Humanity's Greatest Minds

[Exorcet]

I disagree, I don't perceive property rights to be universal human rights, instead social rights. The ability to own property is entirely contingent on approval from society (or the state, which acts on behalf of society). If society doesn't recognize that you own something, you don't own it. Furthermore, different societies have different ideas of what constitutes property that can owned by an individual or corporation. Most societies recognize ownership of individual items (clothes, cooking items, etc.). But do you draw the line at land ownership (and what land specifically), river ownership, a lake, airspace or even the air itself? It's up to the society in question.

If the land in question is determined to be public space and not for purchase, I don't see how that's a violation of human rights. Humans are not entitled to land ownership, so if the inhabitants deem the land they live on to be public space, what right do foreign invaders have to apply their unwelcome societal structure where societal structures already exist?

If you want to look at property from a human rights perspective, look to see when force is applied against someone. If a person comes into an unspoiled, unclaimed valley and builds a house there, no one else can build over that house without destroying it and denying the original builder's ability to exercise their own will.

The same thinking applies to your other examples. Let's take airspace since it can be hard to define borders without solid boundaries. If there is an airport set up to let aircraft approach and depart along certain directions, someone building a skyscraper along the approach path to the runway would be obstructing the airport's function. If the skyscraper owner doesn't care and builds the structure while knowing interfering with the airport, why should the airport owner care to allow the skyscraper to be built? If you use force against others, expect it to be used against you.

 

[TexRex]

Yes, I should have said you are not free to take the rainwater off your own roof. It belongs to the state, and you need to apply and receive a permit from the state to do so.

Except you are.

Having said that, the method you choose to collect said roof water may actually require a permit...a building permit.

Want to line your porch with 5 gallon buckets wherever water is overflowing from your clogged gutters? You can do it without permission from "the man" (of course you should probably do something about those gutters).

Want to bury a cistern on your property? Well, yeah, you're probably going to need that building permit like I needed to pull before doing so here. Mind you that was more to do with acknowledging that I observed safety standards in digging and confirmed there there were no gas or electrical service lines affected. I probably could have gotten away without, but we may end up turning around and renting the property should we choose to move, and inspectors can be sticklers for code and permit pulls as I learned from building a gazebo (I love that word, gazebo...gazeeeebo) behind our last home.

But I digress. Approval is likely needed for redirecting a water flow to determine the impact it will most assuredly have on the environment or other individuals down its path. There's no mention of rooftop collection in the link you provided (I even used the find-on-page function to determine if the word "roof" was used at all, just in case I missed it--spoiler alert, it wasn't), and it strikes me as odd that the state would be so helpful to those wishing to begin rooftop harvesting if it's illegal to do so.

Should you find and provide more information regarding regulations specific to rooftop rainwater collection, I'm more than willing to reevaluate my position, but I suspect you're blowing things way out of proportion as is often your prerogative:

It's communism. And another vote for Karl Marx as one of humanity's greatest, as in most influential, minds.

Frankly, I'm taken aback by the lack of references to postmodernism in the remarks...I suppose "communism" was deemed sufficient.

 

[Dotini]

Frankly, I'm taken aback by the lack of references to postmodernism in the remarks...I suppose "communism" was deemed sufficient.

Frankly, I'm taken aback - shocked, shocked I tell you! - that you've apparently failed to do any opposition research, since the first thing they say about postmodernism is that it derives largely from Marxist philosophers, professors and writers. Are you okay with communism, Tex?

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

I'll nominate a few of my favorites

Art/Design/Philosophy/Literature/Poetry/Music
Le Corbusier
Frederick Law Olmsted
TS Eliot
Hafez
Walt Whitman
Federico Fellini
John Locke
Phillip Glass
Jack Kerouac
Edward Abbey
Jean Claude & Christo
Olafur Eliasson
Michael Heizer

Science:
Enrico Fermi
Ernest Lawrence
Leo Szilard
Niels Bohr
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Werner Heisenberg
Edward Teller
(can you tell I am interested in particle physics? )

Industry/Engineering
Sochiro Honda
Igor Sikorsky

 

[TexRex]

I'll nominate a few of my favorites

Art/Design/Philosophy/Literature/Poetry/Music
Le Corbusier
Frederick Law Olmsted
TS Eliot
Hafez
Walt Whitman
Federico Fellini
John Locke
Phillip Glass
Jack Keroac
Jean Claude & Christo
Olafur Eliasson
Michael Heizer

Science:
Enrico Fermi
Ernest Lawrence
Leo Szilard
Niels Bohr
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Werner Heisenberg
Edward Teller
(can you tell I am interested in particle physics? )

Industry/Engineering
Sochiro Honda

Jack.

