Altruism is not kindness, good will and/or benevolence for each other

"Do not hide behind such superficialities as whether you should or should not give a dime to a beggar. That is not the issue. The issue is whether you do or do not have the right to exist without giving him that dime.
The issue is whether you must keep buying your life, dime by dime, from any beggar who might choose to approach you. The issue is whether the need of others is the first mortgage on your life and the moral purpose of your existence. The issue is whether man is to be regarded as a sacrificial animal. Any man of self-esteem will answer: “No.” Altruism says: “Yes.”"

--Ayn Rand, “Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World,”, Philosophy: Who Needs It, 61

[Altruism: alter or altrui - ism i.e. "other"-ism]

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Yaron Lectures: Inequality and the Denial of Free Will (AynRandCon 2016) rebutted

I want to start off this rebuttal of certain things mentioned in Yaron Brook's recently posted speech by saying I am not here rebutting the Philosophy of Objectivism. I am an Objectivist myself as I have mentioned several times in previous articles. Nor is what I say about Yaron Brook on any given subject means in anyway anything he says is the official view of the Ayn Rand Institute. Nor that I am critiquing any other lectures or speeches he has given on other topics on which both him and I see 100% eye to eye. For example his defense of Capitalism and defense of individual rights as the role of Governing.

The only person I am rebuking in anything he said is the individual human 5th Walking Ape called Yaron Brook. Also, it is specifically the subject of Evolutionary Psychology or our Sociobiological nature that these criticisms are about and not that he is defending free will. I like Yaron am someone that believes in free will and in fact has more than one article providing all the evidence for us being able to make choices, and take responsibility irregardless of people proving Evolutionary mechanisms for our psychological mapping.

Within his lecture in which he made statements about how being for economic equality is to be denying free will. He made several comments which much like Gregory before him showed he did not understand our sociobiological nature as the animal we are. He indeed claims that genetics and the environment we are in do not have any substantial impact on choices that we make. That basically next to nothing is baked into us as Gregory had previously said before him. This is incorrect as we have quite a lot that is baked into us and is part of human nature. This includes after affects from our tribalism of passed generations of our species.

This does not mean that tribalism or collectivism is how one should live now. It simply says we evolved in a time and place where we were that way. Prior to the type of modern day post-industrial societies that we live in now. I agree with Yarron 100% that the ideal way to live in the modern day is as much as a rational person as possible. That Reason AKA the facts of reality not faith or mysticism is our means of survival in a world that is not the one our instincts evolved in. You will nowhere in this article see a dispute with the ideal world being one in which not all, but, way more of the population follows reason and facts not their other instincts or "intuitions" or anything like that.

However, I do not wish to live in a world were everyone has all of a sudden become an Objectivist. I want a world where people use reason, where they believe in rational things not Woo Woo or pseudo-science bullshit. I want a world where more people have integrity, act and think honestly, understand and live justly with others in society. Where people do not think other humans are theirs to use for their own ends. They do not need to become Objectivists or even persay use Objectivism to realize the importance of these virtues. Do I wish most of the world lived by the virtues found in Objectivism?; Rationality, Integrity, Honesty, Proper Pride, be Just with others and treat all people as they deserve based on the content of their character. Absolutely! However, that is different from them needing to agree with Objectivism and take it on as their philosophy.

It sometimes seems that Yarron and SOME others at ARI (not all) need evolutionary psychology to be wrong in their mind in order for Objectivism to be defended. However, I have the complete opposite view; if Objectivism cannot be reconciled with facts found out about existence and the human animal passed Ms. Rands time of being on this planet than it is Objectivism that is wrong not psychology proven through the facts found about evolution. Luckily, no Evo-Psych discovery has ever shown Reason is not preferable to delusion quite the opposite. It shows that our evolved natures are prone to all kinds of missteps unless we ground what we know in the facts as understood in the light of the Reason part of our brain chemistry. Living in reality is the optimal way to survive.

Evo-Psych does not say existence does not exist outside of us and our minds take it in. In fact, once again if Yaron and others actually read people like Steven Pinker this is the entire reason we need to understand human nature via evolution. Due to that being how we really got here from the past and that our brain is indeed what we see the outside world with. We need to KNOW how the mind works, so, we can know how to harness our Reason, Rationality and our Will to self-regulate our actions better. How to be the Rational Animal in the most humane way possible for the agent trying to be Rational. In other words how to "take the reigns of what we have been given to be the Angels of our Better Natures."

