antirational societies: an idea of Ayn Rand

[Elliot Temple]

> Man cannot survive as anything but man. He can abandon his means of survival, his mind, he can turn himself into a subhuman creature and he can turn his life into a brief span of agony—just as his body can exist for a while in the process of disintegration by disease. But he cannot succeed, as a subhuman, in achieving anything but the subhuman—as the ugly horror of the antirational periods of mankind’s history can demonstrate. Man has to be man by choice—and it is the task of ethics to teach him how to live like man. -- Ayn Rand, 1961 [The Objectivist Ethics in VoS]

Note, "the antirational periods of mankind’s history".

David Deutsch has not credited Rand for applying the term "antirational" to societies that do not live in a way proper to man -- static, closed societies -- before he did.

Some possibilities, all bad:

David did not read The Virtue of Selfishness.

David read it but didn't pay much attention.

David read it, forgot what it said, and chose not to refresh his memory.

David got the idea from Rand but didn't think credit was due or didn't pay much attention to the matter. (I doubt it's this one intentionally, but how much better is it if it's unintentional-irresponsible?)

It's also vaguely conceivable that David thought of antirational societies in 1980 (age 27) and only read VoS in 1985 or something like that, but I don't think that is the case. And if that had happened, it'd still be good to mention her valuable prior work even if one only read it after having the idea independently. (Unless one doesn't value it, which would be bad.)

-- Elliot Temple
http://curi.us/

[Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum]

On Feb 16, 2013, at 6:44 PM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:

>> Man cannot survive as anything but man. He can abandon his means of survival, his mind, he can turn himself into a subhuman creature and he can turn his life into a brief span of agony—just as his body can exist for a while in the process of disintegration by disease. But he cannot succeed, as a subhuman, in achieving anything but the subhuman—as the ugly horror of the antirational periods of mankind’s history can demonstrate. Man has to be man by choice—and it is the task of ethics to teach him how to live like man. -- Ayn Rand, 1961 [The Objectivist Ethics in VoS]
>
> Note, "the antirational periods of mankind’s history".
>
> David Deutsch has not credited Rand for applying the term "antirational" to societies that do not live in a way proper to man -- static, closed societies -- before he did.

David Deutsch (DD) uses the term "anti-rational" to apply to *memes*, not *societies*. Do you have a quote showing otherwise?

For societies, he uses the term "static", so no credit is warranted on this front.

The Beginning of Infinity (p. 390):
> An anti-rational meme’s natural home is a static society – not any static society, but preferably the one in which it evolved…

>
> Some possibilities, all bad:
>
> David did not read The Virtue of Selfishness.
>
> David read it but didn't pay much attention.
>
> David read it, forgot what it said, and chose not to refresh his memory.
>
> David got the idea from Rand but didn't think credit was due or didn't pay much attention to the matter. (I doubt it's this one intentionally, but how much better is it if it's unintentional-irresponsible?)
>
> It's also vaguely conceivable that David thought of antirational societies in 1980 (age 27) and only read VoS in 1985 or something like that, but I don't think that is the case. And if that had happened, it'd still be good to mention her valuable prior work even if one only read it after having the idea independently. (Unless one doesn't value it, which would be bad.)

Another possibility is that the idea of an anti-rational meme, as in a meme that survives by disabling criticism of itself, is original to DD, so no credit was warranted. AFAIK this is the case.