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Comment by xenophanes | Hacker News Reader

Calling people "whiny bitch"es if they don't want to suffer or sacrifice, and don't accept that suffering is an insoluble problem, is an anti-human sentiment expressed in a crude and unintellectual way.

Many philosophers have taken contrary views. Ayn Rand is not a whiny bitch for criticizing sacrifice. David Deutsch is not a whiny bitch for applying Karl Popper's epistemology to education (http://takingchildrenseriously.com/), or for saying in his TED talk that problems are soluble (soluble means without suffering, and problems includes the problem of how to learn something). And so on. Criticism of their position would be interesting, but calling them bitches isn't.

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Seems to me like you have a very different view of "suffering" than Rand (I don't know the others in your post so I can't comment on those). Rand criticizes suffering as a moral objective, but her morality very much requires "suffering" in the sense that it is used in the article (even if in her terms it's not "suffering" because it's merely living up to ones' morality). Doing hard labor in a quarry rather than being an architect which if being an architect is one's true calling is not suffering in Objectivist terms but it most surely is in the context of the article.

Roark chose to do hard labor because he liked it well enough. What he was doing was choosing not to work for other architects because, for him, that would have been suffering, even though it would have furthered his career better. He went to the quarry out of a refusal to sacrifice his values no matter how convenient it would be.

Do you remember how Roark interacted with his school?

I don't remember anywhere saying that specifically; I interpreted things as if he only went to the quarry because it was the only work he could find. It was out of necessity, as a stop gap until he could establish himself as an architect. The fact that Rand choose a menial job, and the way she described the hardship of the labor, I see no reason to interpret it as meaning that he liked the work. I'm not a Rand scholar though and open to being convinced of the opposite. So yes, he went to the quarry out of refusal to sacrifice his values, but that doesn't support the position that he didn't suffer. Actually it's exactly what I said in my previous comment.

Besides, my point was that there are several sorts of 'sacrifice' and 'suffering'. The kind that Rand criticized is altruistic suffering - suffering to take the load from someone else. She has no qualms with 'suffering' in a physical sense or even in the sense of prolonged delay of self-realization or gratification if that is required to remain true to one's moral values.

Roark had job options working for other architects; the quarry was not the only work he could find. This was explicit in the book. I don't recall anything about Roark finding the quarry upsetting (i.e. it causing him suffering). If he was suffering -- which I think he wasn't, he was too strong -- it was because of the world in general, and the badness of the architects and clients he'd left behind, not due to the quarry which was nothing compared to them.

Do you think the people in Galt's Gulch suffered in their education? As I recall, they did things like voluntarily attend Galt's lectures (and pay for it, I think). No suffering in sight...

I think he's funny. And his point is less about the need for sacrifice (in general) and more about the need for future time orientation.

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