Leonard Peikoff, conservatorship

[MisterSwig]

On 9/25/2024 at 12:40 AM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I went ahead and saw it.

Frankly, I was hoping for a more gossipy kind of discussion, but instead, I got the impression several times that they themselves were litigating the case...

Hi Michael,

Thanks for taking the time to listen and respond to the episode. I always appreciate your feedback, even when we disagree. Maybe Scott, Ed and I should have engaged in more gossip, but that's not my style. I, for one, was attempting to focus on the known facts and form opinions based on the best evidence available. Another general point, you tend to lump us together in your criticism, but I think our opinions and styles were varied enough to warrant a more individualized criticism. For example, Scott tended to favor Leonard, while I had some harsh criticism of the FB letter. Also, I characterize my opinion as "preliminary," so it's not my intent to "litigate" the case in any sense of that word. I say we're still in the fact-finding stage of the case, with the presently known facts pointing to some very suspicious activity on Grace and Leonard's part. However, as I say in the episode, the suspicious activity could be explained due to Leonard being a lonely, old horn dog with the financial means to buy a younger bride.

As for the elephants in the room:

1. Watching Leonard speak

Obviously Leonard speaks coherently in the interview with James. But they did not discuss the case, nor did Leonard make any significant, life-altering decisions during that interview. So it's not a great example of his mental competency in making such decisions. Also, when Grace entered the picture, both Leonard and James reduced her to "a pretty face," which I found weird, and she clearly didn't want to stick around for the video when Leonard asked her. As I'm sure you know, elderly people might retain the ability to hold conversations and even tell stories about how they once stiffed a waiter at a fancy restaurant, but that doesn't mean they're mentally competent to control their bank account in the face of undue influence from those holding some power over them. I also point out in the episode that Leonard failed to mention the $3.7 million mansion while asking us to condemn his daughter as evil and the idea of conservatorship as slavery.

2. James is a lawyer

Yes, James is a lawyer, but was he acting in the capacity of a lawyer while interviewing Leonard. I don't think so, and therefore I don't think it's relevant. Leonard was being interviewed by a heavily biased friend. The legal system wasn't being represented. And if James were Leonard's lawyer, I'd trust him even less to act against Grace, since he would be doing what Leonard wanted him to do as his lawyer. Also, James wouldn't want to risk his friendship with Leonard by exposing facts like the gift of a mansion to Grace.

3. Peikoff imitates Rand

You say Rand, during schisms, demanded that people choose who to follow based on her standing and nothing else, and that Peikoff has routinely imitated her in this behavior. I don't think we ignored this. Pretty sure Scott brought it up in some form, since he was the one mostly defending Peikoff and relating how Peikoff is treating his daughter to how he treated David Kelley. Maybe we should have covered this aspect more, but I happen to disagree with the notion in general. I don't think Leonard is standing on authority. He gives an argument. The problem is that, like I said, he wants us to pick a side while omitting relevant facts such as his gift of a mansion. That's suspicious.

4. Grace is black.

I don't know whether she's black. She looks Hispanic to me.

Should we have made something of her race? Why?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

MS,

I see ya'!

 

No time right now, but I will respond to this by tomorrow.

Michael

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

MS,

I am writing this to you, but also to the reader since I don't know if you will discuss the ideas, or just registered your views and that's that. (btw - I have no objection to that.)

LATER NOTE: You indicated below you are interested in discussing. Wonderful.  END NOTE

Since I am not sure, when I explain something here, that does not mean I am insinuating you do not know it. I just like to be clear and I like the readers of this forum to get real value, not only perceived value. So no manipulating the images of the parties or situations from my end nor, I presume, from your end.

Here goes.

 

Tone

I have to apologize for the hostile tone I used. I did not mean it as hostile so much as colorful. Maybe even playful at times. But on thinking this through, I did some introspecting and came to a few conclusions.

The first is that if anyone in O-Land is surprised by aggressiveness and hostility where none was expected, those people have not read much Ayn Rand.  Her favorite metaphorical frame for persuading people through ideas was war.

Remember her old Intellectual Ammunition Department and things like that? Or blasting this or that idea out of existence? Although she was not referring to physical violence, she did not hide her targets. She had a habit of naming the names of people she despised.

Since I know this and do not want to emulate it, but I don't want to use standard clichés, I did my own thing. However, I think I misfired a few times. For example, instead of saying xxx (comments, not people) grated on me like scraping fingernails across a blackboard, I said xxx "grated on my soul like the sound of a car running into a moving train."  

I may have overextended the metaphor a little.  

 

Also, on this score, I just had a tiny dustup with a troll who came to OL and I am just fed up with those who replace reality with rhetoric. They do not even try to understand what is being said. But they seek out the leader and focus on him just to get a borrowed spotlight. He went berserk at one point, so I moderated him, and I hate moderating people. 

My tone in response to this video probably carried over some of the grumpiness from that situation.

 

Also, I agree with your criticism. I could have distinguished the differences between you three more. I was focusing on discussing the general approach of the video.

Man, I didn't realize until now how much I hate the word "evidence." I don't hate the concept, which is great, but I hate the way people use this term promiscuously without any concern for epistemology.

Did you know evidence comes in all kinds of forms--that your own speculations can be "evidence" of something? It might be good evidence or rotten. But this manner of use can still be evidence. However, it does not have the emotional undertow of a courtroom setting, thus pulls the teeth out of "there is no evidence of xxxxx."

