If you read Fountain Head or Atlas Shrugged word for word literally, I can understand the negative opinions. I think the value lies in the broader themes of non-conformity, thinking for yourself, conviction and being willing to act on your own conclusions. Howard Roark being a great example of the above. I think it’s a philosophy you should hold yourself too, not necessarily others or the rest of the world. A little bit like stoicism.

Yaron, your words hit me like a ton of bricks. That age when I started to realize that everything an adult said was not true and I started making an effort to think for myself was at the age of 7. I figured out pretty quickly that if I wanted to understand the world I had to do it myself because the adults around me and in church were unable to answer my questions about religion and the world. They just blew me off and told me to go play with the other kids. The world and people didn't make sense to me until I got a copy of Altas Shrugged at 28. I was so mad at that book that I vowed to refute every word of it. In trying to refute it, I started to learn it and the rest is history. I've been studying Objectivism for 28 years and I still marvel at the great achievement that it and Objectivism really is. Thank you for all you do in promoting and teaching it.

So true. Not only did Ayn Rand cover everything in her system of philosophy, from Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics, Politics, and Aesthetics - she also reminded people, particularly young people, who are thinking indepedently for the first time, that they had already lost something - if they've blindly accepted traditional norms, especially, the morality of altruism.

I had helicopter parents, but instead of forcing me constantly into achievements, they forced me into nihilism. Rand saved my life.

Speaking as someone who left school at 15,and didn't go to university but read voraciously and am eternally curious about the world and all its dimensions, rand does what so many Russian writers do so well, uses storytelling to tell us something about humanity and the challenges of ideology. It can be so difficult to reject ideology and have the conviction to adhere to your own truth, but ultimately that's where real progress and achievement reside.

Reminds me of how many times I've told my kids they have to do their schoolwork even though it seems pointless because I had to do the same when I was a kid.

Thank you Lex for asking this question the way you asked it and such a brilliant response.

I've intuitively felt this explanation for years and I'm so happy that I was finally able to hear it verbalized so well

"Why do people dismiss Objectivism?" "They aren't Idealistic enough." And this is what happens when your magnum opus is full of mustache-twirling straw man characatures rather than steelmen. Surely Brook could have given a counterargument about phenomonology or the strategic game theory of banding together to form a social contract to survive a Hobbesian nightmare. No, it's just all of those idealists out there became cynical.

Lex your a musician,so I'd like to let you know,if you don't I already that the album 2112 by Rush is heavily influenced by Ayn Rand.Thats a big deal considering they are considered the godfathers of progressive rock,and that was a "concept"album.

To admit the Fountainhead is right, is to accept some people are more talented than others, and some are grifters that leech off of the talented. If one fears they're in one of these negative categories, it's possibly eye opening - but then embarrassing. So they must meet that truth with derision.

Maybe because she wasn’t original in any way and put in none of the work required to justify her “ideas”. Philosophers don’t do what Ayn Rand does; perhaps pawnshop theologians are more comparable.

Such an inspiring conversation, thank you!

Once you procreate and choose to build a family many philosophies become untenable

I love this. This is my journey as well. Thanks for sharing. Gives me hope and joy to know others think about the same things.

Who did the art work on the opening seen! “The gold dude with wings on his ears?”

That 80 page section in the John gulch book was insane. Impressively insane. But insane.

I'm honestly happy that Brook didn't keep interrupting Lex.

Really enjoyed this conversation.

True, practical, integral thinkers are the ones who really make the massive impact on society. Having the big picture while executing on minutia is the way to really achieve big results. We get our clients to this stage of being, doing and having all the time.

I was blown away when I read her books and learned about her philosophy. I would also encourage people to learn about Nathaniel Brandon, with whom she had a love affair for many years when she was 50 and he was 25. When he tried to end it, she became enraged and banished him out of her life. She's human, and affairs of the heart are neither logical nor obedient.

Thank you Lex for making your conversations public. With these amazing people that I don’t have in my life to have these conversations with. I don’t know if you know Paul Cottrell from Harvard but I’ve gotten to know him through KZfaq in Jan when the virus first hit an over time on fb I think you guys would hit it off.

