Daylight Atheism, Adam Lee, censorship and Social Justice Warriors

For six months I was a frequent and enthusiastic participant in Adam Lee's ongoing discussion of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged at his site Daylight Atheism, but on Sunday, February 23 I quit because I was censored.

Although I am an atheist, I didn't need confirmation that atheists can be just as authoritarian and as devout worshippers of authority figures as any religionist - I had seen what the mostly atheist followers of Richard Dawkins had done when a woman in the atheist community dared to express an opinion with which Richard Dawkins disagreed. And then of course there is atheist hero Sam Harris, defender of torture and ethnic profiling.

From very early on in my analysis of Atlas Shrugged, it struck me that it was very likely that Ayn Rand had Asperger's syndrome. When I googled Ayn Rand and Asperger's I found one of Rand's fans making the same suggestion:

...It is almost certain that Rand had Asperger’s Syndrome, a condition that has only come into greater awareness since the early 1990s...  

...It is possible that neither  author knew enough about Asperger’s to make the necessary connections, but there is abundant evidence for this proposition, particularly in Heller’s description of Rand’s childhood. It is perhaps just as well that neither author explicitly considers this possibility, because it would be all too easy to pathologise Rand, leading to a reductionist psycho-biography that would have done disservice to her ideas and influence. 

Descriptions of Rand's character from many sources as well as video evidence make it clear that she had traits much in common with what are said to be Asperger's traits. And an important reason for why "Atlas Shrugged" doesn't work as an actual critique of real-world socioeconomic systems, is because Rand probably viewed the world through undiagnosed Asperger's syndrome. It is the theory that makes the most sense.

Now I'm certainly opened to arguments against the notion that Rand had Asperger's, but I didn't get arguments last September when I first brought up the subject at Daylight Atheism - I got abuse. And Adam Lee was perfectly fine with this - which of course should have been a red flag to me then. An anonymous coward (although his true identity appears to be Alexander Weaver) who goes by the screen name Azkyroth, who rarely made any substantial contributions to the Atlas Shrugged conversation was the worst offender:

Azkyroth  Nancy McClernan • 6 months ago

The book will make so much more sense if you look at it as revenge-porn by someone with undiagnosed Asperger's Syndrome

No, it doesn't.

And fuck you back.

If you follow the "No, it doesn't" link you can see that Azkyroth's evidence for why I am wrong is a TV Tropes article that supports everything I said - the traits listed as indicative of Asperger's are very much like descriptions of Ayn Rand in the two biographies and two memoirs by her biggest sycophants, Nathaniel and Barbara Branden. None of these authors suggests that Rand had Asperger's but their reports of her behavior aligns very much with the descriptions.

Adam Lee tried to turn this into an issue of the wrongness of diagnosing the dead. First, there is a long tradition in literary analysis of diagnoses of dead writers and Ayn Rand is certainly not the first famous dead person about whom it as been speculated had Asperger's.

But also, hypocritically, Lee never had a problem with anybody suggesting that Ayn Rand was a psychopath.

The idea that Rand was a psychopath is absurd - the reason that psychopaths are so scary is because they are masters of faking emotions they don't feel. If there was ever anybody who lacked the ability to fake, it was Ayn Rand.

Now I have no direct experience with people with Asperger's as far as I know. A cousin of mine has twin boys who have Asperger's but I've never met them. We are Facebook friends though. So I have no negative feelings about people with Asperger's and my understanding of the traits of Asperger's comes mainly from people who have Asperger's talking about Asperger's.

I explained this to the people at Daylight Atheism, but it did no good. Instead Azykyroth claimed that my speculating that Ayn Rand had Asperger's was the equivalent of being a racist. I know that sounds absurd, but here is a screen shot of the comment:

And you can see the results - rather than refuting Azykroth's bogus comparison to racism, instead Adam Lee told me to STFU. 

So it seems that as far as Adam Lee is concerned, the mere speculation that somebody that he and his friends don't like has Asperger's is the equivalent of racism.

Apparently all along Adam Lee was a Social Justice Warrior and I didn't realize it. Possibly because my understanding of SJW was that if you disagree with them about something you are accused of racism. But it seems that another method is to accuse somebody of "ablism" and then compare that to racism. So to disagree with a SJW you may be accused of racism, or alternately, one degree from racism.

Azykyroth wasn't content merely to suggest I was an "ablist" - that wasn't vicious enough:

Azkyroth's lie about me having an "obsessive need to demonize people with AS" was allowed to stand, but my defense of myself was deleted. And of course Azkyroth presents no evidence at all that I have ever harmed any living person by my speculations that Ayn Rand may have had Asperger's - but that isn't necessary. Social Justice Warriors don't have to provide evidence for any of their vicious attacks - they argue by assertion and evidence counts for nothing.

My assumption is that although I only know Azkyroth as an anonymous online coward, Adam Lee is a friend of this person in real life, and so feels compelled to side with him. But it's possible that Lee feels that the hypocritical prohibition against the topic of Ayn Rand and Asperger's is perfectly right and just without any personal considerations.

In any case, I saw no point in continuing to participate in a discussion run by Social Justice Warriors. Adam Lee has no shame about publicly siding with liars and unhinged defamers and feels no shame in censoring good-faith arguments on behalf of liars and unhinged defamers. But that's what Social Justice Warriors do.

Ayn Rand's theory of mind

Well I gotta say, no topic has brought strangers out of the woodwork to comment on this blog more quickly than my ongoing real-time review of Atlas Shrugged. Last week there were intellectually incurious types who found a single post about Atlas Shrugged on this blog and never ventured out of that one post.

The same is true of Michael R. Brown, a Randian fanatic who came to this blog and posted on it just so he could tell me that it was a waste of space.

Like the other Objectivists, this one also lacks intellectual curiosity, not bothering to venture off that one blog post (according to my web statistics) to see what else I've said about Rand.

Well nobody said intellectual curiosity was a virtue for a cult member.

Most of the people who like Rand are right-wingers, so it's always a surprise when right-wingers critique Rand like this piece in the National Review. Although it is the National Review, founded by William B. Fuckley (as the Reverend Bookburn likes to call him), who never warmed to Rand because her atheism made the Baby Jesus cry.

But the piece contains an Atlas Shrugged spoiler that made me re-evaluate Rand: here I thought she was a sick fuck - but based on the revelation in the NR critique, she's an even sicker fuck than I previously imagined.

It does give me an incentive to continue reading though, to at least get to the bit about the gas train - one of Rand's final solutions for the "moochers."

But before I continue reading Atlas Shrugged I have to go back to Rand's inability to intuit what people are feeling - the ability to do so is called the "theory of mind" which is impaired in somebody with Asperger's Syndrome:

Theory of mind is based on empathy, the ability to feel for others and put yourself in their situation. Being able to do so will make interacting socially much easier. Understanding the emotions people go through will give you the ability to predict their behavior which will effect social interaction. Knowing what to expect will help you know how to respond to the situation. To children who are unable to take into consideration how others might feel, think or respond, the world can be a terrifying place to be.

I found this fascinating Sally and Anne Test designed to evaluate a child's theory of mind skills. As the test result discussion says:

In order to get the test right, the child has to be able to put itself (sic) in the shoes of Sally. 

Sally does not know the ball has been replaced and the right answer of the test will have to be: Sally will search for the ball in the basket. 

Children with Asperger generally will say: Sally will find the ball in the box because that is where it is! 

In spite of the necessity to change perspective 20% of children with Asperger will give the right answer: sally will search the ball in the basket.
Most children with Asperger can answer this right when they are older and more experienced. 

Children without Asperger Syndrome will have no trouble giving the right answer: Sally will search the ball in the basket. 

So the discussion mentions what a neurotypical child will probably say, and what the child with Asperger's Syndrome is likely to say.

But what might the child with Asperger's say about the child who says that Sally will look for the ball in the basket?

Would the child with Asperger's say the neurotypical child is stupid because they gave the "wrong" answer?

