Philorandroid

That sounds exceptionally beneficial to whoever gets to define what is and isn't "misinformation," and you're kidding yourself if you think that it'll only ever be used in benevolence and not to the benefit of whatever picotyrant is in charge at a given moment.

Pretty salient article, even if it felt like it hyperfixated on the low-hanging QAnon fruit, and not more controversial examples of perverted/wishfully-thought reality. Well-worth a second read!

In my experience, it's the gap in understanding. To someone with 10+ years experience, certain motes of knowledge might be long-worn givens, where to a beginner it could be groundbreaking wisdom. Without proper introspection, it can be difficult to correctly identify "What doesn't a beginner in this field know?"

I believe it's posted in the article's comments, someone posted two Discord CDN links but I haven't personally watched them.

Again, you're confusing principle with quantitative absolute; the difference here is providing you with an exact list of things you should and shouldn't eat, versus saying "Don't eat poison, it'll hurt you." You can infer that chugging rat poison is probably not in the interest of a long, healthy and fulfilling existence. As such, Objectivism deductively and inductively proves that certain actions are an objective good for the soul as a condition of being human. Soul-tending, satisfying your values, being productive, etc.

No honest philosophy claims to supplant the special sciences, only serve as a foundation, nor will it tell you exactly what you must do to apply those principles to your life. If rigid dogma is what you expect or seek, I suggest investigating religion instead.

... or the music of the Beatles, according to Charles Manson.

If a bad actor wants a scapegoat, they will find one.

You confuse philosophical principle with quantitative analysis. It's perfectly valid to say "you should live your life in accordance with your values, which -- when properly defined, come from rationally benefiting your existence" (or as Rand put it, "life qua man"), without then needing to define thermodynamic systems that dogmatically declare a certain number of calories taken in every day.

I can only think of one example off the top of my head of supposed adherents being used to discredit the philosophy (see Eddie Lampert with Sears), whereas the inverse is true for innumerable cases, where "they read/follow/worship Ayn Rand" is used as a negative qualifier for the person.

John Oliver's segment on Ayn Rand (Last Week Tonight, I forget the name of the segment but it was something to the effect of "Why Is This Still A Thing") did an excellent job summarizing the popular case against her, in all of its disingenuousness: without making an effort to view her statements through the lens of the terms she's defined, it sounds bad compared to vulgar neoliberal sensibilities, and because she herself as a human was less than perfect. It, like every mass media analysis of her or her works I've seen, comes from and is marketed towards a pre-established understanding the Objectivism is wrong.

Also, I'd love to see a source on "everyone who reads" Ayn Rand (or Marx, for that matter, or any author of any written work ever) being toxic sociopaths -- it stands to reason that you'd see her closest adherents, like Onkhar Ghate, Harry Binswanger, Yaron Brook, or Leonard Peikoff being known for acting upon bad ideas if that was all that was in their intellectual orbit, not cherrypicked cases of someone claiming to have read Rand before making questionable or unethical decisions.

She wrote at such incredible length about meaningful labor in the pursuit of happiness -- "productive value" as she put it -- and a soulful existence in general.

It's a shame that there's such a negative knee-jerk reflex to the mention of her name.