248)

going after undeserved settlement money is a bad lifestyle. there are much better ones that are better for you. better to be Roark, who wouldn't do that, than be some guy who got a big settlement (even setting aside risk you don't win).

i think what you're missing is that you can't both be Roark or Galt and go for the settlements and other unearned crap. those contradict.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936274)

How is having a huge amount of money bad for you? I am DYING to hear this explanation. Money buys shit just as well whether it's "deserved" or not.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936292)

and money won't save your ass if you have an empty life. values matter more.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936313)

RSF seems to be enjoying life just fine and he's not producing anything but torn-up teenage puss and a massive collection of instagram pictures.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936330)

do you not want to be Roark or Galt? you don't see the appeal there? do you admit some people like me do and would prefer that to riches? (and anyway riches come naturally if you produce, no big deal). could you imagine how if you changed your personality a bit then you too could want to be a hero like Roark instead of a big spending fool?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936356)

seems like he's having a blast dude. Some people don't give a shit about scholarship and "rationality" and just want to travel and party and fuck. That's not my bag but it seems like RSF's.

You should probably supply some argument for your claim that RSF should value "the better things in life."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936387)

any risk of making big mistakes?

do you think he can fix problems, and avoid mistakes, without using reason really well?

see where this is going? reason is necessary or life just collapses in a shitstorm of errors.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936578)

there are no conflicts of interest with RATIONAL men. but your premise is that all the irrationality you see around you is just how people are so you're miscategorizing it as reason.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936372)

regarding the empirical claims, i'm not just looking at what is but also how it could change.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936401)

they lie somewhat less on XO which is pretty cool, but people LIE SO MUCH. SERIOUSLY.

they aren't that happy and lots of them don't even know what real happiness even is.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936423)

that many others don't doesn't mean they couldn't, or wouldn't like it more. they just don't know how. what empirical observation contradictions this idea that they just don't know how, that's the issue?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936453)

or to try to think they are happy, they have to try to blank out parts of reality and not think about parts of life and hide from good ideas. he has to evade and dodge moral philosophy and reason and so on. as long as he's trying to live irrationally, they are his enemies to be feared. do you see what that does to a life?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936499)

these partiers are just doing what society says is fun, not thinking for themselves, it's like they don't even exist as a person.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936606)

they want it, they prefer it. sure. but WHY? what's going on there?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936503)

Not a hard question.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936511)

are you a shitlib? is that why you hate Rand?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936435)

The most practical advice, the hottest tip, for a big date is the coffee enema. The coffee enema is a man’s push-up bra: it generates intangible smoothness and grace. After a coffee enema, anything can look effortless. Coffee enemas produce composure, sangfroid, steadiness, and even spiritual transcendence. It is easy to carry yourself as Obama after a coffee enema because there is a certain even-tempered power to it. After a coffee enema, you can walk up to a woman and introduce yourself with “I just had to meet you” and she will feel something different in the air, a relaxed, non-threatening purpose in your rhythm, and she will be interested in your agenda open-mindedly. In short, the coffee enema is a little known secret to throwing yourself at a stranger then playing it cool by opening with “I just had to meet you.”

It’s time to revisit The Game: Penetrating The Secret Society Of Pick-Up Artists and Get Laid Or Die Trying with knowledge of the coffee enema, specifically that its very existence means that they have yet to pull their heads out of their asses. The Game is too logical, as if women really buy in to rational pretexts for conversation instead of open-mindedly meeting you halfway by playing along with your total sensibility. The Game’s emphasis on what to say to women does little for the intangible dimensions of interpersonal reality that are hard to put to words, such as the soft charm around your eyes, which are addressed by the coffee enema. Get Laid Or Die Trying is too edgy, always pushing the envelope of what it can get away with, never dissecting the nuances of how to play it cool, which would start with the coffee enema.

This book aims to tackle issues such as the nuances of how to play it cool and other intangible dimensions of interpersonal reality, but the book format is really well not suited for it. A central problem of this book is that a picture is worth a thousand words and a video is a thousand pictures. Words cannot capture the nuances or complexities, the thousand shades of grey, that exist in the “energy” of social interactions, and the “energy” of interactions is difference between failure and success at picking up women. David DeAngelo solves for this problem by referencing a repertoire of movies in his seminars. In this book, I have decided to reference media you will need to track down. The pick-up artist Juggler had an hour long special on the BBC titled “Size Doesn’t Matter,” which is now available at various locations on the Internet including YouTube. In Size Doesn’t Matter, there are clips of Juggler’s guest instructor Johnny talking to women. In comparison to the three students, Johnny is able to maintain his bearings and project a slow, easygoing, effortless, good-natured vibe. Of the thousand shades of grey possible on the topic of interpersonal energy, Johnny’s vibe is easy to reference example of easy-going and effortless energy. Johnny gets an A+ for his vibe.

It is generally assumed by Size Doesn’t Matter that the three students learning pick-up could gradually de-sensitize themselves to their apprehensions and worries, all the cognitive dissonance going on in their head when they think about picking-up women, and over time gradually acquire something like Johnny’s vibe, free and clear of their previous anxieties. I disagree. Between 2005-2008, I lived in New York City and went out all the time, leaning in to my fears and throwing myself into situations that produced anxiety. I spent three years going out on the theory that I could acquire a better vibe by de-sensitizing myself to situations that produced anxiety. It worked to a very limited extent. However, never once was there a situation that I had built up in my mind as a disaster, full of cognitive apprehensions and anxieties, that I threw myself into and then had go well enough that I forever knew better, learning my lesson such that I forever neutralized certain apprehensions and anxieties. Anxiety isn’t so rational that it learns a lesson from past situations. Apprehensions are not so easily conquered.