Something else of interest from the same web site, asperger-advice.com:

Due to misunderstanding their behavior, adults with Aspergers can be seen as selfish by their peer group members. Other unfair labels can be: egoistic, cold, rigid or uncaring. Their behavior might appear to be unkind or callous. This kind of labelling is unfair and has nothing to do with behaving inappropriately on purpose. Adults with Asperger syndrome are neurologically unable to see things from the other persons point of view. They are frequently told by their peers or partners that their actions or remarks are considered painful or rude which comes as a shock to them since they were never aware of this in the first place. It’s therefore important to get a diagnosis so people around them understand their behavior better. 

How often does one of the "moochers" in Atlas Shrugged accuse a Randian hero of being selfish, egoistic,  etc? All the fucking time.

Reading a scene in Chapter 7 of Atlas Shrugged made me think about Rand's lack of a theory of mind. When Dagny visits d'Anconia's old college professor, Dr. Stadler, she asks him to explain why the State Science Institute he runs has come out against Rearden Metal. He says:

...if you consider that for thirteen years this Institute has had a department of metallurgical research, which has cost over twenty million dollars and has produced nothing but a new silver polish and a new anti-corrosive preparation, which, I believe, is not so good as the old ones - you can imagine what the reaction will be if some private individual comes out with a product that revolutionizes the entire science of metallurgy and proves to be sensationally successful!

Stadler then gives his reasons for this response to the sensationally successful Rearden Metal:

...Men are not open to truth or reason. They cannot be reached by rational argument. The mind is powerless against them...

Now people like superior goods. They will generally pay more for superior goods. So if Rearden Metal is that awesome, why wouldn't people like it? Well in the case of the metallurgists at the State Science Institute, they don't like Rearden Metal because it threatens their own rational self-interest. They may not be the best metallurgists in the world, certainly not compared to Randian Superman Hank Rearden, but they are smart enough to understand that if Rearden Metal makes their work look bad, it's possible they could lose their jobs, or the very least, suffer from a loss of status. People care about income and social standing.

Coming out against Rearden Metal may be corrupt and in fact harmful to society - dare one say selfish? - but it's a rational, strategic move on the part of the SSI workers. But only if you are willing to grant that they have their own minds, their own motivations, their own point of view.

Instead of granting those things, Rand has the revered teacher of d'Anconia and Galt and the Norwegian pirate explain that it's because the people at SSI are not open to truth, reason or rational argument. They are "nothing but vicious animals" according to Stadler.

And Ayn Rand knows just what to do with those vicious animals who are too stupid to reason with. More about that soon.

For the record, a small sampling of people with autism spectrum disorder do not believe Rand had Aspergers.

Why I Like Stamp Collecting by Ayn Rand

36 E. 36th Street - Rand lived
in apartment 5A

Well now I can't find the reference that led me to believe that Ayn Rand lived at the Murray Park - she might have lived there, but only after she wrote Atlas Shrugged.

I thought that while she was writing Atlas Shrugged she was only nine blocks away from the library, and so had no excuse for the mess she made out of the Prometheus myth.

In fact when she was writing Atlas Shrugged she lived at 36 E. 36th Street - which is only seven blocks away from the main branch of the NY Public Library. And across the street from the Morgan Library.

Based on a realtor web site this building is also pretty affordable (for Manhattan), although no apartments have been available for rental in over a year.

There are all kinds of details about Rand's life in this apartment thanks to a book by two of her sycophants which appears to be online in its entirety, Facets of Ayn Rand which contains things like this:

A group of her friends met at the O’Connors’ apartment one evening to watch an interview show she had taped earlier. When it was over, she asked us for our reactions. I don’t remember the specific comments, but everyone was complimentary about her performance. When we finished with our remarks, she asked if that was all. We were, to a person, perplexed. What else was there to say? She then said that she was disappointed that no one had a comment about how good her legs looked! It’s not that none of us noticed them—I certainly did. I think we all thought her focus on the show was strictly intellectual. As it turned out, someone at the TV studio had commented on her good-looking legs, much to her pleasure.

***

She had certainty. This is what really attracted me emotionally to her that night. She was the first person I had ever met who projected it—she projected that what she knew was true, and that she was sure of it. 

What she was that night was the way she always was: she never doubted herself and her capacity to understand. It’s not that she had an encyclopedic mind that knew everything—although she knew more about things than most people did. The point is that she didn’t live in a state of chronic doubt. She didn’t constantly question the rightness of her ideas. She didn’t hesitate and flounder. She spoke with conviction. What she knew, she knew. This was a strong element in her personality.

***

One day, she was in the kitchen getting lunch, and I was at my typing table. She called to me, asking if I could come in and help her. I didn’t know what I could do to help the author of Atlas Shrugged, but I was pleased by the request. I went in and saw that she was holding a hot dog, and she asked me if I thought it was edible. When I asked why, she said that it had been in the refrigerator for a while and it was shriveled. So I examined it; it was wrinkled but I pointed out that the color was good and it didn’t have a bad odor. So, I told her that if it were immersed in boiling water, it would plump up. I asked her if she wanted me to do it, and she said, “Oh, no. You have work to do.” That amused me, because my work consisted of typing up her brilliant thoughts while she was going to cook a hot dog! 

Some minutes later, she came out of the kitchen, holding up a plump hot dog speared by a fork. “You were right,” she said, and thanked me for the suggestion. I said something to the effect of “from each according to his ability.” Her immediate response was, “Check your premises!”

But the best part in terms of my theory that Ayn Rand had Asperger's is the Stamp Collecting chapter.

By 1974 she had about 45,000 stamps, all of which she knew from memory. She was phenomenal in that regard. She knew exactly what she owned, and she never mistakenly bought a duplicate. She kept an exact count of her collection, and whenever I asked she had a figure at hand. The last count was something more than 52,000 stamps. It was a worldwide collection, but she would not, and did not, collect stamps from communist countries.

Stamp collecting is mentioned very often in connection with Asperger's Syndrome.

What are the Main Characteristics of Asperger's Syndrom in Adults?

Individuals with Aspergers often have intense interest in one or two narrow topics, bordering on obsession. Stamp collecting, song lyrics, and computer puzzles can become focal points in their need to collect and organize facts, which is comforting to people with Aspergers.

***

20 Facts about Asperger's Syndrome in Children

Older children may enjoy a club that is focused on their interest – for example, coin or stamp collecting.

***

Asperger's Syndrome

Kids with Asperger's also tend to be obsessed with one certain topic. They might talk about this topic a lot. They also might collect certain things -- such as stamps, shells or coins -- and organize their things very carefully.

***

Asperger's Syndrome Symptoms

These children tend to be fixated with some hobby or object like stamp collection, cars, etc.

***

Asperger's? What's That?

Another hallmark of Asperger’s syndrome is a preoccupation with a certain topic or interest. This can manifest as an interest in collecting stamps, dinosaurs, or memorizing phone numbers. Narrow interests are common in typically developing children as well, but tends to be somewhat exaggerated in people with Asperger’s: this may have given rise to the perception of some with AS as “little professors.” 

***

Chapter 1: The Little Professor

When I had run out of resources on geology, I moved onto flags for a while, then stamps (I built up a really good stamp collection, helped by "stamp club" at my first school, and the fact my Dad travelled a great deal, so was able to get me stamps, and got sent lots of foreign post too!). My favourite stamps were always those from various African countries - colourful and with pictures of animals on them! 

***

Social Skills

The social and emotional cues - the intonation of speech and facial expressions - that most people decode instinctively in their daily interactions remain a mystery to Asperger's sufferers. So while many may have high IQs and be technically and logically extremely proficient, they lack the ability to relate to other people. To the outside world they are geeks, nerds, self-centred or obsessives; stamp collectors, even.

***

FUN FACT: There was also an Ayn Rand commemorative stamp which I blogged about several years ago. As the New Yorker observed:

Of all Americans who have appeared on the nation's postage stamps, Ayn Rand is probably the only one to have thought that the United States government has no business delivering mail. In her central pronouncement of political belief - the character John Galt's radio address, which begins on page 1,000 of Rand's 1957 novel, "Atlas Shrugged" - allowance is made for the state to run an army, a police force, and courts, but that's it.