In my view, this posture is more about making the person talking about evidence feel good about himself than trying to identify situations and causes, etc.

Anyway, enough of that for now. My thing is individualism and I could have talked more about the individuals (except the lawyer, Ed, who I featured a bit -- and don't get me started on lawyer jokes  ).

Gossip

I disagree with you about gossip.

But first let's get our meanings aligned. In my studies on story, I got gobsmacked the other day when I was reading something and I suddenly realized most stories are not templated on Freytag's Pyramid or the Hero's Journey or the three act structure or anything like that.

Most stories in the human brain are gossip. Anecdotes about our personal lives or about the personal lives of others. There are characters and their personal desires and what they do about them. The end.

That is the essence of gossip. Everything else is an add-on.

I'm talking epistemologically as one would do when, say, discussing concept formation. I am not using gossip to mean bash other people or denigrate their sexual life or anything like that. I also do not mean it in the sense of presenting--as fact--negative opinions on the personal demeanors and habits of others. 

There is plenty of material from science (plenty of evidence so to speak  ) that the complexity of human interactions was one of the reasons for the evolution of the huge size of the cortex in humans.

Also, you, (me too, all of us) as a human, can't not gossip in this sense. It's like commanding your eyes not to see when they are open. The human brain does not permit otherwise. The organ is there and it wants to perform.

 

The thing I read that I mentioned above was a comment by David Mamet, America's greatest living playwright and one of the best a-list screenwriters out there.

He said to pay attention when you write dialog. That most dialog among humans is gossip. That is the default and you stylize that when you write.

When I read that, I remembered his Masterclass where he said when you listen to people talking at another table, you get mesmerized even though you start listening in the middle.

That has a neuroscientific reason, which is outside of this discussion. Leave it to say gossip is a fast trigger to elicit the story trance in an audience.

 

Anywho, if you go back and read what I wrote, not just in the post about your video, but in the long one I made after that, you will see I am clear on what I can understand as fact, and what I speculate about. In both cases, I consider the discussion of the Peikoff conservatorship as gossip--all discussions I have seen so far all over the Internet. We are talking to each other about the personal affairs and desires of the individuals in a family and their intimates.

To use my cognitive before normative discipline for higher level thinking, that is identify correctly in order to judge correctly, if people yapping about the personal affairs of someone when they are not involved in those affairs is not gossip, I don't know what is.  

 

But that's just a base level of understanding gossip. I am researching this right now, so I came across an interview with a celebrity gossip lady who said celebrity gossip is almost never about the celebrity at root, but about the deeper values of the people gossiping or consuming the gossip. I am writing about this elsewhere, so I only mention it as food for thought. Look at all of the discussions everywhere about the Peikoff thing, then try to see if you see each person using the discussion, the issue, to validate his or her own views. 

What's more, gossip is about collectives, usually small collectives, rarely ever about an individual as the whole enchilada. The individual being gossiped about is a concrete reference and jumping off point in order for those gossiping to discuss how people within a group should think and behave. Approval and disapproval are strong normative filters.

 

But wait! There's more!  

When you said you do not normally use gossip as your style, I disagree from watching your videos, especially where you and Scott constantly laced into Yaron Brook.  You were not objecting to his hypocrisy so much as objecting to him being a hypocrite and being a leader in O-Land.

Pure gossip. And, from my view, it was mostly good quality gossip, although after you killed the horse, you and Scott kept thrashing the cadaver until Brook finally banned you both from his podcasts.  

 

Peikoff speaking

I don't want to judge the way Peikoff was speaking in the video the way you did. I judge him as speaking coherently, albeit more slowed down. (He's always slurred his speech, so that part did not signify to me me any capacity issue. I believe you said something similar in the video. Or was it Scott? Well... it was one of you two if my memory is correct.  )

To your point that his manner of speech just in that video is not a good indication mental capacity, I did not sense the signs of Alzheimer's or anything like that which would indicate mental incapacity.

Both of my parents died from Alzheimer's and I caught the degradation up close. I observed fully functioning and articulate adults slowly transform to adults not making sense anymore. I saw nothing like that in Peikoff's speech and, to be frank, I think demanding to see more evidence of a sane mind after seeing him talk in his interview is pretentious. I'm not judging you as pretentious, but I really dislike that kind of finger-pointing and demands. Peikoff is a human being first and foremost. I judge him like any other man. That is my base-level standard. I saw an old, but articulate, man speaking. Done. That is standard-wise.

 

Lawyer

I don't know what to make of your observation that Valliant was not acting as a lawyer, but instead as a "heavily biased friend," thus talking about the lawyer part is irrelevant.

No it is not irrelevant. Whatever I may think of Valliant (which is not... well... you know  ), I do not think he is stupid, or even has the capacity to compartmentalize his brain to the extent he could throw his entire lived legal life out the window like an on-off switch. 

If he is a "heavily biased friend" like you said (and I agree with this), how on earth would he let a gold-digger con a mansion worth millions out of his dear friend without fighting it? Do you really think he is such a toady and intellectual gold digger himself that he would hide his knowledge of this from Peikoff, or hide talking about it to keep in Peikoff's good graces?

On what planet? I just don't see it. 

Valliant certainly knows about the mansion. After all, he does read court documents and they are public. In my view, I see him actually advising Peikoff to put the mansion in Grace's name to work around a potential probate challenge from his family. And I can see him suggesting and implementing this interview as a form of damage control.