The lesson I learned after literally thousands of approaches is that your vibe is the product of biological energy, which is mostly altered by psychiatric interventions such as drugs, alcohol, diet, exercise, meditation, enema, and supplement habits. Drugs and alcohol works so well that they are the gold standard, the problem categories that can easily catch up with you. Diet, exercise, meditation, enema, and supplements all work to a moderate degree, but, given that they constitute the full spectrum of what is even possible outside of drugs and alcohol, they have to be MADE to work, even when they are only moderately effective.

Something like the golden rule is the case: “What you experience, they experience.” If you walk up collected, cool, and effortless, you will be received well, and the targets’ minds will be set at ease. Being at ease somehow is your responsibility. It is possible to lean into your fears, experiencing anxiety, and still be a success, it’s just that the success will always come despite the anxiety, overcoming the hurdle of anxiety that interferes with the underlying “what you feel, they feel” rule to the situation.

When I lived in New York City I went out all the time to amass reference experiences that would form the basis of a new level of social intelligence. One memorable night I was out at Hotel Gansevoort doing the short set method. Short set method is when you talk to everyone in the room briefly, then wait for some of the women you’ve briefly talked to re-engage you later on, perhaps even after they witnessed you talk to the entire room. If a woman does watch you talk to the entire room, it is possible you will be seen as a desperate cold approach pick-up artist but it’s also possible to build “social proof” as a cool, friendly, outgoing guy. Short set method was commonly accepted by underground pick-up artists as a different style than Mystery Method or The Game, which calculated the right opener and follow up material as if ideally you would only talk to one woman the entire night.

I was at Hotel Gansevoort and ran in to someone else talking to every woman in the room but who was not a member of the underground pick-up artist community. The guy picked ME up by saying “DUDE, YOU’RE A BEAST. You’re one of the best around.” He then offered value by suggesting that we bounce to another club in the area. It was the offering of value, not the flattery, that sucked me into his orbit. I was game because I didn’t know the clubs in the area very well.

In the four years I spent going out in New York, this guy was memorable for being the only guy to pull a fairly obvious 2+2=4 type of move: he used cocaine to approach. He already had a good coke high going when I met him, and he would regularly run to the bathroom to do another bump, promising everyone that he intended to share the cocaine with us as he excused himself to the bathroom. Every time he got back he immediately threw himself at a new woman in the room. He was opening with “It’s my birthday!”, and he had stellar opening success. Women never blew him off up front, which I cannot say was true of me at the time. His energy and charisma cut right in and dominated. The problem occurred about two to five minutes in. He didn’t have a balanced energy. It’s like something was off kilter. The cocaine exaggerated more aggressive aspects of his personality and failed to come off well-rounded. Instead of seeming light and effortless, it seemed heavy and anxious, a dysfunction that took a few minutes to register consciously but was impossible not to see after you first saw it. Two to five minutes after opening a set, he returned empty handed, forced to eject by signals of disinterest.

The cocaine user’s social energy has never left my mind. The thought experiment of what it would take to get the cocaine user to stay in set is the central issue in this book. The cocaine user opened fantastically with “It’s my birthday!” He cut right in and injected a better energy than the group had on its own. It’s just that he started to come off as sweaty instead of well put together, imbalanced instead of cool and confident. I know now that if he had a coffee enema in him, he would have come across with a well-rounded energy, peaceful, effortless, and serene. He would have stayed in set. His energy would have been so much better that women would have rationalized it the other way, hoping he would stay around.

The question of what it would take to get the cocaine user to stay in set projecting a balanced energy is related to two more scenarios. The first scenario comes from The Blueprint Decoded. In The Blueprint Decoded Tyler Durden recounts how he went through a phase where he felt terrible for anybody who had spent any time studying the materials in the “success with women” industry because doing better with women is not synonymous with trying harder. Instead, it is possible to do much better with women by sucking them in to an around the shoulder embrace as they walk by and saying “Who are you?” as if it is now her chance to impress. The around the shoulder “Who are you?” is extremely simple and devastatingly effective in relation to much more complex theories such as David DeAngelo’s cocky/funny, Mystery Method’s attraction/comfort/seduction paradigm, and even Real Social Dynamics’ linear pickup model. The issue with “Who are you?” is that your interpersonal energy needs to be finely tuned or it can fail right off the bat. Later in The Blueprint Decoded, Tyler Durden identified one way to explain finely tuned interpersonal energy: it feels like continuous access to the present moment, uninterrupted, flowing, moment-by-moment, and smooth. To suck a woman in to an around the shoulder “Who are you?”, you need to be finely tuned to the present moment. Stuttering off rhythm would kill the grace required by the approach.

The Blueprint Decoded is ingenious at explaining, finally putting to words, the phenomenology of pick-up. There is a certain level of cognitive satisfaction in knowing that all you need is superior “access to the present” moment in order to pick-up like The Blueprint Decoded. The problem is that knowing the issue is “access to the present moment” is not the same as being able to access the present moment. It’s like knowing you’re funnier after three drinks is not the same thing as actually being three drinks in to the night. In short, knowing that the solution is access to the present moment is still a mile away from actually solving the issue. The Blueprint Decoded stops short of identifying what it takes to have superior access to the present moment and even fails to account for the most obvious solution: three drinks or so facilitates a fluid, easygoing “in the moment” consciousness without self-consciousness. That is to say, in order to pull off the “Who are you?” opener and suck her into a reality in which now is her time to impress you, three drinks will set you up with the right disposition: fluid, funnier, more on rhythm, more intangibly charismatic, conscious without being self-conscious. The intangible charisma I’m describing here is also what is missing from the cocaine user’s pick-up: a balanced, warm, easygoing energy, more like Johnny’s energy from Size Doesn’t Matter and less heavy and less anxious.