BONUS: I just discovered a reposting of Ayn Rand's essay for the Minkus Stamp Journal from 1971 called Why I Like Stamp Collecting. The article includes an image of the Rand stamp. Here's an excerpt:

Purposeful people cannot rest by doing nothing nor can they feel at home in the role of passive spectators. They seldom find pleasure in single occasions, such as a party or a show or even a vacation, a pleasure that ends right then and there, with no further consequences. 

The minds of such people require continuity, integration, a sense of moving forward. They are accustomed to working long-range; to them, the present is part of and a means to the future; a short-range event or activity that leads nowhere is an unnatural strain on them, an irritating interruption or a source of painful boredom. 

Yet they need relaxation and rest from their constant, single-tracked drive. What they need is another track, but for the same train...that is, a change of subject, but using part of the same method of mental functioning.
Stamp collecting fulfills that need.

More ragesex

The work of Ayn Rand has such powers of hilarity that it can inspire wit in any writer.

I don't care much for the work of Richard Brody of the New Yorker, especially his recent "The Demise of Physical Comedy" which I thought was completely inane. But there are two notable items in his review of Atlas Shrugged, Part 1. I had to LOL at this:

The preening resentment of the smart social misfit finds its fantasy fulfillment, as Rand’s flamboyant potboiler intensity (and her fascination with the authority of the great loner) gives rise to a tittering knowingness: the words “union” and “guild” are the pretexts for sneers and smears, and an unintentional howler of a business plan may give rise to a new, Tarzan-style pickup line: “My metal, your railway.” 

The second item - looks like I'm not the only one to figure out why Rand made the switch from oil to coal in her story:

The story is set in 2016 in a dystopian America beset by economic depression and a new oil crisis, which is the pretext for rendering rail travel—the core of the novel’s plot—newly central.

But Brody is no match for Dani the Atlas Shrugged Liveblogger in the humor department:

Dagny then “turn[s] with indifferent astonishment” to open the door, whatever that means, and the ringer of her doorbell turns out to be Frisco, who’s come for a sexy, sexy two three-page conversation that is probably meant to sound deeply philosophical but that only sounds obtuse.  So, basically, it’s Atlas Shrugged.

The philsobtuseversation pretty much boils down to this:

Frisco: I can’t believe you went back to work!  You’re such a stupidhead!
Dagny:  Well, I can’t believe you quit work!  You’re the real stupidhead!
Frisco:  Nuh-uh, you are!
Dagny:  Nuh-uh, you are! 

This masterpiece of dramatic dialogue is interrupted by the sudden entry of Hank Rearden, who apparently has a key to Dagny’s apartment.

Have you ever seen a soap opera? This is a soap opera. There’s a highly predictable love-triangle quarrel complete with obligatory slappings of faces, then somebody storms out. It’s so cliche I can’t even be bothered to remember who does the slapping and who the storming. At least when Gone With the Wind did it, we got some shattered porcelain and hoopskirts.

One of the best things about reading the work of other people who have live-blogged Atlas Shrugged is their confirmation that something that you read in Atlas Shrugged really was in there, and that they too experienced the incredulity and frustration that you did. When I was reading the quarrel between d'Anconia and Dagny in the book I remember having the same response - that this was an incredibly inane and repetitive argument.

And I was glad that the other blogger had this response too:

Then Rand pulls the biggest bait-and-switch in literature since Harry Potter discovered Snape wasn’t really trying to steal the Sorcerer’s Stone after all: 

        He stood looking at her, disarmed and smiling.  ”Not yet.  You have a      great deal to forgive me, first.  But I can tell you everything now.” 

BUT HE DOESN’T.  OF COURSE HE DOESN’T.  WE HAVE 550 PAGES OF THIS CRAP TO GO.

I also love the word the blogger gave to Dagny and Rearden's couplings: ragesex. And she's not kidding when she describes the confrontation between Rearden and d'Anconia over Dagny as a soap opera.

(Rearden) made a step towards Francisco; he asked, pointing at Dagny, his voice low and strangely unlike his own voice, as if it neither came from, nor was addressed to, a living person.  

"Is this the woman you love?" 

Francisco closed his eyes. 

"Don't ask him that!" The cry was Dagny's. 

"Is this the woman you love?" 

Francisco answered, looking at her, "Yes." 

Rearden's hand rose, swept down, and slapped Francisco's face. The scream came from Dagny. When she could see again - after an instant that felt as if the blow had struck her own cheek - Francisco's hands were the first thing she saw...

Now mind you, this isn't after Rearden has discovered that d'Anconia and Dagny had sex. He slapped d'Anconia for merely admitting she's the woman he loves. After all this, he still cannot figure it out until...

The sound she made was half-chuckle, half-moan - it was not a desire for vengeance but a desperate sense of justice that drove the cutting bitterness of her voice, as she cried, consciously throwing the words in his face, "You wanted to know the name of that other man? The man I slept with? The man who had me first? It was Francisco d'Anconia!" 

She saw the force of the blow by seeing his face swept blank. She knew that if justice was her purpose then she had achieved it, because this slap was worse than the one she had dealt.

Putting aside the unavoidable, perplexed speculation on the chuckle/moan, you really have to wonder what is wrong with Hank Rearden that he hits d'Anconia without technically knowing that he'd boinked Dagny - but that reminded me of something I'd read about people with Asperger's... but first the ragesex.

That Ayn Rand was a kinkster. It takes Rearden another half-page to process the soul crushing information that Dagny has had sex with one whole other man besides himself in her entire life, and then...

He seized her shoulders, and she felt prepared to accept that he would now kill her or beat her into unconsciousness - 

(and considering that Rearden congratulated himself for not killing his wife when she discovered that he was cheating on her, she might be right)

- and in the moment when she felt certain he had thought of it, she felt her body thrown against him and his mouth falling on hers, more brutally than the act of a beating would have permitted.

(That must be one mofo heavy mouth.)

She found herself, in terror, twisting her body to resist, and in exultation, twisting her arms around him, holding him, letting her lips bring blood to his, knowing that she never wanted him as she did at that moment.

But this is the best part - the Dagster is basically fantasizing about having both of them simultaneously - the two men of her entire thirty-something years:

...his conquest of that man by means of her body - she felt Francisco's presence through Rearden's mind, she felt as if she were surrendering to both men, to that which she had worshipped in both of them...

These people so need to have a three-way.

So a little later, Dagny's loyal thankless flunky Eddie Willers shows up to take dictation from Dagny, in her bedroom, while she's packing her suitcase to go on a roadtrip to find the Superman she assigned to figuring out the magic machine, when poor Eddie has a revelation:

He knew what was wrong with him, he thought; he did not want her to leave, he did not want to lose her again, after so brief a moment of reunion. But to indulge any personal loneliness, at a time when he knew how desperately the railroad needed her in Colorado, was an act of disloyalty he had never committed before - and he felt a vague, desolate sense of guilt.  

"Send out orders that the Comet is to stop at every division point," she said "and that all division superintendents are to prepare for me a report on -" 

He glanced up - then saw his glance stopped and did not hear the rest of the words. He saw a man's dressing gown hanging on the back of the open closet door, a dark blue gown with the white initials HR on its breast pocket.
He remembered where he had seen that gown before, he remembered the man facing him across the breakfast table at the Wayne-Falkland Hotel, he remembered that man coming,  unannounced, to her office late on a Thanksgiving night - and the realization that he should have known it, came as two subterranean jolts of a single earthquake: it came with a feeling that said "No!" so savagely that the scream, not the sight, brought down every girder within him. It was not the shock of the discovery, but the more terrible shock of what it made him discover about himself.

If you think Hank Rearden was slow on the uptake in figuring out who was schtupping whom, Eddie makes him look psychic in contrast.

But even more amazing is his lack of insight into his own feelings for Dagny. He's known her since they were children, and he has never ever had a single thought in the book that was not directly related to Dagny or her railroad. Not a single one. And he doesn't know he is in love with her until he sees Hank Rearden's dressing gown?

