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I set up automatic posts with Zapier for both my YouTube channels, similar to how I have them for my CF articles.
I like this video’s RSVP embedded subtitles a lot more than https://discuss.criticalfallibilism.com/t/why-critical-fallibilism-podcast. It was immediately noticeable and I can easily listen at 2x with the RSVP. Audio-only at 2x (with my eyes closed) takes more concentration.
Although the transcription isn’t perfect, it seems like it’s worth the overhead (I can usually guess pretty easily based on phonetics). I’m also not noticing much of an issue WRT added punctuation from descript; it’s less of an issue here than the last one.
Automatically generated transcript from Descript (contains errors):
I’m a big fan of Ayn Rand and her philosophy objectivism. But there are some things I disagree with. So I’m going to talk about those.
What a lot of people would probably bring up is induction and possibly follow up with them because they know I’m a critical rationalist. And there is some disagreement there.
But I don’t regard it. Uh, all that major. Looking at what Iran actually wrote. She said that foul bosom is correct. And that she was not an expert on induction. And she barely mentioned induction in her box.
Some of her followers. Emphasized induction more. So there’s a larger disagreement.
Focusing on what ran thought herself.
One of the biggest disagreements. Is.
About looking at people and understanding them and judging them. Particularly from their appearance. Ramp talked about people’s faces and the eyes. And appearances. And connected those physical traits to mental traits.
She suggested that people with a certain face or a walk. Uh, it it could be trusted or untrustworthy that you could judge them. As honest and responsible. Or like a moocher.
When Dagney crash, lands in the Gulch. And sees Galt for the first time. There’s a long paragraph about his face. And it describes his face. With terms like confident and serene as. Attributing mental characteristics, emotions and ideas. To a particular face. It also talks about. Physical features like angular.
Which was one of the ones I in round liked.
But part of it is she describes the face in terms of the ideas that she thinks fit the face rather than the physical characteristics. A fair amount of the description. Isn’t actually about physical characteristics, but supposedly diagnosed learning this at a glance. Just by seeing him.
When Rourke and Dominique. First, see each other. At a distance at the quarry. It means a lot to both of them. They both somehow sort of instantaneously gained an understanding. Of the other person and recognize them as someone important. Or notable.
And I don’t think that you can glance at people and judge them or know them or understand them that doesn’t work.
There’s actually a comment in the Fountainhead. Where. Two, he says something like it’s a big myth that you can’t judge people by their faces. Something like that. I’m going to look it up real quick.
Okay. I found it. I’ll read up.
What’s the matter with both of you Ellsworth, why such talk over nothing at all? People’s faces and first impressions don’t mean a thing. That’s Kiki Holcomb talking.
After Ellsworth had a chat with Dominique.
Partly about, um, About Rourke and what faces Dominique finds attractive. She admitted that she finds Rourke’s appearance attractive and Ellsworth thought that she had slept up and given important information. So Kiki thinks. Faces and first impressions don’t mean anything. And Ellsworth says that my dear Kiki, he answered his voice soft and distant.
As if you were giving an answer, not to her, but to a thought of his own. As one of our greatest common fallacies, there’s nothing as significant. As a human face, north eloquent. We can never really know another person except by our first glance on home. Because in that glance, we know everything.
Even though we’re not always wise enough to unravel the knowledge. Have you ever thought about the style of a soul Kiki?
And I know that’s a bad guy speaking, but I think that’s basically Ram’s view.
Um, Ellsworth is why sometimes like some of the things he sells are right. And I think she basically agrees with us.
Because it comes up throughout like one working Dominique’s each other.
And it’s in multiple books.
I forgot off hand when Kira met Leo. Whether it was like that as well. I think they did sort of.
Rush into things like they didn’t just gradually got to know each other. They had some like quick meeting and. It stood out to each other.
So I think there’s a real problem here. And. It’s also related to her views on sex and romance. And it was also related to her views on communication. One of the larger problems in her books. Is the characters don’t communicate enough. They don’t just. Sort things out by having rational discussions.
So for example, Rourke and Dominique disagree. About. How to deal with society. Something like that. Um, it’s, it’s a major ongoing theme of the book. Is this disagreement. They have.
And Dominic goes and marries other people because of it.
And, uh, sabotages says commissions and so on.
And so what the book tells you is basically she has to learn it for herself and he can’t just explain it, talking about it. In words, won’t help. She has to get life experience and learn things herself somehow, independently. And that’s not all wrong, you know, life experience and trying things yourself and getting experience are useful.
And I’m trying to see things for yourself as very important. You can’t just take someone else’s word for it, but rational discussions explaining ideas. That’s also extremely important and it is underplayed on her books. It’s the same thing with John Galt. It doesn’t just go explain it all to Dagny.
He basically does explain it all to Francisco. And Ragnar Dennis strolled.
But for Dagny I’m Riordan.
They don’t get explanations if they’d had an explanation and they were trying to fit. Their life experiences, MC explanation. If they sort of already knew the conclusion in advance of golf had told him his. Conclusion then while they went through life, they could. Interpret the evidence to see if it fits Gold’s conclusion, they could be like, oh, I just have this experience. Instead of being confused.