The intangible charisma missing from the cocaine user’s pick-up and the intangible energy necessary to pull off “Who are you?” as an opener are related to one final scenario. In 2007, I used the RSD forums to address self-identified “sticking points,” areas that I needed to improve. I was dating a new woman, Sara, and questioned the RSD forums about something she said to me. After we were done having sex, which I should more politely refer to as making love from here on out, Sara rolled over in bed and said to me “Sex to me is about being close. I use sex to feel closer.” She brought the issue up as something randomly on her mind. It wasn’t phrased as a complaint, although it was in the ballpark of complaints. The “problem” was that I was having sex with a difficult to diagnose flawed interpersonal energy, which might be explained as disconnection from the present moment, which might be explained as feeling “on edge” instead of “at ease,” which might be explained as lacking warmth, which might be perceived as lacking in closeness. I didn’t feel completely like myself, which means I couldn’t create the feelings of connection that she sought.

It wasn’t until years later that I discovered how to create the warm energy that she would perceive as closeness and connection in the bedroom. As a veteran pick-up artist, I can now singlehandedly produce the “chemistry” we are both experiencing. I really can experience enough chemistry for us both. The lesson I know as a veteran is that if the spanish fly really were to exist, it would be something I take to experience first and then experience in abundance for the both of us. I know of four ways to create the warm, “connected” energy in the bedroom, to produce a balanced, effortless, sensible energy even on cocaine, to pull off the “Who are you?” opener, and to project Johnny’s common sense, easygoing total sensibility from Size Doesn’t Matter.

A Balanced Energy

There are four primary ways to create a present moment mind/body connection useful in pick-up. The first is three drinks of alcohol. The second is the coffee enema. The third is exercise on the elliptical machine with the supplement sulbutiamine. The fourth is binaural meditation with products such as Holosync.

Three Drinks

The first way to create superior access to the present moment has to be brought up despite the fact that it is obvious. Three drinks or so into the night you are more fluid, more on rhythm, funnier, more conscious without being self-conscious than was possible before the three drinks. This should be obvious to anyone who has ever used alcohol as a social lubricant. It has to be specifically mentioned because figureheads such as Tyler Durden from Real Social Dynamics teach pick-up without alcohol, so it never occurs to them to bring up the advantages of moderate alcohol use. Three drinks into the night is not an experience that is built in to their model of pick-up. However, three drinks in to the night is the gold standard of superior access to the present moment. It sets the bar for what the remaining three approaches attempt to accomplish. I wish I could always be three drinks into the night, and I continually search for healthy alternatives that produce the effect of three drinks.

The Coffee Enema

The second way to create superior access to the present moment is the coffee enema. Intimidating at first, the enema is actually easy, breezy, beautiful, and good for the soft charm around your eyes. A coffee enema cleans out mental cobwebs so well it has to be the intended issue behind the phrase “your head is up your ass.” The first twenty or so coffee enemas you will ever do will produce mental stillness, equanimity, mood stabilization, and serenity. After the first twenty enemas, the effect greatly diminishes. I would recommend using the first twenty or so enemas wisely, rationing them out for big nights out on the town or big dates.

Purchase an ordinary enema bucket. Rather than fill the enema bucket with water, fill it with a quart of coffee that has cooled to room temperature. Lay down a towel between yourself and the cold bathroom tile. Bring a pillow. Set aside hand towels for the cleanup of small messes. Pour cooking oil into the palm of one hand, rub the palms of both hands together, apply the oil to your bum and anus, and finally oil the plastic tube that will be inserted into the anus. Insert the tube standing up, lay down on your towel and pillow, and listen to music. Music is an effective and recommended distraction to the occasional pains that accompany an enema.

One nice innovation improving upon the traditional coffee enema is the use of reishi (ganoderma) coffee. With reishi coffee, you will feel the effect of the reishi mushrooms on your nervous system immediately, unlike eating reishi mushrooms where the effect delayed via digestion. Reishi produces a noticeable lightness of being in the nervous system.

Our family has experimented with various modifications to the basic coffee enema. Few of them are worth mentioning except one. My father reports that adding 400mcg to 1,200mcg of nascent iodine to the coffee also produced a heightened level of serenity out of an enema. I have not noticed this effect myself, however. If it exists at all, it is not as obvious as the reishi. We have similarly added many supplements to the enema with little effect.

Exercise On The Elliptical Machine With Sulbutiamine

The central premise of Eckhart Tolle’s book A New Earth is that the normal state of mind for most humans most of the time contains a strong element of dysfunction or madness. To circumvent the madness of thought, the error of rationalization, which is always fundamentally flawed, Tolle proposes that we identify with the presence beneath thought. Tolle proposes that the shift of consciousness from thought to the presence beneath thought is like “shifting attention from the external form of your body and from thoughts about your body … to the feeling of aliveness inside it.” To notice this aliveness “go to the hands directly. … [B]ecome aware of the subtle feeling of aliveness inside of them.” Next, “incorporate other parts of the body … until you are aware of the inner body as a global sense of aliveness.”