I'm not forgetting of course that the only reason for Willers' existence is to worship Dagny and the railroad, which is why Rand can't be bothered to give him a family or a social life or any other interests, but the idea that somebody is not aware of his own feelings comes straight out of standard diagnostics for people with Asperger's:

Although Theory of Mind is typically seen as referring to the ability to assess other people’s mental states, there is strong evidence that the processes of assessing one’s own and other’s mental states are closely related (Frith, 1989; Frith & Frith, 2003). This suggests that Theory of Mind deficits might also lead to difficulties assessing one’s own mental states (e.g., Moriguchi et al., 2006). It is important to note that this may not only hold for cognitive states, but also for emotional states. If this is correct, Theory of Minddeficits should be related to difficulties reading and labeling one’s own emotions, as well as those of other people.

Both Eddie and Hank seem to be created to illustrate the inability to assess one's own emotional states.

I should point out here that I'm not attacking people with Asperger's by suggesting that Ayn Rand had Asperger's Syndrome - I'm sure there are plenty of people with Asperger's who don't consider their condition to be a sign of superiority and neurotypicals to be the parasites that need to be exterminated. Like neurotypicals, people with Asperger's are individuals and vary greatly. But like neurotypicals they are not all saints either. And Ayn Rand isn't the only (probable) Asperger who hated non-Asperger traits: 

Yes, yes I hate them all without reservation.  

This includes people I love - their NT traits make me sorry for them and I cannot ever fully trust them because of those NT traits. But I make do.
I really do think NT's are 'less evolved', and for all their struggles and occasional briliance, they nonetheless present a difficult and philosophical choice: Is it possible to ever truly, fully trust an animal, or a stupid person? 

No, I don't think it is.  

So while its not necessarily necessary to like, dislike, hate, or even 'love' them, its very necessary to keep one eye on them, and be prepared to squash when necessary.  

Yes, I hate NT's, and I wish there were less of them in the world and more A's.

Another person with autism fantasizes about something that sounds very much like going Galt:

As an advocate of autism rights, I sometimes dream of autism-only spaces. I’m sure other advocates have had that exhaustive moment of “Oh fuck it, I want to buy a private island and invite all my autistic allies to come live with me alone.” It’s pretty easy to feel that way, when the mainstream conversations about autism conveniently forget the disability rights credo of “Nothing about us without us” and prioritize the experiences and “knowledge” of parents and doctors over that of autistic people, effectively silencing them. 

It’s also easy to fantasize about that when you are in a group where autistic people outnumber the neurotypicals, and the conversations are rich, interesting, and feel safer somehow, more free, because you are not constantly wondering whether what you say will be used to prove you are too smart or too high functioning to comment on this or that. I’ve participated in autistic-majority conversations when discussing projects, and the amount of smiles, laughter, and mutual understanding involved made me feel a cheesy kodak moment of, “So this is what it feels like to be accepted.”

And a commenter named Spacemonkey on an Atlas Shrugged forum on Amazon.com makes some excellent points in favor of the proposition that Rand had Asperger's - my favorite point is number 6, especially because I missed calling out the first train wreck in my own analysis - and it's funny:

6) Human life and the emotional/existential experience of others seems bizarrely undervalued. In two of the most unwittingly hilarious sections of the book, trains crash, giving intriguing insights into Ms Rand's psyche as they do so. 

In the first TERRIBLE TRAGEDY of the book, a train carrying copper collides head-on with a passenger train on a hillside, spilling PRECIOUS COPPER everywhere. Hank Reardon surveys the terrible tragic waste of PRECIOUS COPPER spilled over the tracks, before gritting his teeth at the hellish awfulness of it all, and heroically organising alternate transport so his PRECIOUS COPPER can get there on time, without so much letting an emotion slip out because of all the tragedy of the PRECIOUS COPPER. Because that's the kind of heroic guy he is. 

**IT HIT A FREAKING PASSENGER TRAIN HEAD-ON. THE HILLSIDE WOULD BE LITTERED WITH DEAD PEOPLE. RAND DOESN'T EVEN MENTION THIS ONCE.** 

The time people DO get killed in the train, of course, in the collapse of the tunnel, they have pretty much asked for it, by dint of being teachers, social workers, journalists, humanitarians, mothers etc. They knew the risks of living in a society that wasn't based on fascistic capitalism, so screw them, right? They're only useful to make a point. Screw them.

The rest of Spacemonkey's commentary on the novel is equally incisive. And then somebody else on the board named A Capitalist jumps in to basically embody every point that Spacemonkey has made about Rand. 

This Onion parody Autistic Reporter: Train Thankfully Unharmed In Crash That Killed One Man seems to be about Ayn Rand as much as anything else.

"...the real motive of any person who's ever preached 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.' "

I stopped contributing to Adam Lee's ongoing discussion of Atlas Shrugged due to censorship - because Lee's friend, who goes by the name of Azkyroth had a meltdown and began shrieking insults at me and insisted I was out to hurt the autistic because I speculated that Ayn Rand was on the autism spectrum.

To my knowledge, Lee has never objected to Azkyroth's habit of insulting anybody he disagrees with.

This censorship of disagreeable ideas -  thoughtcrimes to Social Justice Warriors like Lee and Azkyroth -  is a disgrace to rational discourse, and Lee has no sense of shame about it.

But I do check in to see how the Atlas Shrugged discussion is going, since some of Lee's commenters are quite astute and I'm always interested in learning what others think of Atlas Shrugged in-depth - I'm always afraid I might have missed something. And Lee does catch things I missed. He makes a good point (highlighted):

But after all that, Dagny objects, the tramp hasn’t told her who John Galt is or what he has to do with any of this. He says that it was something that happened at the first all-hands meeting after the company had agreed to go communist:

“‘This is a crucial moment in the history of mankind!’ Gerald Starnes yelled through the noise. ‘Remember that none of us may now leave this place, for each of us belongs to all the others by the moral law which we all accept!’‘I don’t,’ said one man and stood up. He was one of the young engineers… He stood like a man who knew that he was right. ‘I will put an end to this, once and for all,’ he said… ‘I will stop the motor of the world.’ Then he walked out.…We never heard what became of him. But years later, when we saw the lights going out, one after another, in the great factories that had stood solid like mountains for generations, when we saw the gates closing and the conveyor belts turning still, when we saw the roads growing empty and the stream of cars draining off… then we began to wonder and to ask questions about him. We began to ask it of one another, those of us who had heard him say it… You see, his name was John Galt.”

If you missed that, John Galt vowed to destroy an entire civilization because one business went communist. Disproportionate retribution seems to be the only kind of retribution that Objectivists know. 

This leads back to the question, again, of how the looters came to take over the world. If the Twentieth Century Motor Company’s plan was such a failure, its competitors should have thrived, and once it went bankrupt, the whole idea should have been discarded as an object lesson in what not to do. Instead, for some reason, everyone copied this manifestly disastrous idea, and it spread to all of society despite bringing ruin to everyone who adopted it. Atlas has no real explanation for how this happened,

However, Lee completely misses the boat with the last sentence above. Atlas does have a real explanation for the ultimate root of communism:

...if you ever want to see pure evil you should see the way her eyes glinted when she watched some man who'd talked back to her once... And when you saw it, you saw the real motive of any person who's ever preached 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."

Although it is understandable that Lee missed it. It's so absurd it's easy to disregard the true significance of that passage. But I think there can be no doubt: Ayn Rand believes the root cause of "communism" and the views of anybody who disagrees with anything she believes, is sadism. Or to put a finer point on it - evil.

I think it's likely that Rand had undiagnosed Asperger's Syndrome and she conflated the "neurotypical" view of the world with Communism. And since she could not understand the perspective of neurotypicals - and many on the autism spectrum express the same bafflement - she came to believe it must be due to willful malice.