My experience with Objectivism goes back to the 70s and 80s when I was completely immersed in Ayn Rand's philosophy. I read all of her books and went through all of the Ayn Rand Institute lecture series while at the same time working on a degree in philosophy. I became extremely adept at applying Objectivist ideas to the point that I really never lost an argument or floundered in any philosophical discussions. I am sure that I came across as both very perceptive and at times irritatingly confident. After several years of immersion in the Objectivist subculture I began to notice that the personal behavior of other Objectivists who I knew, not to mention the personal behavior of Ayn Rand herself, was often rather self serving in a shallow sense of that phrase. People would cheat on their spouses or girl/boy friends, terminate relationships with people who were in their minds "moochers" or "mystics," and generally just became self-anointed elitists who believed they really did not have to go any further in their intellectual explorations because, well hey, they already had a complete, integrated objective philosophy and could therefore dispense with ideas that Rand had already addressed and taken down. Rand even provided her followers with a way of linking an opponent's way of thinking to their moral character, which she termed psychoepistemology. This became a license to quickly evaluate and take down people in ones personal and public life because when they disagreed with you they were not only wrong, they were losers. If you want to know more about these things I recommend you read some of the books by the psychologist Nathaniel Brandon, with whom Rand had an open extramarital affair justified by her definition of selfish love. Didn't really work so well for either of their spouses, for whom it was taken as a litmus test for their understanding of rational love. See Barbara Brandon's writings on this as well. In any case, because I had a strong and growing background in Plato and Aristotle and then gradually read the works of most philosophers whom Ayn Rand had identified as basically evil, such as as Immanuel Kant, I realized that there were major holes in Objectivism which, in Rand's attempt to integrate all the branches of philosophy on the basis of rational self interest, had been paved over to make the whole thing work. There are problems in her idea that humans are born tabula rasa and by nature (metaphysically) are wholly individualistic, ignoring what her vicarious teacher Aristotle recognized that we are both individualistic AND social creatures. Rand allowed no formal concept of friendship as being anything more than an exchange-based relationship that could, like a contract, be cancelled at any breach. To begin understanding the relative depth, nuance and scope of Rand's ethics compared to Aristotles, first read her book The Virtue of Selfishness and then Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics. In doing so you will see why no one thinks or has ever thought the latter is not to be taken seriously. For someone who lived over two thousand years ago he is well ahead of Rand in his thinking. What propelled Rand's ideas to the top of the charts for those who had never been lit up by philosophical thinking were her novels, which as with all novels are written to take you on a journey. The problem is that when you package philosophical ideas with idealized characters it can affect your intellectual judgement, especially if this is your first exposure as a young person to philosophical arguments and rhetoric. Unfortunately for many who fall under the Randian spell with no other learning or life experience to break it, it is the last philosophical magic they will ever sample, a concoction with enough power to make them think that they can render "objective" opinions on all sorts of things about which they have no real experience or expertise. God forbid any discussion of consciousness beyond the bromide that it is awareness, pure and simple, or that compassion is good for our character AND has survival value for our species. And how about panpsychism? Not if it won't integrate! As for those who knock Rand as something you go through when you are young and then drop later in life, I disagree with them as well because that sort of characterization can be cynicism about any kind of idealism or youthful excitement and hope. As an Aristotelian I favor a more careful and fairer and educated appraisal. With that kind of approach you will keep growing and remain forever excited about what there is yet to know. You will lose this perspective if you become a philosophical know-it-all and worse yet, like someone in a cult, will never know the difference.

I can only enjoy Dr. Brooks when he's in "Teaching mode" On his own podcast he's just another critic and is always contrarian on everything he talks about ...... But get him on with other people, and out of the constant critic mode, he becomes much more informative and easier to listen to.