But that is speculation on my part.

I hate to say it, but, in my view, there is nothing sleazy in his friendship with Peikoff.

I just can't see him having the warm comfortable feelings for a friend that I observed in that interview and not want to use his lawyerly skills in order help his friend in a legal situation. That's not an Objectivism thing. It's human nature.

 

Picking sides like Rand demanded

I only have one fundamental thing to say about this. Use your own mind.

Peikoff wants you to pick a side. Rand wanted people to pick a side.

That's their prerogative. Freedom of speech and all. Other than that, big shit. You have your own mind. That is more precious to you than their minds, even in the chance you may not believe it is. (Biology and so on.)

So my suggestion is to pick your own side. But it's your mind and your prerogative.

 

And don't get me started on using "evidence" as a standard. Your own reasoning mind is the fundamental standard. Your own personal values. The nature and quality of evidence, meaning things and comments from others one observes, is just one part of that.

Morality is a code of values to guide one's choices. And in this context, value always includes action. 

So in making moral judgments on Peikoff's conservatorship case based on "evidence" leads me to wonder, what choice of action are you aiming at?

Do you want to interject yourself in that case? Do you want to signal to others that you believe Peikoff is mentally incompetent or, on the contrary, mentally healthy and sane? Do you want to start a movement against Grace and have her shunned in O-Land?

What action? It's a serious question. What action do you want to perform from your morality based on "evidence"?

Let's look at the context. We are, at root, gossiping.  

Do you see what I am getting at and why I disparage the use of the word "evidence" so much in this kind of context?

 

 

Racism

Earlier in this thread, I speculated that Grace might be Hispanic in addition to black. I was going from the way she looked in the video, and this was not clear.

On 9/21/2024 at 7:12 AM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

From what I could tell from Grace's brief entry into the scene, I think she's black. She looks black to me. Hispanic instead? Maybe.

Later, talking to a friend, he said she looked Philippine to him (he had lived there for a long stretch). Maybe.

So what does this have to do with Grace? Not much. 

But what does this have to do with O-Land?

Well... take a look around. How many famous black people or dark-skinned people do you see in O-Land?

Hmmmm?

I don't want to give any credence to that "innate racism" or "institutional racism" garbage I see coming from the left, but I do see in patches of O-Land an urge to snootiness. A lot of people in O-Land love Rand's use of adjectives like "noble," etc., and this ties in with their own wish to feel superior to others. Getting over this and focusing on deeper meanings in life is one of the hidden spiritual hurdles in Objectivism.

But for superior-feeling whites (especially on the left, but in O-Land, too), this call to give lip service to condemning racism, but in action behind the scenes, denigrating blacks and other "inferior" races is common enough. How do I know? You can observe it. I know I did. Hang around those people and get them to trust you enough to go backstage. You will an eyeful and an earful.

On an old forum, SoloHQ (which is now Rebirth of Reason, but part spun off to Solo Passion and another part spun off to OL), a black rapping DJ showed up one day. He was a huge Ayn Rand fan and his name was Star the Hater. He was colorful, talked like a rapper, and was famous at the time. You should have seen the backstage discussions.  

I became friends with Star in offline communications for a small while, but we drifted apart. I did not want to go back into pop music at the time. I might still look him up one day for a project, though.

Granted, it is not all people in O-Land who have difficulty with race (token lip-service in public with different opposite views and actions in private), but there is a much bigger contingent than you might realize that fits this bill.

So for those people, seeing Leonard Peikoff, a god to them, marrying a lady of color (whether black or Hispanic or any dark-skinned person) gives them shivers. This is my opinion from seeing similar stuff over decades.

To reiterate, I have no criticism of Grace in this regard. She's lovely, she's competent, and she makes Peikoff happy. In my mind, that's the end of story in terms of race. 

I do have criticism of some parts of O-Land, especially behind the scenes.

 

For William, please do not take anything personally I said here. My real interest in all this is epistemological, specifically in the area of narrative. As to you and Scott, I like you both. A lot. This is from the heart and mind. You guys are always welcome wherever I am.  

For the readers, I hope I have given you some food for thought. And some quality gossip.  

(I deleted the "not revised" message. This post is now revised.)

Michael

[MisterSwig]

4 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

MS,

I am writing this to you, but also to the reader since I don't know if you will discuss the ideas, or just have registered your views and that's that. (I have no objection to that, though.)

I'll discuss the ideas once you've finished editing your reply. Perhaps in a couple days when I have more time.

[Brant Gaede]

So far Kira's ahead of Grace, Leonard, James.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

3 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

So far Kira's ahead of Grace, Leonard, James.

--Brant

Brant,

What about me? What about me? What about me? 

Is Kira ahead of me?

Say it ain't so...

 

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

5 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

I'll discuss the ideas once you've finished editing your reply.

MS,

Revision done.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

6 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Brant,

What about me? What about me? What about me? 

Is Kira ahead of me?

Say it ain't so...

 

Michael

You aren't a part of that gumbo.

--Brant

Neither am I 

[Neil Parille]

I found it interesting that Leonard said that he was creating a committee to decide what happens to Rand's books going forward.  Hard to imagine that happening when Peikoff was 70.