This passage from Atlas Shrugged best expresses the almost mystical feelings that Rand's protagonists have about their enemies:

"Dagny, they're doing something we've never understood. They know something we don't, but should discover. I can't see it fully yet, but I'm beginning to see parts of it. That looter from the State Science Institute was scared when I refused to help him pretend that he was just an honest buyer of my Metal. He was scared way deep. Of what? Public opinion was just his name for it, but it's not the full name. Why should he have been scared? He has the guns, the jails, the laws - he could have seized the whole of my mills, if he wished, and nobody would have risen to defend me, and he knew it - so why should he have cared what I thought? But he did. It was I who had to tell him he wasn't a looter but a customer and friend. That's what he needed from me. And that's what Dr. Stadler needed from you - it was you who had to act as if he were a great man who had never tried to destroy your rail or my Metal. I don't know what it is that they think they accomplish - but they want us to pretend we see the world as they pretend they see it. They need some sort of sanction from us. I don't know the nature of that sanction, but, Dagny - I know that if we value our lives, we must not give it to them. If they put you on a torture rack, don't give it to them. Let them destroy your railroad and my mills, but don't give it to them. Because I know this much: that's our only chance...

...Yes," she said. "yes, I know what you've seen in them... I've felt it too - but it's only like something brushing past that's gone before I know I've seen it, like a touch of cold air, and what's left is always the feeling that I should have stopped it... I know that you're right. I can't understand their game but this much is right: We must not see the world as they want us to see it. It's some sort of fraud, very ancient and vast - and the key to break it is: to check every premise they teach us, to question every precept, to - "

This is no political or economic system they are talking about: the Soviet Communists were not known for caring what anybody thought - they did not hesitate to use force whenever they wanted, unlike Rand's "looters." And Communism doesn't express itself as "a touch of cold air."

This is about perceptual differences, not political differences. 

So the reason "communism" rules the world of Atlas Shrugged, in spite of the fact that it is presented as an objectively inferior socio-political system in the novel; and the reason that John Galt wants to destroy an entire civilization because of one bad business model is because these don't represent political or economic systems - they represent Ayn Rand's rage at living in a world dominated by neurotypicals, which "communism" embodies for her. 

Which makes sense since the major trauma of her early life (second only to the mechanical chicken incident) was the Communist revolution and the confiscation of her father's business. (Although ironically by ending prohibitions against Jews and women attending university, the Bolsheviks made it possible for Ayn Rand to get a higher education, a debt which she never acknowledged - but then she was notorious for claiming that nobody ever helped her.)

People perceiving the world in ways that Ayn Rand found incomprehensible were "evil" to her. And that's how she portrays those who are not the angular-faced producer heroes in Atlas Shrugged - as vermin that need to be exterminated, and that's why she put them on a train, listed their sins against Objectivism, and then put the train in a tunnel full of carbon monoxide. And then blew up the train. That's how Ayn Rand felt about a world controlled by neurotypicals.

And yes, there are those with Asperger's who are conscious of their hatred for neurotypicals, although of course not all people with Asperger's hate all neurotypicals.

• Wrong Planet: Why I hate neurotypicals
• Reddit: I hate neurotypical people
• Things that I hate: Neurotypicals

But on the other hand, at least one person with Asperger's describes neurotypicals as having "superpowers" for "mind-reading" abilities, and even compares this to the powers of a character on Star Trek:

A Betazoid is someone who has the power to sense others and read minds. Deanna is known for her contributions to the show as being able to sense when someone is angry, upset, anticipating battle, or even if the person is being deceitful. 

There was a particular Star Trek episode when Deanna Troi loses her Betazoid powers and she compares it to losing a sense.. such as losing sight, losing hearing, or losing a limb. It drove her CRAZY because she was unable to read people anymore. The rest of the crew was human, so they told her that losing her Betazoid powers was like stepping down to a human's level of understanding now she knew what it was like to not have that awareness. 

Even though Deanna Troi is not neurotypical NOR Autistic. The difference between her and the rest of the crew is how much awareness she had of other people. Deanna vs. a normal human is like a neurotypical vs. an Aspie. She even questioned Riker "How do you people live? Without being able to read others."

And the typical Asperger inability to read people is a problem for Rand's protagonist Hank Rearden, which she makes explicit in this passage:

Rearden had to decide how much he could risk to invest upon the sole evidence of a man's face, manner and tone of voice... 

"I guess I'm not smart enough to make the sort of deals needed nowadays," he said in answer to the unspoken thoughts the hung across his desk. 

The purchasing manager shook his head. "No Mr. Rearden, it's one or the other. The same kind of brain can't do both. Either you're good at running the mills or you're good at running Washington." 

"Maybe I ought to learn their methods." 

"You couldn't learn it and it wouldn't do you any good. You wouldn't win in any of those deals. Don't you understand? You're the one who's got something to be looted."

We'll never know for sure if Ayn Rand had Asperger's (unless we can somehow get hold of viable DNA from her I suppose) but I think that it's extremely likely, given all the evidence. Which does not explain her predilection for laissez-faire Capitalism - I think that is more explicable by her early life experiences - but it does help explain her extremely idiosyncratic presentation of the concepts of Communism and Capitalism. And speculating that she might have had Asperger's doesn't hurt anybody with the condition. Although of course such speculations would not be permitted in a world run by Social Justice Warriors like Adam Lee and friends. Which would be almost as ugly a dystopia as the world of Atlas Shrugged itself.

Bonus Rand artifact: An Actual Letter Ayn Rand Wrote To An Actual Teenage Girl

What's black and white and read all over?

In spite of the binary world that Ayn Rand created in Atlas Shrugged - or very likely because of it - the book continues to sell hundreds of thousands of copies every year.

To many people, especially intellectuals, describing a novel or a philosophy or a personal view of the world as black and white is not a compliment. It's meant to indicate an egregious over-simplification, but Heller's biography notes:

Rand loved the fact that (Mickey) Spillane's potboiling plots and gun-toting heroes were dedicated to separating good from evil in a black-and-white world. ("Grays don't interest me." she said apropos of his work.)

And black and white thinking, we are told from no less an authority than Temple Grandin, is extremely common in those with autism-spectrum disorders:

People with autism and Asperger’s Syndrome tend towards black and white thinking.  They see themselves and the world around them in polar opposites, and this tendency feeds their need to be perfect. Even the tiniest mistakes and mishaps can feel like monumental failures to them, creating high levels of anxiety when their efforts or the events around them do not measure up to this all-or-nothing scale.

And a contributor to the discussion board for people with autism/Asperger's, in a discussion specifically about black and white thinking, wrote:

In my youth I embraced Ayn Rand's writings; she clarified morality and inspired me. (Many philosophies do that; some are bad, like cults, propaganda and Republicans.) But I realized that life is seldom clear...

But many people who haven't been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder won't, or maybe even cannot, think in shades of gray. That's why religion is so popular - the God/Devil dichotomy is so easy to understand. You're either blessed or you're cursed. And Rand's philosophy is an exact copy of this structure - you're either one of the Supermen, blessed with beauty, brains and a superior morality, or you are the exact opposite - in every way.

One thing I found disturbing about the Heller biography was her defense of Rand's work. Heller writes:

The reviews (of Atlas Shrugged)... were hateful and dishonest... (The New York Times) branded the novel as "a demonstrative act rather than a literary novel"... "as loudly as Miss Rand proclaims her love of life, it seems clear the book is written out of hate." (Hicks) suggested that it was nothing more than clumsy mixture of melodrama and didacticism."

I happen to find Hicks' opinion right on the money, but then, I realize it's opinion. And the only way it could be characterized as "dishonest" is if it isn't Hicks' true opinion. And nowhere else in any of the reviews that she quotes does Heller demonstrate that a reviewer was being dishonest. Heller appears to equate dishonesty with strong opinions that Heller disagrees with.

And if the reviews were "hateful" - and they were strongly negative from all points on the political spectrum - maybe it's because Rand's black and white worldview required her to deal harshly with those characters on the bad side of the equation, sending them to their deaths while detailing their thought-crimes. She continually dehumanizes all who oppose her "philosophy" and rants against the altruistic and the poor.

How could any sane person not perceive that as hateful?

