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From: hans@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Hans Huttel)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: sci.philosophy.objectivism
Message-ID: <1664@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 17 Jan 90 12:43:52 GMT
References: <8284@portia.Stanford.EDU>
Reply-To: hans@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Hans Huttel)
Organization: Laboratory for the Foundations of Computer Science, Edinburgh U
Lines: 37

In article <8284@portia.Stanford.EDU> harris@portia.Stanford.EDU (Joe Harris)
writes:
>
>     It has been suggested, here and elsewhere, that a suitable alternative
>to creating a separate Objectivist newsgroup would be to have Objectivists
>post to sci.philosophy.meta.  

In my judgement, this could only mitigate the situation temporarily; it is not
a solution at all.  What is needed is rec.humor.objectivism, a newsgroup where
individuals who (like the author of this postings) are not impressed by 
Objectivism can ridicule the Objectivist postings.

      The `revolution' which Ayn Rand created in the minds of some people is 
catastrophical and least of all ethical.  Her single great achievement, in 
my judgement, is that of getting a large number of devoted followers, the
so-called `librarians'.  These people find it possible to go on and on in vague 
terms about `the cognitive processes by which a human abstracts from perceptual
data', and consequently makes possible an unprecedented number of postings in
newsgroups devoted to the physical sciences and the humanities. 

This is why rec.humor.objectivism is justified--because the central
problem which Objectivism offers the answer to is how a discussion of the 
relationship of perceptual data to abstract ideas (or Central America or
what have you) can provide us with a good laugh.

     If it is true that rec.humor.funny is unused, why not dismantle
it?  The resulting unused newsgroup could become rec.humor.objectivism.
Of course, rec.humor.funny would have to be completely gone--the
name would be rec.humor.objectivism but the charter would be completely
unchanged.  Those who have suggested that Objectivists post to rec.humor.funny,
is this acceptable?  If not, why not?


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