"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
I don't think a guru being beyond criticism is something unique to a particular group like Ayn Rand's objectivists.
It's not enough to not be Hitler, basically.
I don't think Ayn Rand was Hitler. She wasn't as bad as cult leaders like Jim Jones,
My model for a thought leader is someone like Richard Feynman. Feynman didn't write epistles or officiate weddings. This did not prevent him from being enormously influential in physics.
Do you think that everybody who tries to build a community is a guru?
I don't think Ayn Rand was Hitler. She wasn't as bad as cult leaders like Jim Jones,
My point was, it's not a steelman response to pick a deliberately weak foil (and Rand is a quite weak foil as far as movement leaders are concerned). It's not enough to be ?better? than Rand. There isn't even a total ordering on awfulness. That's what the Anna Karenina quote was about.
Do you think that everybody who tries to build a community is a guru?
No?
But I am not talking about everybody, I am talking about EY. And the relevant feature of EY's is not that he...
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