Maybe it's the false equivalency that so many journalists love, that prompts Heller to try to find something positive to say about Rand, because Rand's personal life provides very little that is praise-worthy. But I have to wonder how carefully Heller read "Atlas Shrugged" because she says:

But Rand's certainty that she alone understood the truth and that people who lived by other convictions, especially liberals, religious adherents, and public intellectuals, were mystics of spirit, savages, looting thugs, beggars, parasites, gibberers, carrion eaters, cavemen, and headhunters did have the ring of Big Sister, even if the ideological content of the novel did not.

How could Heller not be aware of the fact that calling people who lived by other convictions nasty names is the very essence of the ideological content of "Atlas Shrugged?" If you took a drink every time someone is called a parasite or a moocher or a looter, you'd be drunk at the end of a single chapter.

And of course the bad guys have to be non-human in order to highlight her heroes' Super-humanness. Because that's how binary thinking works.

I realize it's impossible to prove Rand was on the autism spectrum, and in fact apparently it's all the rage now to claim somebody is "on the spectrum":

 Schnarch recalls a man who phoned him the day before a scheduled initial couples session and announced that he’d just been diagnosed with Asperger’s. “As soon as this happened,” Schnarch says, “I knew I had difficulty.” He contacted the referring therapist, who said he’d suspected the man had Asperger’s because he said things to his girlfriend that were so cruel he couldn’t possibly understand their impact. As far as Schnarch was concerned, it was an all-too-familiar instance of ­sadism masquerading as disability. “If you’re going to perp, the best place to perp from is the victim position.”

And I do have to wonder about this last paragraph of the Heller biography, where Heller reveals Rand saying something so incredibly contrary to Objectivist principles I could hardly believe it. Heller herself doesn't seem to be aware of it, and instead wants to move on to give Rand credit for individual rights and freedom, etc. But the last paragraph begins:

"It is not I who will die, it is the world that will end," she liked to say. Of course the world went on. But her extraordinary achievement...

OK, stop right there.

Putting aside the debatable nature of her achievement, this quote is the most succinct refutation of one of the tenets of Objectivism I've ever read. As the Ayn Rand institute explains, the metaphysics of Objectivism is:

"Reality, the external world, exists independent of man's consciousness, independent of any observer's knowledge, beliefs, feelings, desires or fears. This means that A is A, that facts are facts, that things are what they are...

But Rand's saying the world will end when she dies demonstrates the subjective nature of reality. The world does go on - but not as far as the one who is dying. In their reality the world is ending.

I haven't yet found out what Ayn Rand thought of Schopenhauer, although she can't have thought very highly of him since he did not believe in free will. I also find it strange that she hated both Kant and Hegel, when Schopenhauer revered Kant (not without critique) and despised Hegel. And Schopenhauer tended to favor Plato over Aristotle which would have been completely unacceptable to Rand.

In any case, Schopenhauer felt that subjective vs. objective was a false dichotomy, as he discusses in a brief dialog in The World as Will and Representation which I turned into an Xtranormal animation a couple of years ago:

A Dialog from "The World as Will and Representation" by Arthur Schopenhauer

Ayn Rand & Steven Pinker

One of those discussing my work re: Steven Pinker over at Steve Sailer's column at Unz, "PhysicistDave" went off-topic to talk about my commentary about Ayn Rand.

Ms. McLernan has a psychologically interesting (negative) fixation on Ayn Rand, which results in some (unintentionally) funny remarks. E.g., 

One of the useful aspects of Ayn Rand is that she hid nothing of what she thought – thanks to her own inability to dissemble (which I suspect is the result of her undiagnosed Asperger’s syndrome)…

Note: McLernan is attacking Rand because of Rand’s supposed inability to lie. Alas, anyone who is aware of the details of the famous Rand/Branden affair (as McLernan is) knows that Rand was capable of lying through her teeth. (I suppose McLernan would claim that Rand was not very good at it!)

What a bizarre thing to believe - that I attacked Ayn Rand because of her inability to lie. Who would believe that about even their worst enemy? They attack people for their honesty.

And how do I "attack" her? By suggesting she had Asperger's? 

Right-wing racists really do think differently from the rest of us.

The entire remark I made about Rand's inability to dissemble is here:

One of the useful aspects of Ayn Rand is that she hid nothing of what she thought - thanks to her own inability to dissemble (which I suspect is the result of her undiagnosed Asperger's syndrome) combined with her publisher's disinclination to edit Atlas Shrugged for fear of a Rand tantrum resulting in the loss of income, we get a pure unfiltered hit of the belief that: 

(quoting Corey Robin here)

a world thus emancipated will be ugly, brutish, and dull. It will lack the excellence of a world where the better man commands the worse.

Boy howdy, is that the essence of the Rand world-view. And because she was such a bad novelist, not only is the world of Atlas Shrugged ugly, brutish and dull, as the result of the tyranny of the worser men over the better, but the worser men themselves are ugly, brutish and dull.

PhysicistDave mentions my play with a Rand character, DARK MARKET. 

Thanks to the Trump administration I dropped that play, for now anyway. The bad decisions of Alan Greenspan influenced in part by Ayn Rand seemed like a big deal during the Obama administration, but they seem like nothing compared to the treasonous insanity of the Trump administration, so it doesn't seem worth talking about right now. Once the Trump administration is over... hopefully soon...

Anyway as far as Ayn Rand's inability to lie: she could not dissemble about her "premises." And dissembling is not the precise same thing as lying.

But also as these statements from September 1968 make clear, Rand had help when lying about her affair with Branden - including from Alan Greenspan. It's my understanding that after this letter she refused to talk about Nathaniel Branden at all. So she'd hardly have an opportunity to lie, alone and off-the-cuff, about the Branden affair.

I certainly did write a lot about Ayn Rand on this blog for a period of a couple of years, but for the past almost two months my fixation is on Steven Pinker and his connections to the alt-right, which very much includes his connection to Steve Sailer.

While looking at other comments on Sailer's post, I was amused to see echoes of what others, including me have been saying:

Yes I agree that Pinker is crafty about where he stops defending honest people by name, and switches to a broad-based blanket-defence, simply arguing for allowing honest discussion of all viewpoints. So for example he was willing to defend Lawrence Summers by name, but only would defend Jason Richwine and James Watson in a general sense. So, yes, he does scamper away when the SJW lynch-parties get truly fierce. Is that smart or cowardly, or a little bit of both?

I believe the mot juste is "weaselly."

The most telling aspect of Pinker's denial that he agrees with racialists about black intelligence, I think, is that he never explains why he thinks the racialists are wrong. It's a pretty important issue, you'd think he would address it. Instead he consistently pivots to talking about the meanies who criticize, for instance, The Bell Curve, for its racism.

But isn't it nice that I can find common ground on at least this one thing with people I agree with about nothing else?

Asperger's Shrugged - chapters 6 & 7

Atlas Shrugged makes so much more sense if you don't read it as a pro-capitalist screed  crossed with an ubermenschen romance but rather as someone with Asperger's Syndrome expressing her incomprehension and hostility towards a world dominated by neurotypicals.

That's the only way I was able to get through chapters 6 and 7 of the damn thing this weekend.

So what are the symptoms of Asperger's Syndrome? Well according to the Mayo Clinic web site these are some:

1. Engaging in one-sided, long-winded conversations, without noticing if the listener is listening or trying to change the subject
2. Displaying unusual nonverbal communication, such as lack of eye contact, few facial expressions, or awkward body postures and gestures
3. Showing an intense obsession with one or two specific, narrow subjects, such as baseball statistics, train schedules, weather or snakes
4. Appearing not to understand, empathize with or be sensitive to others' feelings
5. Having a hard time "reading" other people or understanding humor
6. Speaking in a voice that is monotonous, rigid or unusually fast
7. Moving clumsily, with poor coordination

Certainly items 1, 3, 4 and 5 all seem to apply.

This is how Rand describes the relationship between d'Anconia and Dagny, who are the love of each other's lives:

She did not question him about the university. Days later she asked him only whether he liked it.
"They're teaching a lot of drivel nowadays," he answered, "but there are a few courses I like."
"Have you made any friends there?"
"Two."
He told her nothing else.

Mind you, these are Rand's superheroes - this lack of curiosity in each others' lives isn't just an odd trait of characters in a novel - as with all aspects of the Rand superheroes (aka "prime movers") this is supposed to be the ideal mode of behavior.