👍

 

[HenrySwanson]

If people are being discounted on the basis of "advocating genocide", does that mean we exclude racists too?

Racists like....Albert Einstein:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-44472277

Or is all forgiven since in his later life he said that "racism was a disease of white people".

Ay Caramba!

 

[Johnnypenso]

If people are being discounted on the basis of "advocating genocide", does that mean we exclude racists too?

Racists like....Albert Einstein:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-44472277

Or is all forgiven since in his later life he said that "racism was a disease of white people".

Ay Caramba!

I'm sure I'm not the only one that noticed that even though we have nominations for Marx, Hitler and Lenin, responsible for perhaps 100+ million deaths, the major objection so far is to an author

 

[huskeR32]

I'm sure I'm not the only one that noticed that even though we have nominations for Marx, Hitler and Lenin, responsible for perhaps 100+ million deaths, the major objection so far is to an author

Perhaps we all just decided not to reward such obvious attempts to troll?

 

[TexRex]

I'm sure I'm not the only one that noticed that even though we have nominations for Marx, Hitler and Lenin, responsible for perhaps 100+ million deaths, the major objection so far is to an author

Explanations have been sought but not provided--it seems the names weren't offered with any kind of conviction.

I find it funny that Rand wasn't actually suggested, just mentioned in a limp notion of disappointment. I have to wonder why the individual who presented such a notion didn't actually suggest her--perhaps, again, a lack of conviction.

 

[Biggles]

I'm not sure she wanted to exterminate them, but rather just take their land. I'm not entirely sure how that'd work, but still, I don't think she actively said to kill them.

However, her reason behind it was wrong. She claimed that Native Americans didn't have a right to the land because they hadn't settled it - which isn't right. While many tribes were nomadic, there were settlements created by Native Americans. The most prominent one is from the Pueblos who built a sizeable city in a cliff face. Much of this came from flawed anthropological thinking of the time though and some of the most well-respected anthropologists of the late 1800's and early 1900's often thought native people were "savages" for various reasons. It led to a ton of ethnocentric fieldwork.

In the end, it's irrelevant whether the indigenous peoples of the the Americas settled the land or not. The whole concept of "property rights" created by Ayn Rand & her precursors is a culturally specific construct, not a fundamental truth.

The existing indigenous population used the land according to their own traditions to support their own lifestyle - that was their "property right". It's highly debatable whether the lifestyle of the invading Europeans was ethically or materially superior to that of the natives. For example: within a generation of arriving in the western prairies, the encroaching whites had wiped out most of the buffalo herds that gazed on the prairies, destroying the way of life of the Plains tribes & subjecting them to starvation or dependency. When they resisted, they were hunted down & killed.

Rand was totally a product of her time & her own life experiences - she had no real knowledge or interest in the indigenous people of the Americas & had racist pre-conceptions typical of that era.

 

[UKMikey]

Or is all forgiven since in his later life he said that "racism was a disease of white people".

Einstein is mentioned because he contributed to our collective knowledge of science. Fuelling prejudice and hatred wasn't his primary influence on humanity, so it's kind of a false equivalence.

I'm sure I'm not the only one that noticed that even though we have nominations for Marx, Hitler and Lenin, responsible for perhaps 100+ million deaths, the major objection so far is to an author

Hitler at least got a mention. I think I did twice in my posts. For some reason nobody stepped forth to rigorously defend him.

 

[LeMansAid]

TIL being a postal worker is a race

It doesn't need to be for your view on this to be racist. Without prejudice, race is just another arbitrary point of difference. True non-racism doesn't consider the unifying race of a group of people above a unifying occupation, with respect to the murder of innocent people.

It's nice that you seemingly want to observe human rights, and it's extra nice of @Danoff to try and help you do it correctly.

 

[UKMikey]

Race is arbitrary. Let's remember the postal workers.