Question Lex Is it my death I'm scared off Or The Payment for my sins Am I the Patron Saint of Bad Or just an illusion in a Dream Have I the Courage to step back Look inside myself again Look inside and see the truth Look inside and see the pain ? Look inside Look inside my Endless Soul.... Wrote that when I was 14, Only now at 55 do I get it, 🤔🧐

Ayn Rand has some important ideas, such as Self-Determination, Self-Reliance, and the “pull yourself up by your boot straps” mentality, but in my view she misses the mark on her idea of love. She argues that love is only reserved for those morally deserving. She equates in her book, “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal,” that unconditional love for somebody, no matter their mistakes, to the ideas of socialism and communism. “To divorce love from values is to confess one’s longing for the unearned,” this is a direct quote from the above mentioned book. I think she has the idea that the individual(s) is(are) begging for unconditional love but in my mind, the idea is the individual decides for themselves to give unconditional love because we all share the same struggle of life. Just one example of her philosophy.

“Sit and watch as the young grow old.”- Creed

People don't "dismiss" Ayn Rand, they think she is an idiot. And then on the other side of the spectrum there are those who think her a genius, and hang on her every word. In between are those who have read "The Fountainhead" and totally missed the point that she was trying to make.

6:02 some of the best minds go to some of the best universities to work on some of the smallest things :/

Lex, you mention Rand and Nietzsche a lot. I wondered if you had read many other philosophers, because I think you would be equally (if not more) WOWed by the ideas in all the other works in the philosophical canon. It seems that these works are excellent because these are the ones you have read.

I really loved the Fountainhead and the focus on the 2 main characters: one who found the craft that brought him life, so was obsessed by it, he didn't do it to make others admire him or accept him, he just did it because that was his nature, and because of that he was an innovator in his field and could stand strong by the strengths of his own merits without the need for the consent from the crowd. Then there was the other one, who was obsessed by the admiration from the crowd, so he would copy from old greats and innovators and call it his own. The crowd loved him for it but yet he was always left unfulfilled, when the curtain fell and the noise of the crowd would leave, he was left with himself, and, the demons and nightmares for not living for himself.

You're asking people who can't even grasp the idea of the individual why exactly they don't understand a book that is all about the individual. These people think that somehow you are responsible for the well being of people you don't even know and that charity is an expected responsibility rather than something that comes voluntary out of the kindness of someones heart, of course they couldn't even begin to understand objectivism. They call Ayn's philosophy selfish while at the same time want others to be responsible for their wellbeing.

1:00 LF. "I've never really heard anybody cleanly articulate their opposition to Ayn Rand in my own private little circles, and so on. Maybe ...Why is there such an opposition to Any Rand? and ...what's so misunderstood about Ayn Rand?" Dear Lex: Albert Ellis, the behavioral psychologist, wrote critiques of her philosophy and challenged her to public debates, which she declined. She also declined opportunities to submit her work for review by Am. academic philosophers, which I believe was a telling strategic error.

I don't dismiss her but the reason I don't give her that much weight is simply this, she claims humans are not and are not capable of being altruistic. We're pack animals it's part of our nature to be selfish and selfless it's the black and white way of thinking that puts me off. Life is balance everything is about balance.

The way Yaron explains what academia does to you is what Ayn Rand did to her inner circle of followers. With her it was conform to her philosophy or be cast away.

Objectivism puts the center of moral behavior as concern for the self. It glorifies individual performance and claims that a pure meritocracy is the only ethical social structure. The most challenging concept is that altruism in this moral system is equated with evilness and theft. I think the best criticism of Objectivism is that it does not give enough weight to the debt we owe to the social structures of society; no man is an island and we should recognize that individual success is part luck and depends a great deal on the environment and building on what others have enabled you to do (we stand in the shoulders of giants). Rand of course escaped a brutal form of communism, so her philosophy is a reaction to that extreme. I think a more mature and well thought out philosophy of living includes a mixture of recognition of individual accomplishment as well as the humility toward the debt we owe our fellow members of society.

Some people will succeed, some will succeed more than others and some people will fail. We can't all succeed optimally. The challenge is that one must convince individuals to succeed fully in the hopes that they succeed optimally at best or are able to rationalize failure without losing the will to live.

I really needed to hear this Lex. Thank you so much.

Lex, I love your podcast. I really do. You’re clearly a smart guy and you have great guests and overall you do a great job. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but might I suggest a more nuanced reaction to things you like when your guests say something that impresses you? When you describe everything they say as “beautiful” when you have a positive reaction to it, it makes the discussion less idk than maybe it could be. Interviewers aren’t supposed to dominate discussions obviously and you certainly don’t, but it would be ok if there was more of you in there, particularly if you found some new ways to communicate how you respond internally to something you like. Just a thought. Plz keep up the great work!

Don't you love thoughtless dismissal? You'll find it all over. It's group think. It's easier than critical thought.

I think they're touching on something very true about academia. But I also think Friedrich Nietzsche > Ayn Rand

I was actually just talking to a buddy about when he remembers first kind of having the conscious self aware and reflective thought. And it reminded me of how young we all really are in relevance to how long we’ve had that conscious thought and how much or how little time could be left. Like I’m 24 but I’m only twelve when it comes to goal setting and personal expectations for the completion of those goals. Give yourself a break guys.

Ayn Rand's philosophy of self-interest is particularly useful when you have kids. Press, "F" for kids.

Dismiss her? Uhh, because she simply ignored the sometimes/often superior result of disciplined coordinated activity of individuals in groups?

Love this interview, everything Yaron Brooks says here is so true! If only the world and people really understood how things were, maybe life would be a bit better for all!

the romantic part of the rand is probably worth a lot more tho ;) the spirit of dreaming and following your own inclinations is an essential part of being human, and we should work to avoid a divorce with that. but in the end, it's not so simple, and I'm sure the scientist in you appreciates that, that even someone who was so wrong about one aspect of things, can still have voiced important ideas, and the dismissal of those ideas because we find the rest of the persons views silly or wrong is just stupid, and we should all learn to better handle to social relations in a way that facilitates free-thinking and availability of good science and information.

Dad/lex when you coming home with those cigarettes.

There is no collective. There is no we. There is no it takes a village. We're all have thoughts, ideas, and plans. No can take that from you. It's yours just reach out and grab it. Keep it. Make it true

Did I miss even a scintilla of Rand's philosophy here? Her Selfishness Uber Alles.

We should make a bio picture with Aubry plaza as rand.

I never knew about this stigma over Ayn Rand until after I read The Fountainhead. It was very shocking and I never understood it but now I totally understand. God I love that book.

What Lex is describing is exactly the way the looters and James Taggart responded to questions around “why”? Evasive responses and no constructive arguments ever made. Interesting seeing the parallel between the content of the book and its readership.

This was fascinating as ive let my predisposed biases tell me what to think about ayn rand. Most I have heard has been that Shrugged is not that well written. I loved this notion of wonder, and I think my country Finland has a pretty idea rich environment, but the conformity of surrounding norms tend to suffocate wilder ideas that's for sure. Reading more into Rand, I kinda get her way of thinking of reality. Shame it is associated by grifters as well

The legit dismissal of Ayn Rand comes from the fact that in her books people are either on the good side or the bad side. In reality the line between good and bad crosses every man's heart.

It is idealistic to think that one is the “center of the universe” and that natural processes in a Laissez-faire framework will ultimately lead to a better society, the same with the left but in reverse.... as one grows older one realizes that no idealistic frame work is perfect and further more whether it’s systems of industry or systems of government they all take advantage. The middle path typically is a good vantage point because life is a balance. Society by definition is a social contract and that requires working together with multitudes of frameworks.

Maybe a cigar is just a cigar, and maybe Rand's ideas are just as naive and shallow as they look.

Lex you have inspired me brother. I fought Cancer twice and lost a big piece of my face to amputation. A tumor ate up my jaw and I was labeled an ugly freak. I started over from scratch, and started a KZfaq channel to inspire others who feel ugly and not good enough for this superficial world.. my face will not define me. with positive projection you can overcome any mental or physical hurdle. go check me out and subscribe if you want to help me grow. i want to give people a spark of change and join me on my journey!