And then, Valliant chimes in "so it won't involve family members" or words to that effect -- so the implication is that Grace isn't going to be involved.  But Leonard is still on the hook for the mortgage and notwithstanding the fact that he quit claimed the deed, the house can still be foreclosed upon if he or his estate doesn't pay.  The only way they or Grace can stay in the house going forward if much (most? all?) of the proceeds of Rand's book are going to the upkeep, mortgage, taxes, etc.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

3 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

You aren't a part of that gumbo.

--Brant

Neither am I 

Oh, shoot.

I wanted to feel self-righteous and here you come with reality.

Buzzkill...

 

Michael

 

EDIT: I haven't talked much about Kira in my long posts, but the praise I lavished on Grace applies to Kira. She is lovely and talented and I wish her nothing but good. 

Something is bothering me. What the hell is Peikoff doing that he gets all these pretty women around him?

I want to say pretty men, too, but then I see Valliant...

 

[Brant Gaede]

On 10/14/2024 at 7:17 AM, Neil Parille said:

I found it interesting that Leonard said that he was creating a committee to decide what happens to Rand's books going forward.  Hard to imagine that happening when Peikoff was 70.

And then, Valliant chimes in "so it won't involve family members" or words to that effect -- so the implication is that Grace isn't going to be involved.  But Leonard is still on the hook for the mortgage and notwithstanding the fact that he quit claimed the deed, the house can still be foreclosed upon if he or his estate doesn't pay.  The only way they or Grace can stay in the house going forward if much (most? all?) of the proceeds of Rand's book are going to the upkeep, mortgage, taxes, etc.

It wasn't appropriate that he stuck a preface onto Atlas Shrugged 

She'd have hit the roof. Why? Because she was primarily a novelist not a philosopher. She did write her own preface to The Fountainhead 25th anniversary edition, but that was her privilege. Also, she explicitly delegilimatized anything anybody stuck her name on such as The Ayn Rand Institute.

--Brant

I wonder if Peikoff, so much under her thumb the last 13 years of her life might have thus swung his elbows a little after her passing. But by rewriting her books and what have you rendering them worthless was simply intellectual and scholarly incompetence and blind arrogance.

AS was a moralistic construct and the heart of her philosophy, which was not objectivism, a word which may not have appeared in her plus 600,000 word novel. Galts' Speech was equivalent to Moses down from the mountain, but it failed to displace Christianity and it's salvation through Jesus Christ. It wasn't a failure of reason so much as a failure to understand human nature biologically driven and rendered. If you screw up but choose the wrong and immoral you're through in Objectivism and destroyed in life ("It's only a matter of time"), but ripe for Jesus. So Objectivism contracts while Christianity maintains or expands. If you understand that OPAR is dead because Rand is dead then there's no real reason to read that book.

Objectivism is the philosophy of individualism rendered in four parts out of a single mind hence the individualism:

Reality

Reason

(or science)

Morality of rational self interest (needs work)

Individual rights or freedom through delimited government.

These are the basic principles of objectivism. (And they have nothing to do with esthetics.)

There is no group think.

[MisterSwig]

On 10/13/2024 at 4:42 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

And don't get me started on using "evidence" as a standard. Your own reasoning mind is the fundamental standard. Your own personal values. The nature and quality of evidence, meaning things and comments from others one observes, is just one part of that.

Morality is a code of values to guide one's choices. And in this context, value always includes action. 

So in making moral judgments on Peikoff's conservatorship case based on "evidence" leads me to wonder, what choice of action are you aiming at?

Do you want to interject yourself in that case? Do you want to signal to others that you believe Peikoff is mentally incompetent or, on the contrary, mentally healthy and sane? Do you want to start a movement against Grace and have her shunned in O-Land?

What action? It's a serious question. What action do you want to perform from your morality based on "evidence"?

Let's look at the context. We are, at root, gossiping.  

Do you see what I am getting at and why I disparage the use of the word "evidence" so much in this kind of context?

To answer your questions, I'm evaluating the evidence in this case because I'm deciding whether to support Leonard. He's asked for help, and so I'm compelled to respond to someone who's had a great influence on my life. As it stands, I don't agree with him.

I don't know why I should interject myself in the case. Are you asking if I plan to contact the lawyers? I am not.

I'm not merely signaling something. I argued for having much doubt about Leonard's case. I won't be supporting him morally or financially.

I have no interest in starting a movement against Grace.

I don't agree that we're gossiping. Gossip is the idle sharing of information without direct evidence or proof. It's second-hand banter, not even direct testimony. On the podcast we dealt with direct evidence in the form of the FB letter and the video interview. We also referred to evidence from public records related to the mansion. It wasn't all gossip.

Gossiping would be if I heard from a friend who talked with Leonard privately, then I told you what my friend said that Leonard said.

So, no, I don't see why you should disparage the use of "evidence" in this context. Evidence can be used in daily life to support a conclusion, choice or action. It can also be used in court to support a case, verdict or sentence.

Gotta run. Later I'll respond to other ideas.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

WS,

You wrote: "I'm evaluating the evidence in this case because I'm deciding whether to support Leonard."

I am on board with that statement. 100%. How's that for a start?  

You have a personal value at stake. How can I not agree with that? It's your life and your thinking. However, most of the people I have seen discuss this only want to make their opinions known to the group (and maybe themselves in a thinking out loud kind of way) and have no interest in supporting or not supporting Peikoff. For most, some of them will throw a few bucks at the donation site, but that's about as far as that will go after the noise dies down. 