 

[baldgye]

It doesn't need to be for your view on this to be racist. Without prejudice, race is just another arbitrary point of difference.

Race is not something you have any agency in (before being born I wasn't offered where I'd like to be born, what race I'd like to be and who'd be my parents). Being a postal worker is something you have control over being.

I'm not advocating for discrimination, but there is a marked difference between choosing to be a postal worker and being born a certain way.

 

[UKMikey]

Race is not something you have any agency in (before being born I wasn't offered where I'd like to be born, what race I'd like to be and who'd be my parents). Being a postal worker is something you have control over being.

I'm not advocating for discrimination, but there is a marked difference between choosing to be a postal worker and being born a certain way.

More to the point, when postal workers start being targeted for their profession at anywhere near the level that Jewish people have throughout history there's nothing to stop us being concerned with their persecution as well. Ignoring antisemitism or pretending it doesn't exist is more disturbing to me than my being judged racist by objectivism.

 

[baldgye]

More to the point, when postal workers start being targeted for their profession at anywhere near the level that Jewish people have throughout history there's nothing to stop us being concerned with their persecution as well. Ignoring antisemitism or pretending it doesn't exist is more disturbing to me than my being judged racist by objectivism.

Yeah I'm no expert and never claimed to be, I was just asked the (seemingly insane) question



I guess to be somewhat on-top I'm not really sure who would make our greatest ever minds, Da Vinci springs to mind, but many of his amazing sketches and drawings weren't discovered until well after he had died, reducing their impact... then other than philosophers, would it only be limited to scientists? I tried looking into it but all I can find are dull top 10 lists

 

[Liquid]

Christoper Hitchens

It's very hard to talk about Christopher Hitchens without the air of militant atheism with a superiority complex lurking around but I think he was a very intelligent writer and speaker who didn't accept the conventions or hold anyone as above criticism, like Mother Theresa, and his opinions on religion, society, politics, history and individuality certainly make you think and at least consider a wider view outside of your own even if you don't agree with his.

It's also very interesting to see the development of someone who went from being a Marxist, a Trotskyist who condemed Washington and Moscow in equal measure to a classical liberal with deep analysis and criticism of both the left and right of the linear political scale.

He also gave us a rather neat razor similar to Russell's teapot in "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence".

Stephen Fry

Despite his genial figure as a bit of a comedy gay on television or being "that posh bloke off the telly" I really believe that there is real substance to Fry and his thinking. He balances being part of the establishment and being accessible to the wider public unlike almost anyone else.

His interviews with Gay Byrne are a real treat.

Socrates, Plato and Aristotle

I don't claim to be an expert on any of them but these are three of the greatest early philosophers and arguably of any philosopher.

Socrates is credited with critical thinking in which not just individual answers are sought but also an insight into the topic at hand.
Socratic irony in which feigning ignorance is your tool to run rings around your opponent; probably best known as the Columbo method.
Plato founded the Academy in Athens, wrote Republic and Symposium and philosophised on subjects like Forms and the allegory of the cave.
Aristotle was an influential founder of biology, zoölogy as well as being reknowned in the field of physics and psychology.
Aristotle is credited with syllogism and was a pioneer in empirical observation.

Socrates taught Plato, Plato taught Aristotle, Aristotle taught Alexander of Makedon.
It's a good track record. I don't think there is any way to herald them as anything other than in the category of greatest minds.

 

[baldgye]

Stephen Fry

Despite his genial figure as a bit of a comedy gay

Maybe it's just me, but I never saw him as a 'comedy gay'.. be it in QI or A Bit of Fry and Laurie

 

[Liquid]

Maybe it's just me, but I never saw him as a 'comedy gay'

He definitely played up to that on QI, with the usual jokes about public school and promiscuity.

 

[baldgye]

He definitely played up to that on QI, with the usual jokes about public school and promiscuity.

Oh ok, I was publicly educated so maybe I read that humour differently

 

[HenrySwanson]

Explanations have been sought but not provided--it seems the names weren't offered with any kind of conviction.

I find it funny that Rand wasn't actually suggested, just mentioned in a limp notion of disappointment. I have to wonder why the individual who presented such a notion didn't actually suggest her--perhaps, again, a lack of conviction.

I don't know enough about her to suggest her, so you're partly right. It was more a surprise that the most libertarian poster here (I think) didn't that prompted the jokey post.