Tolle identifies a shift I think is important, the shift from thought to the presence beneath thought, but fails to take into account one of the most important ways to make this jump: vigorous cardio exercise. A great workout can leave you feeling like a million bucks: your mind will quiet and your body will become the vessel through which you encounter reality without thinking about reality. The quickest way to end the mediation of thought between yourself and reality is 30 minutes on the elliptical machine. Exercise silences the discordant, jumbled, anxious mental chatter that defines everyday consciousness. You will find that about 20 minutes in to a workout your mind has ceased to be overactive, that your breathing occupies more of your awareness, and that you settle in to “the zone” of peak experience. Exercise can be meditative.

The best way to enhance the effect of your mind quieting, the effect of “the zone” is a little known supplement called sulbutiamine. Sulbutiamine is a modification of vitamin B1, thiamine, which was invented by Japanese researchers to combat thiamine deficiencies. Sulbutiamine crosses the blood-brain barrier at a greater rate than thiamine, and it then feeds thiamine reserves in the brain at an enhanced rate. Researchers distinguish between short term and long term thiamine reserves in the brain. Sulbutiamine enhances short term thiamine reserves. Studies have found increased concentrations of dopamine receptors in the brain after the supplementation of sulbutiamine. Sulbutiamine greatly enhances access to the present moment on the elliptical machine, creating a mind/body sense of centeredness, a steadiness, quietness, a version of body identification prior to thought, supporting thought, that Eckhart Tolle completely neglects to mention.

After you hop off the elliptical machine using sulbutiamine, you will have a greatly enhanced sense of wellbeing that should last at least an hour. That sense of wellbeing, the quietness of mind, the body identification, the centeredness, that experience is an attractive experience to project. It would be ideal to hop off the ellipitical machine and into a woman’s arms directly, but this isn’t often possible. What is possible is the use of sulbutiamine and the elliptical to maintain a baseline sense of wellbeing that is attractive, almost as if you have found a stable sense of purpose and challenge in life that you’re capable of living up to simply by exercising on the elliptical machine.

Binaural Meditation With Products Like Holosync

A fourth way to induce a heightened connection to the present moment is an hour of meditation with products like Holosync. Holosync is an industry standard now because it was a pioneer, a pathbreaker, an innovator in the field of binaural beats. Holosoync does an excellent job of marketing itself, which I encourage you to read at www.centerpointe.com

Human brainwaves can be measured by an EEG machine on a scale of 0 to 40 hz. Brainwaves are classified as beta, the highest, alpha, theta, and delta, the lowest. In the everyday brain, there is activity along the full range of 0 to 40 hz, but there is also a special importance on the dominant brain wave. Somewhere in the spectrum of 0 to 40 hz will be a single frequency responsible for an individual’s general state of mind, the dominant brainwave.

Beta brainwaves are the spectrum of 13-40hz, and even 40 to 100 Hz. Beta brainwaves are associated with “alertness, arousal, and concentration” even “anxiety, unease, and lack of inner peace.” Alpha brainwaves range from 8 to 12.9 Hz. They are associated with introspection, “focus, ‘superlearning,’ and meditation.” Theta brainwaves range between 4-7.9 Hz, which are associated with “dreaming sleep, increased creativity, some kinds of learning, and extremely deep meditation.” Finally, delta waves range from 0.1 to 3.9 Hz and are associated with “dreamless sleep and many autonomic nervous system functions.”

The first scientific phenomenon necessary to understand Holosync is brainwave entrainment. Specifically, if you listen to a steady drum beat for about 10-15 minutes, your dominant brain wave will “entrain” or eventually synch up with and match the rhythm of the drum beat. Think of tribal dancers in Africa inducing altered states of consciousness with nothing but rhythmic drumming, They sync up with a steady beat and slow down their dominant brain wave to a more purposeful, deliberate, measured, relaxed frequency.

The second scientific phenomenon necessary to understand Holosync is binaural entrainment. The two hemispheres of the brain process sounds separately. If you put 100 Hz in one ear, and 110 Hz in the other ear, the brain will hear two separate sounds, one sound processed by the left hemisphere and the other sound processed by the right hemisphere. The brain will then merge the two separate frequencies into a single sound with a 100 Hz “carrier frequency” with a silent 10 Hz beat. After about 10 to 15 minutes, the brain will then entrain to the silent beat created by two separate sounds as if it were a normal drum beat. Two sounds of 100 Hz and 120 Hz create a silent beat of 20 Hz, which will induce a dominant brain wave of 20 Hz on an EEG machine. Likewise, two sounds of 80 and 85 Hz will induce a dominant brain wave of 5 Hz. A Holosync soundtrack begins with a silent beat of 20 Hz, a normal alert, awake, beta frequency dominant brain wave, and gradually slows down to 0.3 Hz, a serene, still, delta frequency dominant brainwave.

The third phenomenon that makes Holosync different from other binaural products is the effect of progressively lower carrier frequencies. Bill Harris explains that he was a veteran of many different meditation methods such as Transcendental Meditation, in which meditators focus on their breath until their mind quiets. Waiting on the mind to quiet by doing nothing but focusing on your breath can be long and frustrating. It’s not an effective method, but it was the only method possible to achieve an altered state of consciousness. Harris found that a basic combination of two frequencies such as 100 Hz and 110 Hz quieted his mind as much as a lengthy period of traditional Transcendental Meditation spent focusing on his breath. He supplemented his traditional meditation sessions with the binaural soundtrack to facilitate a quiet mind quickly, which was the ultimate goal of meditation in the first place. The binaural soundtrack worked perfectly, with one hitch. In about six months it ceased to be effective. Its effect had worn off. Harris then discovered that the effect still existed at a lower combination of frequencies. Although the effect had worn off at 100 Hz and 110 Hz, the effect still existed at 100 Hz and 90 Hz. When dropping the carrier frequency but still using the same differential in the two sounds to create an identical silent beat, Harris restored the effect that disappeared over time with the higher carrier frequency. The serenity of the new, lower carrier frequency would again wear off in another six months, and the only way to resolve it was to drop the “carrier frequencies” even lower, this time to 90 Hz and 80 Hz.

