Wait but why – Dinner table – Thoughts on Ayn Rand?
[Reply to response by CR444]
Agree.
Had she been aware of Axlerod’s work on games theory, John Maynard-Smith’s work on multiple stable state equilibria, Lin Ostrom’s extensions to both cataloguing the sorts of strategies that have worked in practice for commons, and a raft of other concepts (particularly complexity theory as outlined by David Snowden, and algorithm space more generally as outline by Stephen Wolfram), I too suspect her understanding would have evolved with the times.
Certainly her works are used to excuse much that is not in the long term self interests of anyone, and I doubt she would have agreed with that.
I never met her, but a friend of mine did, many times, and discussed many things at length; and I with him (and many others in Objectivist circles in the 90s). I read all of her published works, and critiqued the errors I found in her epistemology over 20 years ago. My own epistemology has progressed substantially since then, and I suspect given my current approximation of an understanding of infinity, that my epistemology will continue to evolve for as long as I am willing to keep questioning (as will my understanding of the recursive nature of evolution and the power of cooperation in complex systems).