'cause I know Girlz idea. I can see how his idea explains it. I can see why he’s right in this case. A lot of what happens when you go through life. If you don’t understand things correctly, you don’t know the right way to interpret them. So if someone has told you an interpretation, you can try it out and find that sometimes it makes sense.
So I think there’s something really wrong with the lack of communication.
And I think it’s connected with donate people by appearances at first glance, by their face. Um, that is also a lack of communication. It’s interesting and ironic because Rand. Wrote books, books are explicit communication. She tried to write down her ideas. I initially started with novels and that’s partly.
Related to this issue. Where she wanted to show, not tell to some extent she’s got, you know, gold speech and some, some telling on her novels where she tries to explain things and give arguments, but also she thought putting it in story form would be code.
Partly because she thinks people need to sort see it for themselves. So she gives them. The stories are a little bit like life experience that isn’t your own. But. You can sort of put yourself in the characters, eyes or shoes. And see the world through what their experiences were and then try to learn from that, which is a little bit different than if someone gives you like a philosophy lecture.
She did write nonfiction later. Afterwards.
And she knew how to debate people and make explicit arguments. And.
She did a lot of that. Um, people talk about visiting her and staying up into the night, debating things. So she was able to do that too.
And there’s some of it in her box. Um, Rourke tries to explain to a lot of different clients why his way is right and makes sense.
But it doesn’t get as much screen time as some of the other stuff.
So there’s less emphasis in Rand on.
People communicating about what they think and trying to meet clear unexplained things and understand each other through conversations. As opposed to. Um, Life experience. Um, the plot events going on and people taking actions.
You know what her story is focused on more. They’re not just a bunch of dialogue. And a lot of the dialogue is. About.
The events of the story rather than. Sitting in chairs and talking about philosophy. They certainly do talk about ideas sometimes here and there.
But they could do it more.
When rockin, Dominique first have sex. I don’t think they talked about it enough. I think there was a problem there. I don’t think it was rape. Like people have accused. Um, Dominique wanted at. And. The plot is the rock knew that.
But I don’t think that’s a good way to initiate sexual relationships with people, even though there were significant hints that that’s what she wanted. I still think people should just talk about it more. Say what they want more. And if people aren’t willing to do that, aren’t able to do that. Then be more careful and more conventional and gradual and stuff.
Don’t do risky things without talking about it. I don’t do unusual. Things, if you aren’t able to talk about them.
John Galt is a bit of a stalker with Dagney. He observes her from a far, for multiple years and falls in love with her without having a conversation with her. I think that’s actually bad.
It’s not fully about appearance. Um, he. Knows what work she does. He probably sees like quotes from her and newspaper articles. Or. Uh, maybe some of her speeches get distributed around the company or her orders got passed down or this or that, where he’s going to know what some of her words and ideas are.
And he also questions people about her. Which is partly stalkery like questioning. At the about her and finding out. What she looks like when she’s sleeping, that’s a violation of her privacy.
Anyway, it’s partly about who she is intellectually. But also, it seems to partly about like, he sees her and recognizes that she’s a heroine. That’s partly about the appearance stuff. That’s why he can fall in love with her without actually having a conversation with her. That plays a role.
Also related to Sox. Rand simply gives it too large, a role in life, in my opinion. She puts it in her box and makes up. Uh, pretty significant in we, the living. Fountain have an outlet strike. And all three of those books, sex and romance are integrated into the plot as a significant part of life. And what the characters do.
And.
I agree with some of what she says. Like she says that pleasure and joy are good. And important. In life.
And that it’s okay to celebrate some things. And be happy. I agree with that.
The people who like walked down on the hedonistic pleasures of the flesh and like hate and despise and condescend to it. There’s something wrong with that attitude. But I also do think. Ran. Overemphasizes sucks. And treats it as more important and more fun and more special than it is.
There’s also a sexism. Aspect. Which was. Much more prominent in.
Brand’s time period than it is tonight. Like sexism in society has gone down. We have female CEOs now. Dagny being an operating vice-president as a woman. Would be a lot less weird or notable today than it was in Rams time or in the society and outlets strike.
And so partly round was a feminist. She thought women were capable that their brains were fully functional, that someone like Dagney could be a great hero.
And she thought women could be involved in business and. It could be authors and philosophers.
However, she also placed some value on femininity. And gender roles. Partly in relation to sex and sexual relationships. Where she seemed to prefer the man to be stronger and wiser and the woman to some extent to surrender. Um, to be the submissive one.
And she made a comment once. Related to something about like a woman shouldn’t want to be president. It’s more of a man’s role.
I forgot exactly what she said, but I think the idea of something like. Women should want to have someone to walk up to, and if they have to take the lead. And be the strongest one.
The men are letting them down in something that’s going wrong. And.
And that they shouldn’t be fully happy with that.
I think she herself was a little bit unhappy with never finding a man who was better than she was. Who’s she could look up to, she had a husband who she liked, but she wasn’t various ways the more capable, intelligent, Person.
Um, she never found her superior. To look up to.
In closing. And Rand is my favorite thinker. Um, don’t take this the wrong way and think I don’t like her.
Her books are my favorite books.
I think she has extraordinary. I just don’t agree with everything.