Harris starts selling the product Awakening Prologue with something like a 120 Hz carrier frequency. He then sells individual levels titled Awakening, Purification, and Flowering, each of which drop the carrier frequency lower. The exact carrier frequencies used remain a trade secret, but more than likely go as low as the ear will go, around 20 Hz or so. According to the marketing each level results in more and more profound spiritual development.

Holosync calls the first soundtrack in offers The Dive. The point of The Dive is to take you from a normal 20 Hz dominant brainwave down to a .3 Hz dominant brainwave in about 30 minutes. The second soundtrack that Holosync offers is called Immersion. The point of Immersion is to keep you at a 0.3 Hz dominant brainwave for another 30 minutes. One hour of Holosync is a typical session. It generates a heightened and pleasant experience of stillness, equanimity, trance, and serenity. I liked to listen to two hours of Holosync to deepen the trance effect. After two hours of Holosync, I could maintain a tranced out, spaced out, stillness for another two hours.

The effect of Holosync levels is tremendous. I was living in New York City when Real Social Dynamics first started pushing Eckhart Tolle in 2008. I had been meditating with Holosync prior to Eckhart Tolle’s popularity. The overlap between Eckhart Tolle and Holosync seemed obvious to me. Holosync was scientific technology that quieted the mind, silenced cognitive chatter, producing stillness, serenity, and equanimity, while Eckhart Tolle was teaching that spirituality was the presence prior to thought, a perfect fit.

Tyler Durden wrote a blog post titled Eckhart Tolle Principles in which he broke down the principles of Eckhart Tolle as applied to pick-up. Tyler broke down Eckhart Tolle in his own way, but the central theme was “staying present” enough not to experience approach anxiety, then being “non-resistant” enough to be resourceful and play the situation to the hilt moment-by-moment, “staying present” enough to avoid rationalization that will thwart an ongoing pick-up like a deal breaking hiccup, “staying present” enough to listen to a woman without thinking a step ahead, “staying present” enough to unleash basic instincts like a caveman, and “staying present” enough to access a supernatural level of creativity. The central theme, of course, is “staying present,” which is completely accomplished by listening to Holosync. In fact, the deeper the level of Holosync, such as Awakening, Purification, Flowering, with 120 Hz to 80 Hz to 50 Hz to 30 Hz carrier frequencies, the more intense the level of stillness or presence you can access.

Bill Harris uses spiritual language to describe the peaceful effect produced by Holosync. The serenity of Holosync is “not at odds with the world.” Holosync meditators are engaged in the world, but “not attached to the outcome.” Holosync meditators are “compassionate,” “[helping] others with their suffering.” They are not “an automatic response mechanism” “responding to the world based on unconscious rules, fears, beliefs, and limitations.” They consciously evaluate every situation “in the moment” and obtains “the most resourceful outcome.” They benefit from a stable “calm,” an “underlying effortless happiness.”

In 2008, I was tranced out from about two hours of Holosync and riding Manhattan’s 6-train thinking about Tyler Durden’s Eckhart Tolle post when I first decided to apply it to pick-up. Without experiencing approach anxiety, I opened instinctively, conscious without being self-conscious. The first thing that came to mind was “I just have to meet you.” I erred on the side of not thinking ahead. I really did make errors, deformities in my interpersonal energy that were out of sync with the situation, that were the fault of not thinking ahead. I stayed present through moments of lull and anxiety. I showered her with serene, Holosync attention, and made out with her in a cab after we got off the train together.

There is a difference between night game and day game. In night game, at a bar or a club, Real Social Dynamics likes to emphasize “state.” Staying in state is about maintaining a positive surge of good emotions, talkative and upbeat, to share with the women being approached. The daygame Real Social Dynamics should teach should be Holosync, the premise of which is staying chill, serene, peaceful, and playing it cool, showering a woman with a stable, buoyant baseline of good energy. I take Johnny’s performance on Size Doesn’t Matter to be an ideal example of daygame. He plays it cool.

I am including with this book a set of binaural meditation sessions that mimic Holosync’s Awakening Prologue, Awakening, Purification, and Flowering levels. I start with a 120 Hz carrier frequency and create sessions that go all the way down to 20 Hz as the carrier frequency. The primary difference between my soundtracks and Holosync’s soundtracks is that Holosync starts every session off at 20 Hz then over a thirty minute period drops the user down to 1.5, .5, or .3 Hz, remaining down at 1.5, .5, or .3 Hz for another thirty minutes. Dropping down to 0.3 Hz in thirty minutes then remaining at 0.3 Hz for thirty minutes substantiates Holosync’s claim to “meditate deeper than a zen monk.” In contrast, my sessions are one hour long and start at 18 Hz, then drop down to 10 Hz, 5 Hz and 3 Hz for fifteen minutes each. The frequencies I use are specially chosen to produce pleasurable endorphins. The soundtracks included with this book are specifically designed to produce the greatest pleasurable, feel good, serene experience possible, which could be directly used to chill out on Manhattan’s 6-train and “stay present” with a tranced out serenity like Eckhart Tolle for an entire pick up.