My nominations would be Muhammad and the founding fathers if I were pushed. But since I don't know much about the founding fathers individually I can't name a specific one

I can only go by the quote from "The Newsroom" that James Madison was a genius so let's run with that.

Einstein is mentioned because he contributed to our collective knowledge of science. Fuelling prejudice and hatred wasn't his primary influence on humanity, so it's kind of a false equivalence.

But was fueling prejudice and hatred Rand's primary influence on humanity?

 

[UKMikey]

But was fueling prejudice and hatred Rand's primary influence on humanity?

By all means, feel free to expand on the positive contributions she made towards humanity because her reputation seems to precede her in most conversations I've had about the subject.

 

[Danoff]

Race is not something you have any agency in (before being born I wasn't offered where I'd like to be born, what race I'd like to be and who'd be my parents). Being a postal worker is something you have control over being.

I'm not advocating for discrimination, but there is a marked difference between choosing to be a postal worker and being born a certain way.

TIL being a postal worker is a race

It's not, it' just more important than skin color because it's something you actually have some control over. Saying that skin color has more weight, which is fairly arbitrary in this discussion, is racist then.

More to the point, when postal workers start being targeted for their profession at anywhere near the level that Jewish people have throughout history there's nothing to stop us being concerned with their persecution as well. Ignoring antisemitism or pretending it doesn't exist is more disturbing to me than my being judged racist by objectivism.

This post is... weird. I'm not saying Jewish people weren't persectued, and I'm not "ignoring antisemitism", and I'm not the embodiment of "objectivism", not all of my statements are objectivist conclusions. Some of them are just... logical conclusions.

I disagree, I don't perceive property rights to be universal human rights, instead social rights. The ability to own property is entirely contingent on approval from society (or the state, which acts on behalf of society). If society doesn't recognize that you own something, you don't own it. Furthermore, different societies have different ideas of what constitutes property that can owned by an individual or corporation. Most societies recognize ownership of individual items (clothes, cooking items, etc.). But do you draw the line at land ownership (and what land specifically), river ownership, a lake, airspace or even the air itself? It's up to the society in question.

If the land in question is determined to be public space and not for purchase, I don't see how that's a violation of human rights. Humans are not entitled to land ownership, so if the inhabitants deem the land they live on to be public space, what right do foreign invaders have to apply their unwelcome societal structure where societal structures already exist?

In the end, it's irrelevant whether the indigenous peoples of the the Americas settled the land or not. The whole concept of "property rights" created by Ayn Rand & her precursors is a culturally specific construct, not a fundamental truth.

The existing indigenous population used the land according to their own traditions to support their own lifestyle - that was their "property right". It's highly debatable whether the lifestyle of the invading Europeans was ethically or materially superior to that of the natives. For example: within a generation of arriving in the western prairies, the encroaching whites had wiped out most of the buffalo herds that gazed on the prairies, destroying the way of life of the Plains tribes & subjecting them to starvation or dependency. When they resisted, they were hunted down & killed.

Rand was totally a product of her time & her own life experiences - she had no real knowledge or interest in the indigenous people of the Americas & had racist pre-conceptions typical of that era.

This has been discussed ad nauseam in the Human Rights thread, where most of this was very thoroughly addressed. I suggest we take this discussion there. For the time being, I suggest we all avoid making claims about people in all threads that we can't substantiate.

I'll have a new great thinker post today, need time to work on it.

 

[LeMansAid]

Race is not something you have any agency in (before being born I wasn't offered where I'd like to be born, what race I'd like to be and who'd be my parents). Being a postal worker is something you have control over being.

I'm not advocating for discrimination, but there is a marked difference between choosing to be a postal worker and being born a certain way.

It seems you are very much advocating for discrimination. A discrimination that deems it worse to murder someone because of their race than to murder someone because of their occupation.

More to the point, when postal workers start being targeted for their profession at anywhere near the level that Jewish people have throughout history there's nothing to stop us being concerned with their persecution as well. Ignoring antisemitism or pretending it doesn't exist is more disturbing to me than my being judged racist by objectivism.

"Ignoring antisemitism" (or "not considering antisemitism") is absolutely the right thing to do to avoid judging the murder of one person as more wrong than the murder of another.