When you, WS, talk about support, I know you enough to know you mean actual action of some sort. So I evaluate what you say in this case a little different than I evaluate the mob.  

 

As to my trouble with the way people use the word "evidence" in O-Land (and in modern culture these days when talking about, say, Trump's lawfare trials), people like to fantasize they are in a courtroom setting where they get to judge another person in a way that has power over them. So they talk about evidence and a whole lot of things when they are not really using those concepts the way a court would.

In reality, they are mostly gossiping, getting some serotonin squirts and playing a competitive game of gotcha with each other. (XXXXX knows more about a certain legal technicality than the others. Isn't he awesome? That kind of thing.  )

Apropos - I believe your lawyer friend, Ed, has the same general understanding about technical legal terms being misused and this explains his opening aggressiveness in your discussion. Except his bug was about how people oversimplify conservatorship to the point making it what it is not, whereas my case is about the term evidence.

Please note, I am not against the concept of evidence. I am against people using the word as a form of smokescreen to hide what they are really doing and thinking and feeling--and maybe even hiding from themselves.

 

This is why I use my own reasoning mind as my own personal standard. I will not use the gossip of another as my fundamental standard, even if he calls it evidence or the law.

If I wanted to be a smartass, I could ask you if your own reasoning mind is not a good standard for making judgments when you don't have all the information... But who wants to be a smartass? Me?   

 

As to gossip itself, we are in one of those situations where I am using gossip as a wide category of human behavior that evolved since humans have been communicating with some form of language thousands of centuries ago, and you are using it in a narrow sense with a negative connotation. Anti-reason yawp so to speak where the idea of reason-based gossip does not exist. But what you call gossip is only one kind of gossip. There are other kinds. That's why I said let's get our meanings aligned.

That way we avoid the following.

PERSON A: You know, that car you are driving...

PERSON B: I am not driving a car. I do not drive cars.

PERSON A: Then what are you driving?

PERSON B: I am driving a Ford Mustang.

 

I used this example to highlight the hierarchical nature of concepts. A Ford Mustang is one kind of car, whereas a car is not one kind of Ford Mustang.

(There are other forms of concept, too, but I don't want to go there for this post. Leave it to say, in Rand's notion of concept, what she formally called her theory of concept, true knowledge is hierarchical.)

 

Or, to bring this closer to O-Land, if we are discussing altruism, there are at least three meanings of altruism and altruistic in popular use. One is biological. The other is a common behavior people observe in others where they help each other out without personal gain and it usually comes with feelings of empathy. And there is the philosophical form devised by Compte where duty is paramount and sacrifice is a moral good, which is the one Rand most often used as the moral beast she liked to slay.

All three fall under the wide meaning of helping others without personal gain. 

When I use gossip, I am likewise using it in a broader sense that encompasses biology, and other areas, including the negative meaning you dislike.

 

We may disagree, but we should disagree while talking about the same thing. (Cognitive before normative.) It is incorrect to attribute a meaning different to a word than the way another is using it, then disagree with that different meaning as if the person were talking about that.

The cousin of that is to use a narrow meaning of a word, then go after other people who use the broader meaning for ignoring contexts and conditions. The simple truth is that, on a cognitive level, those contexts and conditions are not relevant to the broader meaning.

btw - This is at the heart of over 90% of my disagreements with Rand. I often call it a scope problem. She gets a great insight, but one that depends on a certain context or conditions or previous set of propositions. Then she elevates her meaning to be universal for all cases, everywhere and for all time.

(I have shown examples of this in other places, for example where she bashes modern art and goes in depth, then ends up in the same essay saying examples of modern art--like like modern paintings--are not art.)

 

One last comment on this. You have asked me in the past about technical online community stuff. Tips in running a discussion group and so on. Here is some inside baseball. And once you see it, you can't not see it anymore. It's everywhere.

In online forums, and, even in Facebook groups, especially when there are a lot of members, you will find the longest threads with the highest engagement, and most heated discussions, deal with the rules of the forum or how people in the group should act. It never fails.

Just look around and ye shall see.  

(When talking in generalities, I find it tiresome to say over and over and over their might be a straggler or exception here and there. I use words like "humans" and "everyone" and so on in a general sense, not literal sense, in this context. So exceptions are part of the concept.)

 

Humans use a huge amount of their brain, their physical brain, tracking what other humans are doing, making inferences about them, judging them, etc. That activity of tracking and inference of others and discussing it is what I use as the meaning of gossip, the broad meaning.

If you pay attention, you see this part of the brain--a part that refuses to not be used (dayaamm! - a part that demands to be used  )--flowering in everyone in these long contentious threads of gossip in my meaning. As soon and the topic changes, everyone goes away.  

Test this out in your places and see for yourself.

Reality is what it is. It cannot be defined away no matter how one defines a word.

 

Michael

[MisterSwig]

2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Humans use a huge amount of their brain, their physical brain, tracking what other humans are doing, making inferences about them, judging them, etc. That activity of tracking and inference of others and discussing it is what I use as the meaning of gossip, the broad meaning.

Without consulting a dictionary (intentionally), I believe the genus of "gossip" is something akin to "idle or casual conversation." We could debate the finer details and differentia, but I don't see what tracking and inference of others has to do with the concept. You can probably reduce every communication-related abstraction to the fact that we track people and make inferences. That's how we gather base-level knowledge of other people and things, by observing and evaluating. But wouldn't including all that in the concept of "gossip" defeat the purpose of forming concepts? It would bust the crow, and then how would we differentiate between gossiping and, say, reporting and testifying?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

10 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

Without consulting a dictionary (intentionally),

WS,

Here's an exercise for you that might open your eyes to dictionaries,.