Daygame

Juggler teaches a method of pick-up that is uncomplicated. Basically, some point after starting a conversation the student has to SOI, make a Statement of Intent, which is along the lines of “you’re sexy.” The purpose of a Statement of Intent such is to cross a sexual boundary and remove any ambiguity about sexual intentions so that from there on out the interaction cannot be interpreted as platonic. Juggler’s method does not attempt to describe charisma or to dissect the intangible dimensions of social interaction that constitute sexual chemistry. He simply insists that the student SOI, which prevents a woman from assuming a student into the friendzone, a reoccurring issue when no SOIs have been made. I argue that the bulk of pick-up in Juggler’s paradigm, the heavy lifting that happens in any successful pick-up, is left undescribed, as it is too difficult a subject to tackle. For instance, what is Johnny doing exactly when he plays it so cool? How did Johnny arrive at his attitudes about women and pick-up? How does a student repeat the intangible factors that lead to Johnny getting a woman’s number, while other students spin their wheels in the mud dealing with anxiety issues?

I have identified four ways to generate the intangible charisma that has been formulated as “access the present moment”: three drinks, the coffee enema, exercise with sulbutiamine, and binaural meditation with Holosync. These four ways deal with intangible dimensions of interpersonal interaction not tackled by Juggler’s method. These four ways are no-nonsense, high potency ways to generate a glowing, radient, serene, still, cool vibe, which Jeff from Real Social Dynamics calls the “searing hot coal” nimbus. If you do any two of the four together, you will have a world class interpersonal energy, relaxed, cool, and confident. The interpersonal energy I have identified can give SOUL and “energy” to any method, including Juggler’s, which crucially revolves around the SOI.

I can only teach what I know. My reference experiences include gaming women on the subway platform in New York City. The subway platform in New York City is the quintessence of daygame. Daygame is its own beast. Johnny’s vibe in Size Doesn’t Matter is an expert’s daygame vibe. It is impossible to run around talking to people in order to throw yourself into “state” on the subway platform. Some other type of social energy is necessary. I argue that doing two of the four methods identified above will let you summon the necessary social energy from within and lay it on thick. In the Biff Tannen method, it is still the case that your “energy” is your game. Doing two of the four methods identified above will let buzz from the inside out with positive energy. After you’re buzzing from the inside out, all you have to do is walk up and say “I just have to meet you.” then not think ahead, playing the situation moment-by-moment. If “I just have to meet you” feels like a canned line and not something you would instinctively, consider something more genuine, perhaps expressing uncertainty and saying “I don’t know how to do this, but I have to meet you.” When you say “I just have to meet you” you are THROWING yourself at her, but the effect is moderated by the fact that the vibe you’re going to project is so cool from the inside out. Saying “I don’t know how to do this, but I have to meet you.” shows off your soft underbelly, a hint of vulnerability, that can be charming and attractive if there’s otherwise a sensibility to the approach.

The Philosophers' Stone

The search for the philosophers' stone was the quintessential pursuit in the occult spiritual tradition of alchemy. The Emerald Tablet of Hermes is one of alchemy’s most famous texts. The Emerald Tablet identifies as unique the assembly of “three parts of the philosophy of the whole world.” I have “three parts of the philosophy of the whole world.”

1 – What Is Consciousness by Bill Harris – http://www.rsdnation.com/files/biff6.doc

2 – Decoding the Blueprint: Part VI by Drama – http://www.rsdnation.com/files/biff7.doc

3 – Eckhart Tolle Principles by Tyler – http://www.rsdnation.com/node/71430

Psychologist Carl Jung refered to the philosophers' stone as the “living, philosophical stone,” which implied continuity with the “living stones” of 1 Peter 2 and alchemy’s philosophers' stone. The living stones in 1 Peter 2 include the single Greek word that is translated variously as keystone, capstone, and cornerstone, the origin of the capstone to the pyramid in the Great Seal of the United States on the dollar bill. The philosophers' stone is associated with the cornerstone in Psalm 118 for similar reasons.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936298)

(February 1963)

4.

The "Conflicts" of Men's Interests

by Ayn Rand

Some students of Objectivism find it difficult to grasp the Objectivist principle that "there are no conflicts of interests among rational men."

A typical question runs as follows: "Suppose two men apply for the same job. Only one of them can be hired. Isn't this an instance of a conflict of interests, and isn't the benefit of one man achieved at the price of the sacrifice of the other?"

There are four interrelated considerations which are involved in a rational man's view of his interests, but which are ignored or evaded in the above question and in all similar approaches to the issue. I shall designate these four as: (a) "Reality," (b) "Context," (c) "Responsibility," (d) "Effort. "

(a) Reality. The term "interests" is a wide abstraction that covers the entire field of ethics. It includes the issues of: man's values, his desires, his goals and their actual achievement in reality. A man's "interests" depend on the kind of goals he chooses to pursue, his choice of goals depends on his desires, his desires depend on his values--and, for a rational man, his values depend on the judgment of his mind.

Desires (or feelings or emotions or wishes or whims) are not tools of cognition; they are not a valid standard of value, nor a valid criterion of man's interests. The mere fact that a man desires something does not constitute a proof that the object of his desire is good, nor that its achievement is actually to his interest.

To claim that a man's interests are sacrificed whenever a desire of his is frustrated--is to hold a subjectivist view of man's values and interests. Which means: to believe that it is proper, moral and possible for man to achieve his goals, regardless of whether they contradict the facts of reality or not. Which means: to hold an irrational or mystical view of existence. Which means: to deserve no further consideration.