"Pretending it doesn't exist" would be moronic. I find it is utterly baffling though that you think that that sentiment is anywhere near to being in play here.

That you seem to place those things as if they are of similar meaning and relevance in the context of this conversation very strongly suggests to me that you don't actually understand the conversation.

 

[HenrySwanson]

By all means, feel free to expand on the positive contributions she made towards humanity because her reputation seems to precede her in most conversations I've had about the subject.

I don't really feel qualified to do a vignette of her impact/achievements so I'll link to this:

https://mises.org/library/ayn-rands-contribution-cause-freedom

I'm also curious why you're asking that question - is it because you believe her contributions have been more negative than positive to humanity?

 

[UKMikey]

That you seem to place those things as if they are of similar meaning and relevance in the context of this conversation very strongly suggests to me that you don't actually understand the conversation.

In that case I'll happily admit to being lost since deciding to target people on behalf of their race is hate crime and it sounds to me like denying its distictiveness from regular crime is like saying hate crime isn't a thing.

I'm also curious why you're asking that question - is it because you believe her contributions have been more negative than positive to humanity?

As far as I can see the only people singing her praises are isolated websites, so yes.

 

[HenrySwanson]

As far as I can see the only people singing her praises are isolated websites, so yes.

Why view her as a negative contributor then? Do you have evidence she was?

 

[LeMansAid]

In that case I'll happily admit to being lost since deciding to target people on behalf of their race is hate crime and it sounds to me like denying its distictiveness from reguar crime is like saying hate crime isn't a thing.

Legally? It's a thing. Morally? It shouldn't be. The "hate" bit is completely superfluous and discriminatory.

Oh, and.....

Race is not something you have any agency in (before being born I wasn't offered where I'd like to be born, what race I'd like to be and who'd be my parents). Being a postal worker is something you have control over being.

You'd be counting the targeted murder of a Muslim as less wrong compared to the targeted murder of a black person? I'd assume so, given your choice/non-choice rationale. Me? I'd count all innocent people as equal - something both of you seem unwilling to do.

 

[baldgye]

It seems you are very much advocating for discrimination. A discrimination that deems it worse to murder someone because of their race than to murder someone because of their occupation.

It's not, it' just more important than skin color because it's something you actually have some control over. Saying that skin color has more weight, which is fairly arbitrary in this discussion, is racist then.

You'd be counting the targeted murder of a Muslim as less wrong compared to the targeted murder of a black person? I'd assume so, given your choice/non-choice rationale. Me? I'd count all innocent people as equal - something both of you seem unwilling to do.

I feel like we are now off base because I used the real world application of genocide (used in Ayn's question/answer) being against someones race.
Danoff I see you're American and I think you can appreciate that there are certain classes that are protected above others. I think it's fair to assume that generally these are more relevant (to this argument) than someones career path, especially in your example of a postal worker, which is generally considered to be unskilled labour and not someone's life work that they couldn't transition out of at pain-of death.

However, I feel like we've deviated off the original start point. If discrimination (based on anything) is wrong (which I agree with) then wouldn't that make the murder/eradication of said group based on any reason (postal worker, race, religion), worse than just random murder?

Genocide is intentional action to destroy a people (usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group) in whole or in part.

 

[UKMikey]

Why view her as a negative contributor then? Do you have evidence she was?

Even if Rand is seen as only a neutral contributor that doesn't have any net effect on humanity, rather than someone who preached that altruism towards others is destructive and can only lead to totalitarianism, then that still wouldn't qualify her in my mind for inclusion in the list of humanity's greatest minds - those that enabled all of us to advance as a species rather than just making fictional advertising executives feel good about themselves.

You'd be counting the targeted murder of a Muslim as less wrong compared to the targeted murder of a black person? I'd assume so, given your choice/non-choice rationale. Me? I'd count all innocent people as equal - something both of you seem unwilling to do.

I'd count them equally as hate crimes. You seem to be spinning this as us thinking that people being murdered en masse because of their occupation (when does this ever happen?) are less worthy of our sympathy than those targeted by neo-Nazis.

In my case I would say that they're both capital crimes but in the case of the Nazis would look for links with other far right sympathisers. As far as I know there is no known network of postal worker murderers. I'm not saying that the victims of one crime are somehow less worthy than the others but that the crimes are different in nature.