Dagny learns from d'Anconia's old professor in chapter 6 that his two friends were Ragnar Danneskjold, the Norwegian terror of the high seas (no lie), and John Galt.

One of Ayn Rand's traits according to Ayn Rand Fun Facts is that she despised small talk. This comes as no surprise because she absolutely cannot write small talk. Neither the superheroes nor the looters in Rand's simplistic dichotomy make small talk. Ever. At the excruciating party thrown by Hank Rearden's wife for their eighth wedding anniversary the conversations of the looters are entirely dominated by two blowhards who make the standard anti- "selfishness" and pro-modern art proclamations, peppered by questions from random no-name characters.

In another scene where Dagny is having coffee in a greasy spoon, the conversation proceeds thusly:

Her head fell down on her arm on the counter.
"It's no use lady." said the old bum beside her.
She had to raise her head. She had to smile in amusement at him and herself.
"It isn't?" she asked.
"No. Forget it. You're only fooling yourself."
"About what?"
"About anything being worth a damn. It's dust lady. All of it, dust and blood. Don't believe the dreams they pump you full of, and you won't get hurt. "
"What dreams?"
"The stories they tell you when you're young. About the human spirit..."

And on and on. That's why reading Rand prose is so tiresome - you never get a moment's rest from the proselytizing. Except when Rand is expressing her truly creepy views on human sexuality. In a passage where Rand is writing about the Dagster looking superfine in her ladywear at the Rearden party she says:

The black dress seemed excessively revealing - because it was astonishing to discover that the lines of her shoulders were fragile and beautiful, and that the diamond band on the wrist of her naked arm gave her the most feminine of all aspects: the look of being chained.

New Atheists vs. Social Justice Warriors

In the middle of my JULIA & BUDDY production I took the time to address the issue of Richard Dawkins vs. Adam Lee on July 6. It isn't only them though, but what they represent - New Atheists vs. Social Justice Warriors.

In case you aren't familiar with the terminologies - "New Atheists" are generally considered to be lead by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel C. Dennett, and until he shuffled off this mortal coil, Christopher Hitchens.

Since Hitchens is gone other atheists are up for being considered as the fourth of the Four Horsemen of atheism - see the Wiki I linked to above. Steven Pinker is one of the most prominent runners-up, and I think the most appropriate - like the others he is devoted to explaining human behavior through evolutionary psychology, a research theory that posits among other things that women have evolved to be more monogamous than men, and less capable, innately, at math and science ways of thinking than men, which is why, as Larry Summers famously argued, women don't have as successful careers in STEM.

And Hitchen's own personal contribution to this mighty theory is that women have evolved to be unfunny. Outside of the New Atheist bubble, Hitchens is known as the guy who said women aren't funny. Serves the asshole right.

The New Atheists also tend towards xenophobia, especially against Muslims, most likely in a terrified response to the 9-11 attacks. Sam Harris is especially awful in this respect, justifying torture and promoting ethnic profiling in security checks.

I've discussed my objections to the New Atheist celebrity leaders throughout this blog, right from the very beginning if you count Pinker, who has flirted with the edges of more hard-core sociobiology - the racial aspect - through his publicly proclaimed intellectual affiliation with right-wing operative Razib Khan.

While Pinker has no trouble citing Khan to back up his own work, he has stated that Stephen Jay Gould's critical views on evolutionary psychology should be discounted due to Gould's leftist political leanings. Although as far as I know Gould was never an actual political operative like Razib Khan.

Pinker's absolute, shameless, blatant hypocrisy on this issue should be more widely-known and should certainly give anybody pause when deciding whether to worship Pinker as a Great Man of Atheism, along with those other seriously flawed celebrity atheists.

On the other side are the Social Justice Warriors, who are just as obnoxious as the New Atheists, but in different, and sometimes opposite ways. I haven't been criticizing Social Justice Warriors for as long as New Atheists, but I have certainly been doing so a lot lately. Surprisingly there is no entry in Wikipedia for Social Justice Warrior - I will probably remedy that soon - perhaps because the term is less well-known, although Richard Dawkins has been using the term lately. But science fiction writer Will Shetterly, while not the coiner of the term, has been most prominent in using the term, even writing a book about SJWs.

SJWs have well-known proponents, although they don't have the celebrity status of the leading New Atheists. But SJWs tend to think and act in mobs anyway, through the power of social media aggregation, and so are less likely to stand alone as an individual celebrity.

One of the most prominent SJWs is Mikki Kendall, whom readers of this blog know I have a personal beef with: several years ago she used her Tumblr account to proclaim me, by name, as a "racist." This was because some friend of hers I argued with on Facebook decided I was a racist because I defended John Lennon and Yoko Ono's use of the N word in a song written 40 years ago. They used the N word to make a serious political point about sexism, not to attack African Americans. But you can't reason with a SJW mob. They know what they know and anybody who argues with them is automatically a racist.

The power of Google-bombing a person's name is still under-discussed in the media, considering how much power it has to harm people, and legally. Google suggests that if you don't like what somebody is saying about you, which is showing up in Google results, ask them to take it down. But if you ask a SJW to take it down, that only confirms your guilt in their mind, and they will simply post even more links, to make their defamation against you go even higher in Google results.

Kendall was joined in her Tumblr smear of me by K. Tempest Bradford, also via Tumblr. Bradford is a science fiction writer, and included by Shetterly in his blog on SJWs. I had a Facebook exchange with Bradford during which I asked her to stop smearing me, and I found it fascinating that Bradford basically excused the smears on the grounds that I was rude to friends of hers when I argued with them. In other words, smearing me as a racist was justifiable payback for my bad manners. I will have more to say about Bradford's response, and the attitudes of SJWs generally as soon as I get a chance.

In any case, I concluded on July 6 that both sides are idiots.

However, I must acknowledge that Richard Dawkins has scored one for the New Atheists by this statement, made with Ophelia Benson:

It’s not news that allies can’t always agree on everything. People who rely on reason rather than dogma to think about the world are bound to disagree about some things. 

Disagreement is inevitable, but bullying and harassment are not. If we want secularism and atheism to gain respect, we have to be able to disagree with each other without trying to destroy each other.
In other words we have to be able to manage disagreement ethically, like reasonable adults, as opposed to brawling like enraged children who need a nap. It should go without saying, but this means no death threats, rape threats, attacks on people’s appearance, age, race, sex, size, haircut; no photoshopping people into demeaning images, no vulgar epithets. 

Richard adds: I’m told that some people think I tacitly endorse such things even if I don’t indulge in them. Needless to say, I’m horrified by that suggestion. Any person who tries to intimidate members of our community with threats or harassment is in no way my ally and is only weakening the atheist movement by silencing its voices and driving away support.

Bravo.

I was one of those who pointed out that Dawkins had a responsibility to denounce the shitstorm of rape and death threats that his ill-considered personal attack on Rebecca Watson inspired, and so even if this statement is three years late, it's something.

To give you a sense of how it should be done, recall that idiot Twitterer Suey Park called for the Colbert Report to be cancelled because of her own obtuseness (deliberate or not) over Colbert's parody of the Redskins football team name. I'm still not entirely convinced that Park is not a sock puppet of some right-wing think tank - her friendship with Michelle pro-Japanese-internment Malkin alone is extremely suspicious. But she could be real, and just a garden-variety dumbass Social Justice Warrior.

When his show returned after the weekend, Colbert defended himself, in character, but while he was doing it he said:

"Now all of this was started by a hash tag activist, or hashtivist, who has been viciously attacked on Twitter, and if anyone is doing that for me I want you to stop it right now. She's just speaking her mind and that's what Twitter is for..."

And that's how it's done. But Colbert is an entertainer and while his show and the Daily Show has a clear demographic, they can't speak only as the leaders of a self-selected group of people.

And that's what makes them different from both New Atheists and Social Justice Warriors, who tend to live in their respective bubbles. So New Atheists will make the most outrageous claims about the religious and religion in general without providing evidence, and as if all New Atheists live in a world in which they don't have to co-exist with religious people - including close friends and relatives.