Open any dictionary on earth--any one in in any language--and what do you see?

This is universal.

Even before you open a dictionary, what do you think you will see?

Easy.

More than one definition per word.

 

Genus, differentia and all that is Ayn Rand's system of defining concepts, not just words, and she based this on Aristotle. This has nothing to do with dictionaries as they exist.

When she says "definition," that is not the same thing a dictionary means by "definition." (It's that scope thing again where her limited definition works in a limited field, but is not universal. For example, there are many other ways to categorize abstractions than hierarchical concepts based on algebra as she defined them. Dictionaries all cover these other forms of categorization. Rand's theory of concepts after slapping a word on a concept as a label--a "mental concrete"--does not. )

If you are stuck on that point, no wonder you will not consult a dictionary intentionally. You will not find what you want to find in any dictionary on earth, but you will find what you don't want to find in every dictionary on earth.

 

Premise-checking time...

 

btw - There is a guy in O-Land who used to have a reputation as very difficult to get along with. His name was Shayne Wissler. He's the person who opened my eyes to dictionaries when I was in the "one word one definition only" phase of epistemological thinking.

In fact, I borrowed the phrase "open any dictionary on earth" from him way back when and I've been using it ever since.

I wonder where Shayne went... I kinda miss him despite his total lack of social graces... He was a good person at root.  

(LATER: I looked around and found him here. He has written some recent things over there, but more as publishing, not as discussing. I think he got tired of the bickering with online discussions. I don't think he understands bickering and other forms of social intercourse well, but I read around and it looks like he has found a social formula of sorts that works for him. I wish him all happiness  ) 

 

As to not understanding how brain size and shape is a result of human evolution and how that relates to an activity like gossip, you just gotta do the work. There is an enormous amount of literature on this and oodles of science papers and books.

Ayn Rand herself was starting to lean toward evolutionary thinking when she wrote her essay (Ayn Rand Letter), "The Missing Link." She said she did not know enough about evolution to believe in it, but she did posit the possibility that a conceptual brain evolved, and that an "anti-conceptual" mentality was a half-point between a conceptual brain and a perceptual-brain-only like an animal.

(Here views on this as she stated them are pretty far off the mark, too, but that is another long issue outside of this post.)

If she had gone in the evolutionary way of thinking, including neuroscience and all the rest, she would have come across a lot of things that would have surprised her. It would have been fascinating to see what she had she to say about all this as she went along. 

I do not find it feasible that she would have ignored neuroscience and the rest. I have way to much respect for her to ever believe that.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

10 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

But wouldn't including all that in the concept of "gossip" defeat the purpose of forming concepts?

No.

 

10 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

It would bust the crow, and then how would we differentiate between gossiping and, say, reporting and testifying?

Bust what crow? Are you testing me?

 

If you want to differentiate for real, you start with observation. Not with a declaration at the beginning of ITOE.  Just in case you doubt me: From ITOE: "Consciousness, as a state of awareness, is not a passive state, but an active process that consists of two essentials: differentiation and integration."

Besides, crow epistemology deals with short term memory more than anything else, although it's been a while since I read Rand's comments on it in ITOE. And I don't recall her using the word memory in that passage. Still, she is talking about short-term memory at that moment. If I remember correctly, this, and her proclamation (wrong proclamation) that sensations are not recorded in memory are the two main places where she discussed memory. Maybe there are more places, but I don't remember them off the top of my head. Rand did not do the topic of memory very well.

Yet, what is a concept without memory? Hmmmm?  

In her fiction (but I no longer remember where), Rand used a poignant portrayal of memory where the image of a dead beloved starts fading from a person's mind over time  and that person get horrified by it. This even happened with Rand in real life when Frank passed away. 

 

Here is a suggestion if you want a reasoned answer to your question about how we differentiate in the best way I can think about it.

We have to leave the universe of a "linear mind only" behind and deal with the brain and mind in the way they exist. That means we observe first, then conclude. We do not start by deducing the brain and mind from some sort of principles and proclamations. Granted, we have to use the brain and mind to observe them, but that's what philosophy is all about.

Being an agent with agency is awesome.  

After that, we can come up with standards for evidence and things of that matter. They may not be the standards used in court anymore, because the US court system has been polluted by "legal precedence" ever since the 1800s, not to mention normal corruptions, etc. But it is at a gawdawful level now. The courts are politicized way beyond their reason for existing at the present. At least the court-system, when it works well, is self-correcting, so there's hope it will right itself.

 

Getting back to the mind, why do you think "intent" is a fundamental component of evidence in a crime for courts when I know of no-one in O-Land who speaks like that when they talk about evidence?

Is "intent" rational? If not, what makes it evidence? 

I submit, with all the criticisms I (and others) have of the courts, their process implements--in reality--a closer version of the human mind as it really exists than any ideology or philosophy. Rand herself even talked about the "philosophy of law" and that would have to be based on a notion of what the human mind is as it exists.

So if you want to know of one system that gets a lot right about differentiating, about the difference between hearsay, confession, witnessing, and so on, I say look at the way the law does it. That's not the only way (just study behavioral science some and you will see what I mean), but that will almost force you to observe more than binary propositions based on binary definitions. (Human beings are far more complicated than zero and one.)

