Does objectivism claim to offer the ultimate truth or a better approximation?
>I'm not sure what you think you know about science. Crack open a
>behavioral psychology text if you think the subconscious doesn't distort
>perception. A simple example: Many liquor advertismements have
>airbrushed or painted pictures of erect male genitals embedded in them.
>Experiments show that only 5% of Americans see them immediately, while
>almost all of a pupolation of Inuits picked them out.
The subconscious (or conscious mind) can distort the relationships between
perceptions, not the perceptions themselves. The Inuits thought in a way that
picked out the genitals more easily than the Americans, but both saw the same
ad. If different people took the archives of CoV and wrote a book, different
people would single out different items which they thought to be most important.
On this screen you can see the words as ideas, memetic patterns, or nonsense.
>>Good summary of why things like objectivist axioms, which might be
>>seemingly
>>irrefutable, should at least be open to criticism and debate, like
>>everything
>>else.
>They are of course not "seemingly irrefutable" to most people.
Within the context of people like me who've already been "brainwashed", the
axioms should still be open to debate. Within the context of the other people
who have not accepted such axioms, the axioms could still apply, just like
people who don't know about memes could be affected by memes.
--David