Social Justice Warriors are perhaps more insidious - under the guise of social justice they will attack anybody, even allies, or perhaps especially allies, who ventures even slightly out of the political correctness compound, or who even leave themselves open to the slightest misinterpretation, as in the Colbert controversy. They are so in love with their self-image as defenders of justice that they will try to invent cases of injustice so they can get their superhero tights on and fight it.

Of course the New Atheists have their own dreams of glory - they like to imagine themselves standing tall against the forces of ignorance and superstition and, in their most misguided logical leap, terrorism which they equate with Islam. And so they support stupidities like the outcry against the "9-11 mosque." I went to the counter-demonstration.

Now it appears that Richard Dawkins was not getting off on the power of having his slavish New Atheist followers attack feminist atheists - especially but by no means only Rebecca Watson - at least if Dawkins was to be believed. He apparently was oblivious the the phenomenon, or at least didn't seem to understand he might have the power to reduce the viciousness through speaking up against it. Well now he has, so let's see if it works.

So that gives New Atheists a boost over Social Justice Warriors at this point - I consider Adam Lee of Daylight Atheism to be a SJW because he censored me when I suggested that certain of Ayn Rand's literary output might have been due to Ayn Rand possibly having an autism spectrum condition. He told me to STFU and allowed his good buddy Azkyroth to attack me as someone out to hurt people with Asperger's.

And mind you, I had been contributing to the discussion of Atlas Shrugged on Lee's blog for months, and had shown no indication of wanting to harm anybody with Asperger's. But that does not matter - when a SJW has their hero tights on, you cannot reason with them any more.

It's issues having to do with brain functionality that is one of the big problems with Social Justice Warriors. Just as it is unacceptable to use gender and race and other physical features to suggest a difference in emotional/intellectual expression, they believe it is also unacceptable to even discuss the possibility that conditions like Asperger's, or even mental illness might have an influence on the way a person expresses themselves.

You can see it in Greta Christina's response to somebody suggesting that the disgusting "Amazing Atheist" might have a mental illness:

Brian Walsh @ #13: Please don’t do that. The idea that hateful and vile people must be mentally ill gets trotted out a lot (it did with the Elliot Rodger shooting), and it’s very problematic. It diminishes responsibility for hateful and vile behavior. It marginalizes people who are mentally ill, perpetuating the idea that we’re dangerous and/or evil. And it disproportionately gets used to protect white people. (As has been pointed out many times by many people: When a white person shoots a bunch of people, they’re mentally ill. When a black person does it, they’re a thug. When a brown person does it, they’re a terrorist.) Please don’t do it. Thanks.

Please note that she doesn't present an argument for why the Amazing Atheist is not mentally ill - she proclaims that it is unacceptable to suggest that anybody who is hateful and vile has a mental illness.

Just as it is unacceptable to Lee and company for anyone to speculate that Ayn Rand might have had Asperger's. Because friends of Adam Lee and Greta Christina (or apparently Christina herself) have Asperger's and mental illness. And so you must not ever say that anybody who is bad might have the same condition. 

This is censorship, plain and simple. They think they are promoting social justice, but what they are doing instead is making areas of discussion taboo. And demonizing anybody who wants to explore that area of discussion.

Social Justice Warriors are wrong in this. Wrong and stupid. And they need to admit that their censorship and shaming attempts are wrong. And chances are they never will - they believe in their own absolute correctness and moral superiority and you dare not attempt to argue with them or they will have no qualms about smearing you and attributing all kinds of evil against you. And then they will censor you, so you cannot argue back. 

That's what Dawkins and company mean by "witch hunts" and they do have a point. So New Atheist are slightly up on Social Justice Warriors in my book.

Until the next horrific thing they do/say/support. Tune in for future reports.

More on chapters 4 & 5 of Atlas Shrugged

When I blogged about chapters 1 - 3 of Atlas Shrugged I said:

The funniest bit so far though, is Rand's imagining how non-angular businessmen talk, as in a scene from chapter 2:

And I quoted some of the things uttered by these "businessmen."

But in chapter 4-5 I discovered that there's an even more implausible way to talk about business - the way that angular businessmen talk. Here's Dagny telling Dan Conway:

I intended to give you the battle of your life, down there in Colorado. I intended to cut into your business and squeeze you to the wall and drive you out, if necessary.

If you've ever worked in business in any capacity, you know that this is how human beings in business do not talk. The primary hallmark of business talk is niceness. Even if you are trying to do something nasty, you talk nice. And so of course Dan Conway responds in a way that is typical of no businessman ever:

He chuckled faintly; it was appreciation. "You would have made a pretty good try at it, too," he said.

It should be noted that Ayn Rand was never a businesswoman - she was a screenwriter and a novelist. Her husband was an actor and a painter. Rand researched the railroad business for Atlas Shrugged not by working with the people who actually ran the business, she researched the business by hanging around Grand Central Terminal and driving a train.

But back to Dan Conway - lest you think he's not an angular businessman, Rand establishes his angular bona fides early on:

 Dan Conway was approaching 50. He had the square, stolid, stubborn face of a tough freight engineer, rather than a company president. 

Conway has a square face. A square, of course, is composed of four right angles.

But back to Rand's representation of the way successful business people talk. Here is Dagny with Hank Reardon (we've already taken the measure of his hypotenuse):

"Pretty steep, Hank. Is that the best price you can give me?"
"No. But that's the one I'm going to get. I could ask twice that and you'd pay it."
"Yes, I would. And you could. But you won't."
"Why won't I?"
"Because you need to have the Rio Norte Line built. It's your first showcase for Rearden Metal."
He chuckled. "that's right. I like to deal with somebody who has no illusions about getting favors."
"Do you know what made me feel relieved, when you decided to take advantage of it?"
"What?"
"That I was dealing, for once, with somebody who doesn't pretend to give favors."
His smile had a discernible quality now: it was enjoyment. "You always play it open, don't you? he asked.

We've already met Dagny's unlikely brother, James, a loser in every way, starting with his lack of angularity, and probably the bastard of a wayward government employee. Here he is in the childhood flashback speaking to Dagny and Francisco d'Anconia:

"Don't you ever think of anything but d'Anconia Copper?" Jim asked him once.
"No."
"It seems to me that there are other things in the world."
"Let others think about them."
"Isn't that a very selfish attitude?"
"It is."

Actually, no, it isn't. How can not caring about other things in the world be characterized as "selfish"? Boring, maybe. But it's only selfish if his interest in d'Anconia Copper somehow prevented other people from enjoying the contemplation of copper mining and processing. And ironically, d'Anconia shortly after this exchange, tells James that "words have an exact meaning."

But James must accuse d'Anconia of selfishness, just as Mother Reardon has to accuse Hank Reardon of selfishness, because Rand's heroes are virtuously selfish - and so the anti-heroes must be against selfishness, incessantly. Even if it means sacrificing the mot juste to describe Francisco d'Anconia's attitude towards his ancestral copper company, which would be "monomania."

So Rand considers monomania a good thing, and lacks insight into the motivations of human beings. Is it possible that Ayn Rand had Asperger's? 

I looked it up and discovered that although there's no record of her getting an official diagnosis, at least one of her admirers thinks so. In his review of two Rand biographies libertarian Stephen Kirchner writes:

...It is almost certain that Rand had Asperger’s Syndrome, a condition that has only come into greater awareness since the early 1990s... 

...It is possible that neither  author knew enough about Asperger’s to make the necessary connections, but there is abundant evidence for this proposition, particularly
in Heller’s description of Rand’s childhood. It is perhaps just as well that neither author explicitly considers this possibility, because it would be all too easy to pathologise
Rand, leading to a reductionist psycho-biography that would have done disservice to her ideas and influence. 

No surprise, Kirchner hates Paul Krugman, believing apparently that he played a successful round of gotcha with Krugman over some variation in the cover art of one of Krugman's books, while making common cause with crackpot Krugman-obsessive Donald Luskin.

The competing neuro-atypical theory is that Rand was a sociopath.