We are not deterministic beings in any sense in which you could predict specifically what every single human agent is going to do in life simply based on the fact that we are understanding the agents/humans motors inside them. Evo-Psych is not determinism and never has claimed to be determinism as Gad Sadd had told Yaron in person when he was interviewed by him. Knowing the Ultimate Goals of us as a species through our passed like procreation. Or understanding how Kin Selection works doe not remove free will from peoples Minds. We still make choices, introspect and then change actions. We also do this by choice; we can choose to not do it and drift along in life just acting on instincts till we get into trouble as we hit a wall where our instincts harm not help us.

This is why so many people are irrational they are making the choice and reasons could be numerous not to think. This is the Objectivist definition of free will and not a single study has refuted that we can pick to think or not to think about x,y, or z and then to act on the thought or pick not to act on it. We also can work through things like therapy to not pay attention to intrusive thoughts that are bad and not volitional. The fact that therapy such as CBT work actually proves that the Objectivist definition is way closer than most traditional ideas of a human will that require some sort of Ghost in the Machine. Nothing I have said above would be something any Cognitive Psychologist would ever disagree with. This is because there is ample evidence of this ability in the human brain/mind.

As I said previously in an article Evo-Psych is descriptive not prescriptive. It does not say you need to nor should go on the evolved instincts you have obtained. It simply shows what is there, how it got there and what needs to be remembered when trying to be Rational in order to be humane. Like I said on my last critique of a speech by an ARI fellow on Philosophical matters me and Mr. Brook agree 100% we are both Objectivists, but, that does not mean everything that comes out of their mouth is something I will agree on. I agree with him on Metaphysics, epistemology, ethics of rational and ethically performed egoism, the political ideal being Capitalism and even on Aesthetics. Where we disagree is Application of this. Application can be wrong for a Philosophy while the main tenants itself are good, noble and completely in touch with reality. Errors of application can happen from ignorance/cognitive bias. This is what I feel is going on with certain topics by certain Objectivists.

Confessions of a Climate Change Skeptic

There was a time when I was very much a believer in the idea that climate change was a major issue that needed to be tackled. That was before I actually looked into all the studies and not just some of them pre-picked by the UN or other groups whom had a vested interest in there being a catastrophe. I realized climate was not in the horrible state it was said to be and in fact the environment is much better in this era than it had been in our human past. We are living one of the Greenest forms of planet Earth that has ever existed.

Not only that, but, the vast majority of climate alterations is not even human caused. There is much more natural influence on the overall climate as part of Earths climate cycle than humans. Water Vapor is the most important greenhouse gas for alterations in Earths climate along with various sunspot and solar cycles. Man-Made CO2 pales in comparison to the effects of all the natural inputs on the Earths climate sensitivity. In fact, the Earth has been in a cooling phase since around 1998. Where it is either cooled or stayed the same with a complete stop in Global Warming overall. Even the Met Office in the UK had mentioned this at one point.

I not only find no climate catastrophe, but, find very little credible evidence for the climate changing by very much at all since around 2000. Not when you look at all the actual satellite minus the computer models biases. It shows clearly there is no issue and the globe is not changing the way it was thought to be within the broader scheme of things.

Which is a pity really because as we are in fact still in an Inter-glacial Period historically we should be pumping much more CO2 into our cooled down atmosphere to make it warmer than it is now. I say far from dissing the Oil Sands we should be looking for more of them all over the West. Dig, find that black gold and stop feeding the Saudi Arabians that support the likes of ISIS.

CO2 is a necessary element of life and it is NOT a pollutant it is food for this Earth and its organisms. Not only that, but, fossil fuels help make it so we can have all the wonderful things that help us survive. Including helping to run life saving medicines, schools and all of our homes. I love fossil fuels and I also think we should be using more Nuclear Energy too. Wind cannot sustain the infrastructure of a major city. We need actual fuel like fossil fuel and nuclear energy.

The point is the environment lobby really only looks at studies they do themselves or that proves them right. They never look at all the studies or all the research and see what is really out in the science. Only viewing studies to see they agree with you is not scientific and nor is it reasonable. I look at all kinds of sources for my information and go by what I find.

I do not just go by one or two sources. We are in a lot of ways in one of the most clean generations of this Earth and we are not in an apocalypse things are good right now. People are just too blinded with BS information, myths, lies and downright stupidity. To paraphrase John Stossel's old special name.

Relax the world is fine, the world is not ending and it is not as horrid as your worried wort negative thinking wants it too be. We are all too many of us seeing only the bad and often wrong stories. We do not see how we are living even for all the crap in one of the best times to be alive for so many reasons. Lighten up people and enjoy life. We only got one, so, live it while you can and quit worrying that the world is ending. It is not, it is just your primate wetware mind needing a boogeyman to fight.

Myles Power Fact Checks March Against Monsanto Claims

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