I won’t get into the whole philosophy debate and all but just saying Anthem is one of my favorite books of all time. Really struck a chord with me especially the second half of the book. ‘For in the temple of his soul each man is alone’ gave me chills and still does

So true. I quit research after my PhD for those reason among others. Academia is a meat grinder

The William Edward Hickman affair should tell you what you need to know about Rand

Yaron is excellent in this interview.

Nietszche was a real thinker willing to take the logic of his premises to their fullest extent, in ideas and in practice. Nobody has taken the logic of atheism to its end point better. Ayn Rand was a salesperson, a gatherer and marketer of the original thoughts of other philosophers, not a thinker. She sold a very narrow doctrine that had only a passing relationship with reality. "Anthem" was her one good literary work. I say this as a person who read and was energized by Ayn Rand as a teenager, but who discovered the world is much more complex, interesting, and full of joy, and can't be contained by her simplistic categories. Don't let the Rand cultists hijack you into their compound. The world is big and full of possibility.

I just think she was a bad fiction writer, nothing to do with her ideology.

I dismiss Ayn Rand because she failed to interact with her philosophical contemporaries.

We have to challenge everything that is based on deception.

People roll eyes on Rend not because they fear to chalage there ideas or because loss of youth ideals, it is because people feel deep selfishnes and narcissism of here's philosophy, something that is acsseptable while you are young and exploring your self and the world .Bath when your start to mature and take responsibility for yourself and those close aurraund, it is over with teenage selfishnes (that if you are not a narcissist).

Who is John Galt?

Rand is more capitalist (leaning anarcho-capitalist) and vehemently anti-communist. And look how things are playing out today with the left's ridiculous policy and cultural pushes. Seizing the assets of the productive, rewarding the lazy. Persistent encroachment in individual rights, constantly moving the goalposts to inevitably make you a criminal. Crony business and politics. Shifting the Overton window via mob violence and control of institutions. It's all there in here books, and it's all here today. And what the left hates the most? In the end, they lose.

She had some good ideas but she was a mediocre writer. Both Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead were twice as long as they needed to be, because she was too proud for an editor. Atlas Shrugged got just plain stupid at the end with the door that crumbled and Dagny rescuing Francisco and all the melodrama. Ayn Rand was a bitter, sexually repressed meth addict who treated people horribly. We can appreciate her good ideas and still recognize her for what she was. Like the 12-step programs say, take what you like and leave the rest.

I am John Galt. To say we all are, but avoiding collectivist "we" mentality.

Good question, but it completely avoids the question: was Rand right?

People roll their eyes because it's a cliche. Most people that talk about them both haven't even read their works.

Why do people dismiss Ayn Rand? Hitchens put it bluntly: "I don't think there's any need to have essays advocating selfishness among human beings. I don't know what your impression has been, but some things require no further reinforcement."

It's because there's more to ethical judgements than the prism of extreme individualism.

Lex have you seen my bunny? Btw, great talk gents. I soooo agree!

Lex is making what Objectivists call an integration.

Academic philosophers dismiss her (uncharitably but understandably) because she had a narcissistic meltdown at a Harvard Aesthetic Conference in 1962. Moreover, the reaction was in response to what is standard practice in academia: asking questions. She was so bent out of shape she would no longer acknowledge her friend and host at the conference, John Hospers. So please at least acknowledge a basic paradox. The 'bold' thinker who bucked convention also withdrew from intellectual scrutiny and adopted a victim-posture with this key bit of context hidden. This doesn't mean there isn't value in what she says, but her personal difficulty with criticism needs to be understood to evaluate her properly.

Descarte did, "doute everything to know it", Al-Ghazali also before him

FUNNY HOW THIS CLIP, DESPITE ITS TITLE, DEPARTS FROM AYN RAND A FEW MINUTES AFTER BEGINNING AND GETS INTO LARGER CONSIDERATIONS ,I did enjoy the discussion/ guess a critique of Ayn Rand wd have to be found somewhere else.

