Interesting ideas. Nice to hear rational discussion on these points.

Interesting, serious, philosophical show.

🎉

Such a pathetic joke

Doherty admits in his book that Ayn Rand was an ignorant, incurious, under-read woman, so you have to wonder why her Obsessivist followers accept her pronouncements on things she didn't know much about so uncritically. By contrast, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and many of their early followers read voraciously, picked up new languages as adults, followed the developments in the sciences of their time, and could discuss ideas competently. That doesn't mean they were right about capitalism, but it does show the intellectual quality of the people who were drawn to this new way of thinking about economics and society early on.

Why didn't Marco den Ouden properly introduce Walter Block?

An engaging discussion with many answers begging more questions. Walter indicated he attended Brooklyn College, and I was curious about what year that was. I was also there (66-72) when the loose formation of the Libertarian Party began (meeting in an apartment at the Junction, for those familiar) with the “ad hoc committee against student terrorism” (CAST). Working at NBI (67-68), I was already familiar with Rand and was interested in his time period for some context. As a side note, Savvy Street has published several of Dr. Jerome Huyler’s essays, and he also attended BC at that time, majoring in philosophy. On a humorous note, Walter’s rocking back and forth was reminiscent of the old Grass Roots music video, lol.

50:00 and following:. Or else Objectivism has failed to thrive because *_it doesn't work._* In the real world, plenty of successful people didn't need Ayn Rand's help to get that way, especially because humans can function well through compartmentalization. Friedrich Engels & John Maynard Keynes were both successful businessmen & investors, for a couple famous examples.

Individualism versus collectivism is a false alternative. Do you know any Native Americans? They are tribally oriented, which is a form of collectivism which works with man's nature as part of his means of survival. But their humanity works just fine

But was Rand particularly "self-actualized"? She smoked, she ate a poor diet, she never exrrcised, apparently she didn't bathe regularly, and she was under-read in the subjects she made authoritative-sounding pronouncements about.

Thoughtful and principled, Rectenwald really answers some great questions in this interview. Michael talks about his transformation a number of years ago, I have found in myself a more gradual but inexorable change to now see the value of liberty and Libertarianism.

I have just finished watching episodes of Reading Between the Lines. I watched both after an hour listening to a runaway motormouth, and I can’t begin to express the appreciation of listening to someone who is thinking about what he wants to say. Listening to interviews is still a new activity of mine, and I’ll be tuning in again! Thanks for the show!

I agree that superstition (religion) is not a totalitarian concern in America, though it does influence many immoral laws concerning abortion and liquor and many other things. The hierarchy of values is a fascinating subject. I think it revolves around ballast, which allows for spontaneity. For human beings to be happy, they must have pride. And to have pride, they must work, and feel efficacious in that work, because it is their primary creative connection to reality and themselves. This is the ballast. Having that fruitful and happy ballast allows us to add compartments to our life-ship, such as love and friendships and children and hobbies and sports, etc. Those things can only be put into perspective and hierarchy with a fundamental ballast in place. The hierarchy is semi-rigid and thoughtful, but it allows for spontaneity in each moment of life within the structure. When we are being rational about our work ballast, and the rest of the hierarchy, if we make a bad choice spontaneously, our emotions will let us know, and we will immediately correct. That’s how it works for the rational person. Thanks for the podcast, guys.

Excellent explanation of the importance of the LLC. They are of top importance for all our economies up there with money. Sad that most people can't understand this, for example labor unionists and their political supporters who consider LLC's free money pots ready to be looted.

WOW! Now tell us how free market bailouts are. 🤮

I had no idea you did interviews, Vinay! I haven’t finished this one yet, I have a deadline to meet and have to leave this on halfway! I’ll be back!!

What about animals that don’t have verbal languages but are intelligent enough to have contextual body language and sound making?

Great title for the book.... "DRINKING THE WEF KOOLAID.... Suicide of the West"

Supposed capitalists would not promote anti-capitalist principles unless they first rigged the market to favor themselves within the context of anti-capitalism. How might they do this? Through crony capitalism (erasing the distinction between government and large corporations), technocracy and depopulation. Technocracy gives them total control over people and depopulation gives them fewer people that need to be controlled. ESG (Environmental, Social, Governmental), DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) and CRT (Critical Race Theory) are the ideological window dressing for what amounts to a campaign of thievery and mass murder. Technology is ready to be deployed in the form of 5G, Internet of Things, robotics, etc., in order to establish a universal electronic concentration camp for all but the elite. Through technology, you can be monitored, and your compliance is reflected in your social credit score, which in turn affects your ability to work, buy, sell, access your own money, etc. It is fairly easy to see this technological development as it occurs. It is more difficult to see the depopulation agenda that is being put into place. Insistence that people have fewer children; rage over the Supreme Court's refusal to uphold Roe v. Wade; feminism; promotion of gender confusion; normalization of the LGBT lifestyle, exaggerated climate change hysteria; contempt for the church and traditional family, artificially created supply chain disruptions...these are just the beginning signs of what is in store for us. Through 1) bioweapons masquerading as naturally occurring epidemics; 2) "vaccines" and medical treatments that induce sterility and increase rather than decrease mortality; and 3) energy and agricultural policies that will impoverish people in the West and induce mass starvation in the Third World, depopulation will proceed apace. By the time it is noticed, the control grid will be in place so that resistance is futile and even stronger depopulation measures may be taken.