And it will be rational.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

I believe Shayne Wissler went by Wolf deVoon on this forum. We got a long pretty well. I think he ended up broke in Missouri. I got an email a while back asking me to review one of his books on Amazon. I hadn't read it and didn't reply because I literally had no time for any of that.

It was hard to get a good sense of honesty from him, as if he were hiding 

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Brant,

Shayne is a software engineer, not a fiction writer. He lives in Utah, Mormon country.

Shayne and I corresponded offline for a while, but that was years ago.

Wolf is a libertarian who messed around in that shady Costa Rica project years ago that ended up in a mess. 

I like Wolf, but I did not have what he needed here on OL.

Wolf needs guidance without realizing he is being guided. He seeks devotion or martyrdom, but his life and writing do not fit either.

He was elevated to the stars in the libertarian Costa Rica colony as if he were the greatest writer on earth. But he was part of a front for a con and didn't know it. Not even when it all fell apart.

He has been chasing that high ever since. But where to find other people who believe he's the greatest writer on earth?

That's a tough one.

What's more, Wolf is talented and that's the bitch of it. There's a long road to haul out from where he has been, if he ever gets back.

I, myself, found a path in daily writing exercises, written for nobody except me, while forcing myself to be in full focus. I've been at it over two and a half years so far. I am finally getting somewhere.

I had to allow myself to feel like a beginner again. And become a beginner again. All without any guarantees. It was humbling. Painful. Tiring. A real pain in the ass. And cool at times. But so damn irregular in quality and understanding. All I could do is keep plugging at it. Day after day with no missed days. The road to artistic development and the best within me does not start anywhere else. Not for me. If it does, I haven't found it.

But I found this road, did what I had to do, and I know I am finally on it--on my way to competence and mastery and, if such be in my stars, as much greatness as I can muster.

I hope Wolf finds his own way someday, I say that from the heart.

Michael

[MisterSwig]

On 10/13/2024 at 4:42 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Tone

I have to apologize for the hostile tone I used. I did not mean it as hostile so much as colorful. Maybe even playful at times. But on thinking this through, I did some introspecting and came to a few conclusions...

I don't want to spend much time on tone, but thank you for the apology. Your tone only slightly bothered me. I understand your tendency toward colorful language, but I did not know you were recovering from a troll encounter. I chalked it up to you being passionately in favor of Leonard.

I'm mostly bothered by repeated, crude hostility and incomprehensible hyperbole. Insults are boring and distracting, unless the critic makes it funny or attached to a solid point. And if someone exaggerates or fantasizes so much that I can't understand the message, how am I supposed to respond? It can be exhausting having to sort out the genuine meaning behind poorly worded hyperbole, especially when the confusion exposes deeper issues. But even here I often enjoy digging into deeper issues to the point of exhaustion, if I have the time.

So I am not bothered by much when it comes to language and communication. As a lover of language, I appreciate the writer's flair and sometimes will study unique examples until I better grasp the meaning and intention. Thus, I'm not merely tolerating hostility and exaggeration, I'm evaluating it and possibly learning from it, because I value language and communication in general.

Regarding persuasion through war metaphors, I have no strong opinion. I suppose the particular context is highly relevant. Generally my thought is that warlike rhetoric should be reserved for enemies. And when trying to persuade friends, a more peace loving rhetoric is appropriate. If Rand had considered conservatives more friend than foe, perhaps she would have changed the metaphorical context of her related articles. Actually, it would be an interesting study to track changes in her rhetoric toward conservatives. At first she sided with them, but ultimately ended up declaring them dead.

[MisterSwig]

12 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Here's an exercise for you that might open your eyes to dictionaries...

I should have explained. I'm not against dictionaries, and I'm aware that words can have more than one definition. I did not consult a dictionary in this case because we're comparing my idea of "gossip" to yours. Appealing to the authority of a dictionary would defeat that purpose, in my opinion.

[MisterSwig]

On 10/13/2024 at 4:42 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

If he [James Valliant] is a "heavily biased friend" like you said (and I agree with this), how on earth would he let a gold-digger con a mansion worth millions out of his dear friend without fighting it? Do you really think he is such a toady and intellectual gold digger himself that he would hide his knowledge of this from Peikoff, or hide talking about it to keep in Peikoff's good graces?...

Valliant certainly knows about the mansion. After all, he does read court documents and they are public. In my view, I see him actually advising Peikoff to put the mansion in Grace's name to work around a potential probate challenge from his family. And I can see him suggesting and implementing this interview as a form of damage control.

Based on my personal interactions with James, I do think that he is capable of evasion in order to preserve something other than the truth, whether it's a friendship or his own opinion on a matter. But in this case he could simply agree with Leonard that Kira's case is unfounded, that there's nothing suspicious about Leonard giving a mansion to his nurse. What's truly perplexing is that James failed to mention the case at all. Here we have the FB letter, and Leonard claiming that he needs protection from being enslaved, yet neither James nor Leonard mention this horror in the video. They both seem pretty content with life actually.

