Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Ayn Rand is the ultimate proof of something I've realized as I've grown: doing the right thing is actually really simple. It's not easy as in "low difficulty of accomplishment", but it's simple as in "low difficulty of understanding". In fact, I've started to think of complex decision making as the moral equivalent of a code smell: if I'm waffling back and forth over what the right thing to do is sometimes it's a genuinely complex situation where principles are in conflict but much (Much, MUCH) more often it's just that I no what the right thing to do is and just don't wanna do it. Objectivism feels like the inverse of this: you can make anything feel like the right thing to do if you just expand, generalize, hypotheticalize and muddy the question until "Should I give a hungry person a sandwich when I've got one I won't miss?" becomes something like "How do you expect society to function if no one works?"


The question of Ethics is what we should we do, With life. There is nothing easy or clear about that.

Morality is not just being generally nice when it’s convenient for all parties.

One of the themes in the Fountainhead is contrasting someone with this attitude with the individual with a longer term vision and goals.


>expand, generalize, hypotheticalize and muddy the question


Yes that is something you said. And no I don’t think it’s true.

If you don’t have an answer to the question of what should be done in life, you have no framing for other dependent moral questions.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: