We The Living (WTL) by Ayn Rand is a very good book. One always hears about Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. I think those are better, but only by a small margin rather than a large one. WTL deserves attention. (By the way, Anthem is nice too, and only takes about 90 minutes to read.) The rest of this post contains spoilers.

In the introduction it says that Kira is better than Leo or Andrei, and asks which of Andrei or Leo is better. It says Ayn Rand prefers Leo, and that she thinks Leo would be like Francisco D'Anconia if he lived in the USA instead of in Russia.

I disagree. I prefer Andrei. Let's start with Leo: Leo has already largely given up when the book starts, and he gets worse as the book continues. I don't see that Leo did anything impressive in the entire book. I'd note that Kira is attracted to him due to his appearance. Admittedly, in Rand's worlds appearance is a direct indicator of character including heroism, so perhaps when she described his appearance she intended to be telling the reader that he was just like Francisco. But I prefer to judge people by their thoughts and actions, and while Leo is a decent guy sometimes, he never does anything heroic. The closest he comes is buying passage on the boat to try to escape from Russia.

Andrei improves as the book progresses. He learns things. I would say he is the only character in the book who learns much of anything good (some characters learn how to talk like a loyal communist, or other mundane skills). Kira was evidently born heroic. As good as she is, she already had all her merit when the book starts; I think Rand sees having to change as a bit of a weakness, rather than seeing learning as a strength.

My favorite part of WTL is when Kira confesses to Andrei that she slept with him to get money for Leo's medical treatment and that she didn't love him. In particular I like Andrei's reaction. He does not get angry. He does not whine about how his lover betrayed him, and his heart is broken, and all the stuff nearly everyone would say. That alone is wonderful. But Andrei does considerably better than that. He reacts by stopping to think. He doesn't say anything except "I didn't know" until he's thought about it. He's calm and collected even as Kira continues her mean rant. That's great too. But then the really amazing thing is that within minutes of finding all this out, and with Kira fully unapologetic, he has not only forgiven her, but praised her for doing it, said he would have done the same thing, and said it vastly raised his opinion of her. When he found out she was living and sleeping with Leo, what bothered him was not the betrayal but that the best explanation he could think of involved her being a bad person.

Sidenote: Why would that indicate to Andrei that Kira is a bad person? Andrei considers Leo a bad person, so why would Kira want to be involved with him? And also, why would Kira want Andrei's money? Why would she want to take advantage of him? Is she just a whore and a sort of thief? That is incompatible with being heroic.

So when Andrei finds out the truth, that Kira had good reasons, he realizes she was in fact a better person than he'd ever known. She did something very hard, but also important. She epitomizes the heroic values he liked about her even more for doing it. And Andrei recognizes all this right away and is glad about it. That is in many ways even harder than what Kira did. Think about it. A lot of people could lead a double life if they were motivated enough. Nothing about it is really too complicated. But what Andrei did, staying calm and reacting to emotional news in a rational way, most people couldn't even begin to do that. They have no idea how to do it, or even how to start learning to do it.

To sum up: Andrei has this very exceptional moment, and he is the character who learns and improves over the course of the book. That's why I prefer him to Leo. By contrast, Leo lets his life get worse and worse until he gives up and no longer wants to try or think.

The worst thing about Andrei was his suicide. He could have remained friends with Kira, and looked for ways to turn his life around, such as going abroad (even without Kira), or helping anti-communist resistance. Note that if he'd been alive longer, he would have been around when Leo left and Kira decided to escape, and she would have accepted his offer to escape together at that point.

Leo has a lot of serious flaws. He despairs, he doesn't want to think, he wastes money, he turns to crime knowing he's putting his life at serious risk, he doesn't value his life, he befriends bad people, and he mistreats Kira. Leo has a different reaction than Andrei when he finds out about Kira's double life. Andrei reacts heroically. Leo reacts despicably. Leo thinks worse of Kira, and then says he's glad for her to be worse. The worse a person Kira is, the better, is Leo's view. He doesn't want there to be any good in the world, so when he turns his back on good he's less guilty. That's just terrible.

On to Kira. She fails to improve things, but she never gives up, so it's alright. Actually Kira does improve her life in one major way. She forms a relationship with Andrei, and then helps him improve. The more he improves, the better a friend she has in her life. Unfortunately she doesn't recognize this. By the way, I think she should accepted Andrei's offer to go abroad. It would have improved her life! She only stayed for Leo. Self-sacrifice is bad. I know she wanted Leo in her life for her own sake, but he wasn't making her life wonderful, and she should have noticed that and taken the superior opportunity. Note that it would have quite possibly saved both her own life and Andrei's life.

One of the great parts about Kira is the stuff she doesn't notice. Near the beginning of the book her family complains about their poor clothes and poor food. Kira comments that she hadn't noticed. Kira does not think of hardships just like when Roark comments that he doesn't think about Toohey. Kira instead focusses on pursuing her goals and living her life, which is great.

I like Kira's escape attempt because it was her pursuing her values. I like her interest in engineering. I like how she insists on living life her own way. For example, she enrolls in engineering classes against her family's wishes, and she goes to live with Leo even though her family will disown her for it (they forgive her when they are hungry and she has more money than them). By the way, I also like Vasili Ivanovitch, the relative who sells all his possessions but refuses to get a Soviet job.

Kira demonstrates her strength and perseverance by her escape attempt, by maintaining her double life, by never giving up, and by making a great effort to get and keep a job, to wait in all the lines, and so on. Those are the things she has to do to continue her life, so she does them, and she doesn't complain incessantly or turn her mind off or let it destroy her spirit, she just does it and keeps living like a full person, almost like a free person. She also demonstrates it strikingly when Leo leaves. She chooses not to tell him why she slept with Andrei, or where the money for his medicine really came from. A lot of people would be angry with Leo and tell him out of spite. A lot of people would tell him and say it was the truth as an excuse. A lot of people would tell him without even thinking about it first. But Kira is better than that. She judges that Leo is lost to her, so there is no point in telling him. She further judges that Leo does not want to know. Not telling people things they don't want to be told is a good policy. It's respectful of their life; it's living by consent.

Kira stands up to the communists at times. Not in a sacrificial or suicidal way like Sasha (Irina's boyfriend; they are sent to separate camps in Siberia), but only by way of expressing her values and living in the way she wants to. That is nice. Sasha gives up his life for a cause. Kira values her life more than he does. She doesn't want to be a martyr. In one scene Kira considers sacrificing herself to do a good deed. She's in a communist march/parade, and some foreigners are visiting to see Soviet propaganda, and she could run up to them and tell them the truth about Russia. But she thinks of her life with Leo, and doesn't want to give that up, and she puts that ahead of communicating this important truth which has the potential to save every oppressed Russian. Good for her.

People who care about their life try to better themselves.

By me, partially inspired by Ayn Rand in We The Living.

It sounds pretty obvious. Here's why it's important:

People often, for a wide variety of reasons, do not give learning their best effort. I knew these people do not care about truth-seeking and creating knowledge as much as Popper or I do. But I hadn't made the connection before that what they don't care about, at root, is their own life, in the way Rand cares about life. Life is not precious to them; they aren't dead set on making the most of it.

When someone is careless and wasteful during their own free time, they are disrespecting their own life. When people decide some of their problems are too hard and permanently give up on solving them, and try to be content settling for less, what they are really giving up on is life.

In his Lectures on Computation, at the very end of the chapter on Coding and Communication Theory, Richard Feynman writes:

Such developments will transform the future. Movies will be cleaned up, too -- optical fibers, for example, are now giving us overcapacity. The soap ad will appear with absolute clarity. It seems that the technological world progresses, but real humanistic culture slides in the mud!

Ads work because people like them; people voluntarily choose to respond to ads by buying the product, or increasing their opinion of the quality of the company or product. Being anti-ads is being anti-humans; it's thinking that people with a different approach to life are dumb and wrong, and declaring their values to be mud. Maybe they are mistaken, but Feynman hasn't given any argument that they are, nor has Feynman made any attempt to help or enlighten them. He's just insulting them harshly.

I do think people are sometimes insufficiently skeptical of claims made in ads. Perhaps often. But that's bad reason to trash those people. Who cares about their choice of soap brands? It's not important. There are much more important issues to worry about, like whether they use soap to violently wash out their child's mouth, or not. Let's not compare people to mud unless they do something seriously bad.

Further, the assertion that we are sliding into the mud claims human culture is getting worse. In other words, Feynman claims that people used to evaluate companies and products better, but now, due to advertising, they have gotten dumber. Feynman gives no explanation of how advertising cripples judgement.

Feynman is saying that, in some "humanistic" sense, primitive cultures with no achievements to speak of were better than modern culture with its spaceships, skyscrapers, science, and also moral achievements like giving women the vote, reducing prejudices, and creating unprecedented law and order and peace. I think that's out of character for Feynman and I'm unaware of him saying this anywhere else. Instead he, for example, understood the extreme gullibility of primitive cultures that formed cargo cults. Not only in the case of cargo cults, but also in general, people in the past were far more gullible, not less. One can't be really gullible and still achieve all the things we've achieved. One reason is that, as Feynman says, science is what we've learned about how to avoid fooling ourselves; not fooling yourself is a big part of not being gullible.

Suppose that 50% of the time you think someone said something dumb, actually you misunderstood them. This is a good rough guess because it supposes each party is equally likely to make a mistake, rather than the common supposition that other people are idiots and make all the mistakes. Of course if you're a super genius that could tilt the odds, but let's neglect that.

So, half the time you insult someone here's what happened: he said something reasonable, you got the wrong end of the stick, you blamed him for this, and then you lashed out at him. How embarrassing!

I think any kind person aware of this logic must swear off insults.

Many people think immorality is not self-defeating and needs nasty consequences imposed on it, like legal repurcussions or the community shunning offenders. And on the flip side think that morality is not very effective: doing moral actions means sacrificing getting the most money, prestige, etc, that is possible to get. In this way morality is closely tied to altruism.

One result of this way of thinking is the rich and successful are deemed prima facie immoral, and the powerless and weak are deemed prima facie virtuous. Another is that people who think this way don't whole heartedly try, strive, and want to be maximally moral; instead they are at least a little conflicted.

I define morality as our knowlege about how best to live, and thus it is effective by definition. I think the reason people shy away from this definition is if they used it then they can't see anything wrong with stealing, or with premarital, gay sex on the first date, but they are sure in advance that those are immoral, so they think my definition is refuted by contradiction.

I think it's scary that people don't understand that stealing is self-defeating even if you aren't caught and punshed. In a way, it's a denial that morality exists. They're saying that "immoral" actions are simply the ones society (or perhaps God) will punish you for, and they can't see any inherent logic in what is and isn't moral without reference to punishment.

On the other hand, I think premarital gay sex is not self-defeating, and also is not immoral. It has no negative consequences for one's life, except perhaps inciting bigots to be mean to you. I don't think we should defer to bigots; that's appeasement, and it would mean, for example, that as long as anti-semites exist people shouldn't be Jewish.

Here is a principle of mine:

True statements do not imply false statements.

The intended point is that if someone says something true (even if only in a strict, literal, or technical way), one should not "read between the lines" anything false.

For example, given that this principle is literally true, it specifies one should not assume it be intended to mean anything false. I therefore trust there will be no criticism of it in the comments. Any criticism involves interpretting the statement to imply something you consider false. :)

The FTC is going to monitor blogs to make sure when they review or praise products, they disclose if they were paid to say that.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/FTC-plans-to-monitor-blogs-apf-4106175840.html?x=0

"If you walk into a department store, you know the (sales) clerk is a clerk," said Rich Cleland, assistant director in the FTC's division of advertising practices. "Online, if you think that somebody is providing you with independent advice and ... they have an economic motive for what they're saying, that's information a consumer should know."

Why should a consumer know that? What does it matter?

If an advertisement or product review functions by persuasion, then it's irrelevant. How persuasive an argument is or isn't does not depend on whether the author was paid.

The FTC has a different model of how consumers shop in mind. In this model, people vouch for products and consumers judge whether to trust them based on their integrity and authority. Reason and persuasion are irrelevant.

I don't think the FTC should monitor whether sources of information are reputable, because I don't think it matters. I have one caveat. If a company pays a blogger to write demonstrably false factual claims about its product, then that's fraud.

I think the FTC sees it this way: when a blogger claims to have integrity (which all product reviews implicitly claim unless they state otherwise), but actually was paid to say stuff and hasn't disclosed this, then that's fraud. It's a demonstrably false factual claim about the author of the product review.

It's a shame how many ideas are judged by their source rather than their content.

http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/godwin/pj8/pj8_10.html

Whilst this sheet is in the press for the third impression, I receive the intelligence of the death of Burke, who was principally in the author's mind, while he penned the preceding sentences. In all that is most exalted in talents, I regard him as the inferior of no man that ever adorned the face of earth; and, in the long record of human genius, I can find for him very few equals. In sublety of discrimination, in magnitude of conception, in sagacity and profoundness of judgement, he was never surpassed. But his characteristic exceilencies were vividness and justness of painting, and that boundless wealth of imagination that adorned the most ungrateful subjects, and heightened the most interesting. Of this wealth he was too lavish; and, though it is impossible for the man of taste not to derive gratification from almost every one of his images and metaphors while it passes before him, yet their exuberance subtracts, in no considerable degree, from that irresistibleness and rapidity of general effect, which is the highest excellence of composition. No impartial man can recall Burke to his mind, without confessing the granduer and integrity of his feelings of morality, and being convinced that he was eminently both the patriot and the philanthropist. His excellencies however were somewhat tinctured with a vein of dark and saturnine temper; so that the same man strangely united a degree of the rude character of his native island, with an urbanity and a susceptibility of the kinder affections, that have rarely been paralleled. But his principal defect consisted in this; that the false estimate as to the things entitled to our deference and admiration, which could alone tender aristocracy with whom he lived, unjust to his worth, in some degree infected his own mind. He therefore sought wealth and plunged in expense, instead of cultivating the simplicity of independence; and he entangled himself with a petty combination of political men, instead of reserving his illustrious talents unwarped, for the advancement of intellect, and the service of mankind. He unfortunately has left us a memorable example, of the power of a corrupt system of government, to undermine and divert from their genuine purposes, the noblest faculties that have yet been exhibited to the observation of the world.

My favorite part is

In all that is most exalted in talents, I regard [Edmund Burke] as the inferior of no man that ever adorned the face of earth; and, in the long record of human genius, I can find for him very few equals. In sublety of discrimination, in magnitude of conception, in sagacity and profoundness of judgement, he was never surpassed.

I think Godwin's criticism of Burke is incorrect. Burke, like Godwin, knew that there is knowledge in the status quo (in traditions), and that it should only be changed gradually/piecemeal to avoid both violence and destruction of knowledge. For this reason, both of them considered the French Revolution a bad idea. To my mind, they were basically in agreement. But somehow they did not see it.

Godwin would of course also have approved of Burke's take on America, India, and Irish Catholics. (Perhaps Godwin might think Burke was too timid in his advocacy for Catholics, but I don't think that).

The comments about political entanglements do make sense. Burke had those. But for good reason. He wanted to work within and with the system to reform the system. By taking on flawed allies (which are the only kind available), Burke was able to make important, good things happen like peace with America and recognizing American independence. That changed history for the better. Godwin held himself aloof, which I respect, but I don't think Godwin's way is a moral imperative, and I don't think Burke should be criticized for having some practicality. (Note: There were significant limits to Burke's practicality. For example, his impeachment of Warren Hastings became sufficiently politically impractical that Fox wanted him to stop, but he wouldn't. And he had his party turn down running the Government over some ideals.)

Burke turned down a seat in the house of lords. Someone commented that taking it would honor the house more than Burke. If he was corrupted by the Government and aristocracy, and adopted their values, it must only have been in quite a limited way, or he would have taken that seat. Burke could also have had a well paid and powerful position working for the King, if he'd wanted. I think Burke did hard work for his entire political career, and made sacrifices for the cause, and he did it because he cared about reform, and he wasn't very interested in any rewards. He was not corrupt.