As for your speculation about James advising Leonard to quitclaim the mansion, this assumes they planned for Kira's probate action. If so, James should have also advised setting money aside for future legal expenses. The fact that Leonard needs to beg for money at this stage of his life is itself a red flag regarding his mental competency to manage his money.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

8 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

Based on my personal interactions with James, I do think that he is capable of evasion in order to preserve something other than the truth, whether it's a friendship or his own opinion on a matter. But in this case he could simply agree with Leonard that Kira's case is unfounded, that there's nothing suspicious about Leonard giving a mansion to his nurse. What's truly perplexing is that James failed to mention the case at all. Here we have the FB letter, and Leonard claiming that he needs protection from being enslaved, yet neither James nor Leonard mention this horror in the video. They both seem pretty content with life actually.

As for your speculation about James advising Leonard to quitclaim the mansion, this assumes they planned for Kira's probate action. If so, James should have also advised setting money aside for future legal expenses. The fact that Leonard needs to beg for money at this stage of his life is itself a red flag regarding his mental competency to manage his money.

MS,

I'm with you up to here.

But here, you leave out so much and you speculate so much in an unbalanced manner, you are getting a predetermined outcome that does not reflect reality.

To put it in O-Land terms, to me you are violating the Law of Identify several times over.

The pattern I detect can be illustrated by an analogy. Granted, dogs bark. But in this one case, maybe the dog decided not to bark--for days on end. But who's counting? Maybe the dog planned to bark, but decided against barking for this one case because reasons. Maybe the dog wanted to meow, couldn't figure it out and forgot to bark for days on end as he was dealing with this problem.

And on and on.

 

On another point, you give one meaning only to Peikoff's act of asking for donations. You call it "begging for money" and call this a red flag signaling his mental incompetency.

Hell, nobody needs to pay for this conclusion. People have been calling Peikoff a loon for decades for free.  That's a quip, but there is plenty of writing all over the internet and elsewhere attesting to this.

To look at the other side, what if Peikoff asked for donations just to help out with legal expenses like most people do these days when they set up a GoFundMe? Lawyers cost a lot of money, an excessive amount of money for the service they render. People only pay them because lawyers have a virtual monopoly on the court system. Oh, you can represent yourself at times, but good luck with that in practice. Legal costs have become akin to damage from a natural disaster. So doesn't setting up a GoFundMe for those emergency expenses seem reasonable? It does to me.

What's more, what if Peikoff used his own normal melodramatic form of expression (outside of lectures and presentations), catastrophizing up a storm when dealing with conflicts? That's also reasonable to me. It's not as if there is any lack of examples over the years. Does anyone need any specifics? I can come up with a bunch of them off the top of my head like most people in O-Land can do.  

 

In my view, I claim that dogs bark unless there is a real good reason for them to not bark. Law of Identity. I'm not convinced by the reasons you posit. In my understanding of identification and evaluation, you are forcing reasons into a preconceived conclusion. Pure normative before cognitive processing. (And you are entitled to do it. You're head is your own sentence just like with me, with all of us.  )

If I were to guess, I think you are repulsed by this entire affair and feel deeply that all this is beneath Peikoff. This is not the O-Land of your dreams. This is a frigging soap-opera nightmare. How are you going to help change the world for the better with this shit going on? 

In that context, mental incompetence is much easier to accept than the possibility that Peikoff chose his actions of his own volition. Rand's heir do that? No way. There's gotta be something else going on...

So your brain leads you to tell a story that explains it in a manner you can accept and still keep your admiration for Peikoff whole and hygienic. Yup. The story explains it all.

A judgment in search of corroborating reasons in a barren land, cherry-picking and blanking out no object.

(I know that sounds snarky, but that's not my intent. I am very harsh on myself when I go off into distortions--so much so that that comment is babyfood by comparison. But the main reason I wrote it is that it popped into my head out of nowhere and it's such a good line, I couldn't resist.  )

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

21 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Brant,

Shayne is a software engineer, not a fiction writer. He lives in Utah, Mormon country.

Shayne and I corresponded offline for a while, but that was years ago.

Wolf is a libertarian who messed around in that shady Costa Rica project years ago that ended up in a mess. 

I like Wolf, but I did not have what he needed here on OL.

Wolf needs guidance without realizing he is being guided. He seeks devotion or martyrdom, but his life and writing do not fit either.

He was elevated to the stars in the libertarian Costa Rica colony as if he were the greatest writer on earth. But he was part of a front for a con and didn't know it. Not even when it all fell apart.

He has been chasing that high ever since. But where to find other people who believe he's the greatest writer on earth?

That's a tough one.

What's more, Wolf is talented and that's the bitch of it. There's a long road to haul out from where he has been, if he ever gets back.

I, myself, found a path in daily writing exercises, written for nobody except me, while forcing myself to be in full focus. I've been at it over two and a half years so far. I am finally getting somewhere.

I had to allow myself to feel like a beginner again. And become a beginner again. All without any guarantees. It was humbling. Painful. Tiring. A real pain in the ass. And cool at times. But so damn irregular in quality and understanding. All I could do is keep plugging at it. Day after day with no missed days. The road to artistic development and the best within me does not start anywhere else. Not for me. If it does, I haven't found it.

But I found this road, did what I had to do, and I know I am finally on it--on my way to competence and mastery and, if such be in my stars, as much greatness as I can muster.

I hope Wolf finds his own way someday, I say that from the heart.

Michael

Thx for the clarification. This Shayne did ask me to review his book, whatever that book was.

--Brant

My last contact with Wolf he was living in Missouri somewhat depressed down on his financial luck but near some family. He wrote a lot of books but lacked recognition and money for it all.

Well, even Ayn Rand wondered about the effect of AS. If it was worth it