I roll my eyes when I hear a person mentions Ayn Rand as some kind of a genius philosopher, especially if he never read any philosophy book but Ayn Rand.

She LOVED Social security.

If you listen closely...you will not be able to simply 'shrug' off this interview. 😉

I really don't like that sentiment about "ideals". People are sometimes just straight up "wrong" about what they think they want, or how they think the world should be, etc. Some people also take it too far and basically have their imagination gutted, but if anyone said to me "I've never given up on something" I'd think they're either full of shit or that they've lived a very sheltered, guided, and overall incredibly lucky life. Which you know, good for them if they're happy, but I question how "scalable" that is in the sense that everyone should live like that or if everyone would even be happy living like that.

I think many people have issues with her hypocrisy, which is a knock on Rand herself rather than her philosophy. Taking government aid is wrong and weak...unless she does it. Infidelity is not wrong...unless you’re cheating on her. Her philosophy itself, divorced from her, is much harder to attack.

I do not know ayn rand well, but is what yaron saying something that ayn rand wrote? Or is this yaron's interpretation of ayn rands popularity? ..Where can I find the ayn rand of her speaking on this if its her idea?

Awareness is the ONLY constant of ALL experience what could be more fundamental to reality than that?

People dismiss her because it is unreasonable and illogical to refuse to acknowledge that reason and logic have their limits. They are limited to the material tangible world and the do not relate to the intangibles like love, fear, hope. Humans are driven by emotions and anyone who thinks we SHOULD be guided by reason and logic has never suffered and therefore can understand that an apparently illogical person is such because or pain and suffering which is...an intangible. The woman was brilliant but every theory fails when it crosses a certain boundary of magnitude - if it becomes too extreme it eats its self, reason taken too far becomes unreasonable. This is all not to mention the most obvious flaw in rationalism- EVERYONE considers themselves rational.

I think people dismiss Nietzsche's nihilism because it's depressing, and people in general are hopeful species.

Nobody’s introspective today. We have given up our freedom because we don’t wants to take complete responsibility of ourselves. She saw the future and we refuse to believe we were here.

It's because her psychopathic extremes are often used to justify and condone many different types of criminal, anti social and abusive behaviour. Her work has helped many white collar criminals in a range of sectors to sleep at night and even victim blame. An example would be mining executives who who have communities in slave labour camps and given Ayn Rand's rational you can blame the children for not standing up for themselves and that's why they shrivel up and die in these camps. So these people could actually justify their actions as really doing a service to these communities by forcing them to step up and if they don't step up they don't deserve to live. This is a very very slippery slope! We see exampls of this is with the Covid lockdowns in many countries. The US government has bailed out their biggest donors while leaving the majority of the population to struggle and starve. A compassionate balanced and practical plan with safety nets and support like Sweden or New Zealands is very un-Randist. So she illustrates extremes and important potential costs and benefits without really clarifying the attacks on humanity that often come through her work. It's deeply psychopathic and an interesting perspective to study and be aware of.

I love her

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

It's an idealised version of capitalism that is not attainable for the majority of people. So should they suffer because of that? Because they do in Ayn Rand's fantasy Atlas Shrugged. Though the analogy to communism when discussing the factory that changed to promoting need over expertise haunted me for a long time. That was scarier than most horror books.

Misinterpreting Nietzsche is what people do when they first encounter him. When you realize what he is really saying it's really something.

Is their anywhere ayn Rand’s ideas have been tried? There was the free state project and another weird ocean based floating libertopia which both failed. How would objectivists deal with a pandemic or climate change ?

shouldve asked about his son

KZfaq: Hitchens destroys the cult of Ayn Rand

So funny, I brought up Ayn Rand In my intro to philosophy class and my teacher did exactly what Lex about her being dismissed. I always remember that happening and so crazy to hear someone else say it happened to them. That just made my evening

Because it’s fashionable amongst modern day hipsters not to be into her…because we need to get those people on a stage & actually debate them & make it public & show the ideals…not just in small circles behind closed doors. 😎

Never heard of Rand. Thanks for the tip. Hope I can find a decent translation because this sounds very interesting.