In choosing his goals (the specific values he seeks to gain and/or keep), a rational man is guided by his thinking (by a process of reason)--not by his feelings or desires. He does not regard desires as irreducible primaries, as the given, which he is destined irresistibly to pursue. He does not regard "because I want it" or "because I feel like it" as a sufficient cause and validation of his actions. He chooses and/or identifies his desires by a process of reason, and he does not act to achieve a desire until and unless he is able rationally to validate it in the full context of his knowledge and of his other values and goals. He does not act until he is able to say: "I want it because it is right."

The Law of Identity (A is A) is a rational man's paramount consideration in the process of determining his interests. He knows that the contradictory is the impossible, that a contradiction cannot be achieved in reality and that the attempt to achieve it can lead only to disaster and destruction. Therefore, he does not permit himself to hold contradictory values, to pursue contradictory goals, or to imagine that the pursuit of a contradiction can ever be to his interest.

Only an irrationalist (or mystic or subjectivist--in which category I place all those who regard faith, feelings or desires as man's standard of value) exists in a perpetual conflict of "interests." Not only do his alleged interests clash with those of other men, but they clash also with one another.

No one finds it difficult to dismiss from philosophical consideration the problem of a man who wails that life entraps him in an irreconcilable conflict because he cannot eat his cake and have it, too. That problem does not acquire intellectual validity by being expanded to involve more than cake--whether one expands it to the whole universe, as in the doctrines of Existentialism, or only to a few random whims and evasions, as in most people's views of their interests.

When a person reaches the stage of claiming that man's interests conflict with reality, the concept "interests" ceases to be meaningful--and his problem ceases to be philosophical and becomes psychological.

(b) Context. Just as a rational man does not hold any conviction out of context--that is: without relating it to the rest of his knowledge and resolving any possible contradictions--so he does not hold or pursue any desire out of context. And he does not judge what is or is not to his interest out of context, on the range of any given moment.

Context-dropping is one of the chief psychological tools of evasion. In regard to one's desires, there are two major ways of context-dropping: the issues of range and of means.

A rational man sees his interests in terms of a lifetime and selects his goals accordingly. This does not mean that he has to be omniscient, infallible or clairvoyant. It means that he does not live his life short-range and does not drift like a bum pushed by the spur of the moment. It means that he does not regard any moment as cut off from the context of the rest of his life, and that he allows no conflicts or contradictions between his short-range and long-range interests. He does not become his own destroyer by pursuing a desire today which wipes out all his values tomorrow.

A rational man does not indulge in wistful longings for ends divorced from means. He does not hold a desire without knowing (or learning) and considering the means by which it is to be achieved. Since he knows that nature does not provide man with the automatic satisfaction of his desires, that a man's goals or values have to be achieved by his own effort, that the lives and efforts of other men are not his property and are not there to serve his wishes--a rational man never holds a desire or pursues a goal which cannot be achieved directly or indirectly by his own effort.

It is with a proper understanding of this "indirectly" that the crucial social issue begins.

Living in a society, instead of on a desert island, does not relieve a man of the responsibility of supporting his own life. The only difference is that he supports his life by trading his products or services for the products or services of others. And, in this process of trade, a rational man does not seek or desire any more or any less than his own effort can earn. What determines his earnings? The free market, that is: the voluntary choice and judgment of the men who are willing to trade him their effort in return.

When a man trades with others, he is counting--explicitly or implicitly--on their rationality, that is: on their ability to recognize the objective value of his work. (A trade based on any other premise is a con game or a fraud.) Thus, when a rational man pursues a goal in a free society, he does not place himself at the mercy of whims, the favors or the prejudices of others; he depends on nothing but his own effort: directly, by doing objectively valuable work--indirectly, through the objective evaluation of his work by others.

It is in this sense that a rational man never holds a desire or pursues a goal which cannot be achieved by his own effort. He trades value for value. He never seeks or desires the unearned. If he undertakes to achieve a goal that requires the cooperation of many people, he never counts on anything but his own ability to persuade them and their voluntary agreement.

Needless to say, a rational man never distorts or corrupts his own standards and judgment in order to appeal to the irrationality, stupidity or dishonesty of others. He knows that such a course is suicidal. He knows that one's only practical chance to achieve any degree of success or anything humanly desirable lies in dealing with those who are rational, whether there are many of them or few. If, in any given set of circumstances, any victory is possible at all, it is only reason that can win it. And, in a free society, no matter how hard the struggle might be, it is reason that ultimately wins.

Since he never drops the context of the issues he deals with, a rational man accepts that struggle as to his interest--because he knows that freedom is to his interest. He knows that the struggle to achieve his values includes the possibility of defeat. He knows also that there is no alternative and no automatic guarantee of success for man's effort, neither in dealing with nature nor with other men. So he does not judge his interests by any particular defeat nor by the range of any particular moment. He lives and judges long-range. And he assumes the full responsibility of knowing what conditions are necessary for the achievement of his goals.

(c) Responsibility. This last is the particular form of intellectual responsibility that most people evade. That evasion is the major cause of their frustrations and defeats.

Most people hold their desires without any context whatever, as ends hanging in a foggy vacuum, the fog hiding any concept of means. They rouse themselves mentally only long enough to utter an "I wish," and stop there, and wait, as if the rest were up to some unknown power.

What they evade is the responsibility of judging the social world. They take the world as the given. "A world I never made" is the deepest essence of their attitude--and they seek only to adjust themselves uncritically to the incomprehensible requirements of those unknowable others who did make the world, whoever those might be.

But humility and presumptuousness are two sides of the same psychological medal. In the willingness to throw oneself blindly on the mercy of others there is the implicit privilege of making blind demands on one's masters.

There are countless ways in which this sort of "metaphysical humility" reveals itself. For instance, there is the man who wishes to be rich, but never thinks of discovering what means, actions and conditions are required to achieve wealth. Who is he to judge? He never made the world--and "nobody gave him a break."

