Randian
Article
Randian is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between February 09, 2022 and August 08, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “imagining - you’re some kind of Randian tycoon”; “Randian/Nietzschean/master-morality ideas”. It most often appears alongside effective altruism, 10240, 4chan.
Metadata
- Category: Concepts
- Mention count: 2
- Issue count: 2
- First seen: February 09, 2022
- Last seen: August 08, 2024
Appears In
Related Pages
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- effective altruism (2 shared issues)
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- 10240 (1 shared issues)
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- 4chan (1 shared issues)
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- @slatestarcodex (1 shared issues)
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- Acemoglu & Robinson (1 shared issues)
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- Achillead (1 shared issues)
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- Achilles (1 shared issues)
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- ACX Grants (1 shared issues)
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- Against Malaria Foundation (1 shared issues)
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- Agamemnon (1 shared issues)
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- Agememnon (1 shared issues)
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- Alastair Roberts (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
I’d previously been imagining - you’re some kind of Randian tycoon, sitting serenely in your office, reviewing resumes for your 1001st software engineering drone. You can easily check how they do on various coding exams, Project Euler, peer ratings, whatever, but instead you go with the one who went to Harvard, because you’re a f@#$ing elitist.
Something that's always puzzled me a bit is girl-power pop-feminism. They've internalized a lot of Randian/Nietzschean/master-morality ideas (be strong/powerful, don't apologize for who you are, make time for yourself, don't make yourself smaller to make other people feel better, etc.). And yet their ideal doesn't look very much like Dagny Taggart. Instead of building rocket trains to Mars out of magic green metal that cures cancer or whatever, it seems like the idealized girl-boss is just leading a few Zoom meetings and then going home to do yoga and meditate on how liberated she is, and possibly writing a pop anthem about the experience. So there seems to be some kind of strange disconnect (juxtaposition?) going on there.
(Maybe the vague unacknowledged Randian current in pop-feminism comes by way of Nathaniel Branden's popularization of the psychology of self-esteem? Idk.)
Also, I don't interpret her philosophy as saying that if you're making rockets, you should only think about how the rocket makes cool explosions, and not about how it will help the world. Helping the world by creating economic value, which you then trade with others, is very Randian, at least if you also personally love your work.