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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   2285 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for April 7, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I am having an amazing conversation with Bing/ChatGPT4 about Rand, Nietzsche, and Montessori. Here’s a sample:

I agree that willpower is important, but I don't think it is enough to overcome all the obstacles and injustices that some people face. Willpower is not a magic wand that can erase the effects of poverty, racism, sexism, or violence. Sometimes, people need more than their own will to succeed; they need support, guidance, and solidarity from others. They also need a society that recognizes and respects their dignity and rights as human beings. Do you think that willpower alone can create such a society?

I also agree that Montessori was innovative and progressive in her approach to education. She did not follow the traditional models of schooling that were based on rigid curriculum, authoritarian discipline, or standardized testing. She created an environment where children could explore their interests, develop their skills, and express their creativity. She also respected the individuality and diversity of each child, and encouraged them to cooperate and learn from each other. However, I don't think that Montessori's education was only about fostering willpower. She also emphasized the importance of developing moral sensibility, social responsibility, and global citizenship. She wanted her students to become not only independent thinkers and doers, but also compassionate and ethical human beings. How do you balance these different aspects of education?

EDIT: The conversation ran out of steam pretty quickly once it flatly rejected my assertion that Ayn Rand and C.S. Lewis could have been fantastic collaborators if she’d been able to see past her knee-jerk disgust of religion and religionists. Now I see BingGPT’s Eliza-like trick of stating what it currently believes and then asking a consensus-building question.

I thought for a moment it was Rand-Al-Thor from the Wheel of Time and was intrigued. It'd be interesting if GPT-4 could nail a mildly schizophrenic, semi-insane farmboy-cum-Godking with a heart of gold and a harem. Maybe that'll be my next prompt.

My GPT-4 is writing its own (admittedly somewhat generic) fantasy short story now, alternating between perspectives as I command. I should probably give it more guidance and tell it to be more original. The story just grew out of nothing, I was trying to get it to replicate the feel of a text but it can just extend these things out! If I ask for puns, it gives me puns. If I ask for a style, it gives me a style. It's a very novel experience.

Ayn Rand and C.S. Lewis could have been fantastic collaborators

Admittedly I know much less about Ayn Rand than about C.S. Lewis, but given what I do know I'm having a hard time seeing this. I'd be quite interested to hear your reasoning.

Certainly.

  1. They both stood against totalitarianism, seeing it as the inevitable outgrowth of collectivism winning a nation's philosophy.

  2. They both appreciated Man standing tall and being all he can be, similar to Yudkowsky's Quirrell and HJPEV; Rand seeing humanity as the pinnacle of the natural world, Lewis seeing forgiven Man as the pinnacle of the created world.

  3. They both knew that logic with integrity meant insisting on the truth even where unpopular, unpleasant, and likely to be punished.

  4. They both are misread by their ideological foes through motivated reasoning and bad faith reading, as both tend to ignite either adoration or hatred.

  5. They both understood the fine distinction between self-purpose and greed, and saw selflessness as nihilism.

Consider this Lewis quote:

If you asked twenty good men today what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive… The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love…

This is practically echoed word for word by Rand:

Selfless love would have to mean that you derive no personal pleasure or happiness from the company and the existence of the person you love, and that you are motivated only by self-sacrificial pity for that person’s need of you. I don’t have to point out to you that no one would be flattered by, nor would accept, a concept of that kind.

(Kudos to Jacob Brunton's Medium post for picking out this parallel.)

Lewis fan Rob Stroud compares and contrasts the two authors in a blogpost called "C.S. Lewis Shrugged," but unfortunately misses Brunton's nuance and calls Jesus' philosophy "altruism". Meanwhile, Rand herself said "Christ, in terms of the Christian philosophy, is the human ideal. He personifies that which men should strive to emulate."

But of course, she immediately misses the point:

Yet, according to the Christian mythology, he died on the cross not for his own sins but for the sins of the nonideal people. In other words, a man of perfect virtue was sacrificed for men who are vicious and who are expected or supposed to accept that sacrifice. If I were a Christian, nothing could make me more indignant than that: the notion of sacrificing the ideal to the nonideal, or virtue to vice. And it is in the name of that symbol that men are asked to sacrifice themselves for their inferiors. That is precisely how the symbolism is used."

She doesn't see that, like Wyatt's burning of his own oilfields at Galt's urging, Jesus is declaring a general strike against sin - the wasting of potential and ruining of the good in the pursuit of pleasure and the nihilism of suffering - and telling all to follow Him to a better place.

Here's an article on Rand's actual reaction to Lewis - including the list of her writings in the margins of her copy of Lewis' Abolition of Man. Ironically it was the work she could have conversed with him on most if she weren't busy writing ranting vitriol in longhand. She too found her greatest foes among Lewis' "men without chests," the people who believe nothing as a way out of being held to account for what they believe, and she couldn't see an ally because he believed himself in a different sort of reality than her. The ol' ontology-as-ideology trap.

Here's a blogpost of a Christian picking what parts of Rand's thoughts to keep and which to toss, and some excerpts along the lines of my point from about 2/3 down the page:

In spite of herself, Ayn would find herself in agreement with Lewis’ on several points if she were to just approach his arguments calmly and rationally. Ayn writes that, “Joy is the goal of existence, and joy is not to be stumbled upon, but to be achieved, and the act of treason is to let its vision drown in the swamp of the moment’s torture.” and Lewis would agree. He would argue however that joy finds it’s culmination in the spiritual reality which she rejects.

SF author Brad Linaweaver (RIP) puts it best in this afterword to The Rainbow Cadenza, the Libertarian counterpart to A Handmaid's Tale in which followers of Rand and Lewis both stand against a federal prostitution draft for women by a totalitarian libertarian government:

Ayn Rand and C.S. Lewis were honest individualists in a despicable period of rampant collectivism. The Rainbow Cadenza tells us, and shows us, that if there is any hope left in the future, these two will have helped provide it.

EDIT: I've got a new conversation going with BingGPT, I'll post it separately.

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