There is the girl who wishes to be loved, but never thinks of discovering what love is, what values it requires, and whether she possesses any virtues to be loved for. Who is she to judge? Love, she feels, is an inexplicable favor--so she merely longs for it, feeling that somebody has deprived her of her share in the distribution of favors.

There are the parents who suffer deeply and genuinely, because their son (or daughter) does not love them, and who, simultaneously, ignore, oppose or attempt to destroy everything they know of their son's convictions, values and goals, never thinking of the connection between these two facts, never making an attempt to understand their son. The world they never made and dare not challenge, has told them that children love parents automatically.

There is the man who wants a job, but never thinks of discovering what qualifications the job requires or what constitutes doing one's work well. Who is he to judge? He never made the world. Somebody owes him a living. How? Somehow.

A European architect of my acquaintance was talking, one day, of his trip to Puerto Rico. He described--with great indignation at the universe at large--the squalor of the Puerto Ricans' living conditions. Then he described what wonders modem housing could do for them, which he had daydreamed in detail, including electric refrigerators and tiled bathrooms. I asked: "Who would pay for it?" He answered, in a faintly offended, almost huffy tone of voice: "Oh, that's not for me to worry about! An architect's task is only to project what should be done. Let somebody else think about the money."

That is the psychology from which all "social reforms" or "welfare states" or "noble experiments" or the destruction of the world have come.

In dropping the responsibility for one's own interests and life, one drops the responsibility of ever having to consider the interests and lives of others--of those others who are, somehow, to provide the satisfaction of one's desires.

Whoever allows a "somehow" into his view of the means by which his desires are to be achieved, is guilty of that "metaphysical humility" which, psychologically, is the premise of a parasite. As Nathaniel Branden pointed out in a lecture, "somehow" always means "somebody."

(d) Effort. Since a rational man knows that man must achieve his goals by his own effort, he knows that neither wealth nor jobs nor any human values exist in a given, limited, static quantity, waiting to be divided. He knows that all benefits have to be produced, that the gain of one man does not represent the loss of another, that a man's achievement is not earned at the expense of those who have not achieved it.

Therefore, he never imagines that he has any sort of unearned, unilateral claim on any human being--and he never leaves his interests at the mercy of any one person or single, specific concrete. He may need clients, but not any one particular customer--he may need a job, but not any one particular job.

If he encounters competition, he either meets it or chooses another line of work. There is no job so slow that a better, more skillful performance of it would pass unnoticed and unappreciated; not in a free society. Ask any office manager.

It is only the passive, parasitical representatives of the "humility metaphysics" school who regard any competitor as a threat, because the thought of earning one's position by personal merit is not part of their view of life. They regard themselves as interchangeable mediocrities who have nothing to offer and who fight, in a "static" universe, for someone's causeless favor.

A rational man knows that one does not live by means of "luck," "breaks" or favors, that there is no such thing as an "only chance" or a single opportunity, and that this is guaranteed precisely by the existence of competition. He does not regard any concrete, specific goal or value as irreplaceable. He knows that only persons are irreplaceable--only those one loves.

He knows also that there are no conflicts of interests among rational men even in the issue of love. Like any other value, love is not a static quantity to be divided, but an unlimited response to be earned. The love for one friend is not a threat to the love for another, and neither is the love for the various members of one's family, assuming they have earned it. The most exclusive form--romantic love--is not an issue of competition. If two men are in love with the same woman, what she feels for either of them is not determined by what she feels for the other and is not taken away from him. If she chooses one of them, the "loser" could not have had what the "winner" has earned.

It is only among the irrational, emotion-motivated persons, whose love is divorced from any standards of value, that chance rivalries, accidental conflicts and blind choices prevail. But then, whoever wins does not win much. Among the emotion-driven, neither love nor any other emotion has any meaning.

Such, in brief essence, are the four major considerations involved in a rational man's view of his interests.

Now let us return to the question originally asked--about the two men applying for the same job--and observe in what manner it ignores or opposes these four considerations.

(a) Reality. The mere fact that two men desire the same job does not constitute proof that either of them is entitled to it or deserves it, and that his interests are damaged if he does not obtain it.

(b) Context. Both men should know that if they desire a job, their goal is made possible only by the existence of a business concern able to provide employment--that that business concern requires the availability of more than one applicant for any job--that if only one applicant existed, he would not obtain the job, because the business concern would have to close its doors--and that their competition for the job is to their interest, even though one of them will lose in that particular encounter.

(c) Responsibility. Neither man has the moral right to declare that he doesn't want to consider all those things, he just wants a job. He is not entitled to any desire or to any "interest" without knowledge of what is required to make its fulfillment possible.

(d) Effort. Whoever gets the job, has earned it (assuming that the employer's choice is rational). This benefit is due to his own merit--not to the "sacrifice" of the other man who never had any vested right to that job. The failure to give to a man what had never belonged to him can hardly be described as "sacrificing his interests."

All of the above discussion applies only to the relationships among rational men and only to a free society. In a free society, one does not have to deal with those who are irrational. One is free to avoid them.

In a nonfree society, no pursuit of any interests is possible to anyone; nothing is possible but gradual and general destruction.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936445)

note the rich party people have weaknesses too.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936649)

koch brothers are awesome too of course. we need more people like them. some of my other favorites are Ann Coulter and David Horowitz. should we do some threads about Ann Coulter? she's so fucking wonderful. (also a good example of how you miss out if you aren't rational. being rich won't get you a woman like that!!)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2757192&forum_id=2#26936643)