Reincarnation has conditions and constraints. I like it. And maybe once in a million years the soul is too close to a wormhole and gets sucked away to the opposite side of the universe.

I was just thinking about when people tell stories or you watch various Youtube videos…wasn’t thinking about Science Fiction. Cool list of links! Thanks!

Thanks! I’ll check them out.

Why shouldn’t I be able to disagree with her?

At no point in this thread did I even allude to the fact that you should not be able to disagree with her. In fact, I stated the opposite and you did not notice that. I wrote:

"…you should be able to read the books, discard what you don’t like, perhaps keep something you do like, and think “well, none of that matches my philosophy in life but I didn’t have the same childhood as the author and if I did maybe I would think the same way”.

That statement is just about open-mindedness. If your reading comprehension skills were good you could see from my posts that even I don’t agree with her. My whole point is that people criticize her without reading or understanding what she wrote or why she wrote it.

Do you know how I know people don’t actually read her novels? It’s because no one ever mentions the theme or what those books are about. Those books are about anti-communism. That’s it.

Nearly everyone should be aboard and agree with anti-communism but the problem is that Ayn Rand took it to the extreme. If her philosophy took over a country or the world there would eventually be no middle class, we probably would not have national parks, we definitely wouldn’t have social services, and a lot of people would suffer if they could not produce in society.

A lot of people don’t understand why I brought up her upbringing or why it has anything to do with anything. The whole point is when I read her novels I understood why she wrote what she wrote.

There’s an Aristotle quote I like: “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

And that quote encapsulates how I read Ayn Rand. I was able to read the novels, like the parts I liked, and then discard the parts I did not disagree with. It really should be that simple for everyone but I believe there’s hatred for her because of the groups who like her and because people don’t actually read her work.

I like your tech bros and edgelords comment.

So let me ask you this.

Suppose that those tech bros and edgelords never discovered Ayn Rand. Imagine if all her works still exist in the world but those groups never read her books. Would Ayn Rand be as despised in that world as she is now? Are people judging her solely on her works and life or are they judging her based on the groups who like her?

I was clear in my last response - “Events in one’s life shapes their worldview”. If you interpret that as “can’t be wrong” I can’t do anything about that but that is not what I wrote.

|That’s not really a stance worth arguing

That why it’s called an opinion. It’s an opinion not a fact.

Where did I specifically write “she CAN’T be wrong”? I did not claim that. Events in one’s life shapes their worldview. That was the point I was making. I never wrote the phrase “can’t be wrong”

but the way they got there is unobtainable for anyone hearing the advice

How is living on a little patch of land in a shack and growing beans unobtainable? It was the 1800s. Way too many people are hung up on the idea that he lived on a lot of land belonging to a friend. He could have gone off into the remote woods very easily. I don’t see the big advantages or unobtainable nature in your argument.

It’s not like he was a YouTuber living in a mansion that his dad bought and was trying to sell you his book on real estate investing.

There’s nothing unobtainable about what he did or what he wrote about. Chris McCandless (though definitely controversial) went out and had his adventure in the 1990s and did so without money.

Thoreau living on Emerson’s land was convenient but he didn’t win the lottery and it’s not unobtainable. There’s a homeless guy living in a cave in Baker, CA right now. He walks to town about once a week. I suppose his life is easy and unobtainable because he’s got a “free cave” on BLM land, right?

People are way too hung up on Thoreau’s supposed advantages and they are exaggerating them as well.

I think you have a reading comprehension problem. The smoking/cancer analogy was not a comparison. It was used to state that you should not dismiss good advice simply because you think someone is a hypocrite.

| exploiting and completely depending on others’ labour

Ralph Waldo Emerson was Thoreau’s friend and he allowed him to stay on his land. How exactly is that exploitation? When your friend does you a favor or lends you something that in your mind is exploitation?

My guess is that you have never read “Walden” or “Civil Disobedience” or “Life Without Principle”.

Yeah, anytime I hear people wanting to give up the art because of the artist I think you’d have to give up a lot of media and live a life without a lot of books, music, movies. Also, that’s just the stuff we know about. And there’s probably some evil person who had a hand in assembling my car but I’m not going to stop driving it because of that. I’m still going to rock to Led Zeppelin.

I understand your point. However, if someone who has smoked for 30 years and is dying of lung cancer advises you not to smoke do you dismiss them, call them a hypocrite, and then start smoking?