Rectenwald seems to follow the path of many intellectuals. The “ethos” of Marx is alluring, while the reality is repulsive. Dr Soul (Thomas Sowell) had the same epiphany, realizing the failure of centralized control and overwhelming government control of society.

I have heard Dr. Rectenwald's story a few times before. It mirrors my journey in a lot of ways. I was never a Marxist, but the process was very similar. I did not have to endure such a degrading process as to have all of my peers attack me and seek to cancel me. I was a rather mainstream conservative who started reading a lot of Libertarian and Austrian-leaning literature and opinion pieces and, slowly, I began to see that my belief in limited government was very flawed, and logically inconsistent. It was the logical and operational inconsistencies and absurdities that finally convinced me to abandon Statism completely. Dr. Rectenwald has endured a lot, but he is a much better man for it. He has learned that liberty is superior to any other way of organizing a society. In fact, liberty is almost the anti-organization of society, what Austrian economists call spontaneous, undirected order.

Conservatives and libertarians say, we need to "wake" up the public, but they are against the "woke." The Queen knighted Henry Kissinger who groomed knight Klaus Schwab. These are BRITISH AGENTS serving GENOCIDAL BRITISH GEOPOLITICS. Those who focus on Klaus Schwab fail to inform the public. The British through Privy Councilor Sidney Webb groomed Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin. Privy Councilor Malloch-Brown is a trustee to Soros Open Society. Rhodes agents infest Biden's administration. This is a British-English dictatorship that right wing and left wing ideologists can't handle. The English are killing off the world. CRT should accept Benjamin Franklin's dictum that the English are the whites and that British imperialism is white supremacy. "The English make up the principle body of white people on earth." Franklin characterized Europeans as "swarthy." A real revolutionary movement is needed to kick British servants out of America. Conservatives worship Churchill ("We welcome Soviet ships on the high seas," iron curtain speech). The Deep State is a group of British agents advancing British world imperialism/white supremacy: CFR, Rhodes Scholars, mason, Skull and Bones. The unipolar nature of the Deep State is because it singularly serving British imperialism. sites.google.com/view/gbg-journal

Are You My Conscious? - Dory What?!

That “transportation” theory or hypothetical whatever would be extremely interesting. That Paradigm would change much debate. Excellent

Thanks for explaining science Ian.

It's becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with primary consciousness will probably have to come first. The thing I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990's and 2000's. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I've encountered is anywhere near as convincing. I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there's lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order. My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar's lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman's roadmap to a conscious machine is at arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461

Learn more about Julian Jaynes's theory by reading his book, "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind," and visiting the Julian Jaynes Society at www.julianjaynes.org/ Our latest book, "Conversations on Consiousness and the Bicameral Mind," can be ordered here: www.julianjaynes.org/product/conversations-on-consciousness-and-the-bicameral-mind/

𝓅𝓇𝑜𝓂𝑜𝓈𝓂 😝

Good interview. Particularly informative as to how far he has come intellectually in six years as he claims to have supported Marxism prior to voting for Trump. If you have a link to reach Mr Rectenwald could you post it as I'd like to send him a brief message?

Vinay, a fabulous interview! My sincere thanks. I was thinking that his new book was already out...

I can't find his new book anywhere. When will it be published?

Human flourishing in the most literal and tangible sense means the conditions where young men can pair up with young women and start families. This is alien to Rand's understanding of the world, given the hostile way she portrays mothers, family life and children in her novels. So to me it's weird and dishonest when Objectivists try to rebrand Ayn Rand as a philosopher of human flourishing in the way that really matters, when she promoted using sex for sterile hedonism instead of generating new human life.

Is there any evidence on recent people with very low language knowledge who probaly do not posses conciousness?

I find the redefinition of consciousness inconsistent with the evolutionary process and historical observations (and maybe that's the point). As Rand would say "check your premises."

Great points about Dunkirk and the Superhero genre today. There are a lot of other points that I still need to digest.

Wonderful timing on the release of this. 60th anniversary of The Objectivist Ethics delivered at UW Madison. Chance? Coincidence? Intentionally? Never have we needed a metaphysical, secular reiteration of Values than at present. I am a Life form. My metaphysical Purpose is Continuity. I Continue through the processing of energy and procreation. I experience myself, along with all other life forms, through comfort and discomfort. I experience myself, along with many other life forms, through happiness and unhappiness. And then...the sentient experience. Humans have created Tools to insulate ourselves from the immediacy of Mortality. Objective and subjective Values are now in play. Equity or Inequity of interaction seems to be the dynamic. Relationships and choices are a dynamic that does not need to be believed, yet cannot be avoided all inclusive of Life. I hope this animates and does not appropriate.

A most enlightening and far-reaching discussion. Great to listen to.

Wonderful start!