The real question is did you learn anything from it? I read about Russian nobility decades before I read Atlas Shrugged too.

Just because she lauded a certain, relatively elitist view, a view which is echoed to some degree in actual human endeavor, doesn't mean that she advocated some sort of nobility. Her heroes weren't people who were noble by birth or because they belonged to the right families. They were people who made things or ran enterprises (which incidentally is not a thing the Russian nobility was notable for!). In the end, the protagonists of her book had largely abandoned society and lost the fruits of the labors they had in greater society (gone on "strike").

Further, I find it odd that all you can seem to find in the book is some lame argument for Russian nobility. The most important takeaway is that this novel is about a dystopian future created by people who take from others and society supposedly for the purpose of saving society. The language she uses to describe them, particularly, "looter" indicates why she abhors the foes of the book. It's not because they aren't nobility.

She actually has some good writing in there particularly the story of the end of "20th Century Motors", a business which happened to employ John Galt as an inventor. The only people who could be considered nobility were the ones who inherited and then destroyed the company, causing a great deal of suffering in the process.

Do you really think she would be so popular today, if you were even remotely right? The US is going through the early stages of the Atlas Shrugged nightmare right now. It's a country where higher education costs have tripled over a few short decades (adjusted for inflation) and this increase in cost is due solely to attempts to make college allegedly more affordable (subsidized and government guaranteed student loans). The same has happened for health care and home ownership.

It's a place where one can justify government spending by claiming that they will create one temporary job per few hundred thousand dollars spent. Where economic activity (GDP) is more important than future wealth. Where people can bitterly complain about the lack of jobs while simultaneously advocate for various policies that make it harder and more costly to employ people. Where moving enterprises to the more productive and vigorous societies of the world becomes synonymous with derogatory terms like "race to the bottom".

It's a place where various robin hood and social improvement policies have been in place for generations, yet things are getting worse and more corrupt with chilling signs of tyranny on the horizon. Where governments get creative with interpretation of laws in ways that suit them or their cronies.

Here's the thing. Rand nailed that 50 years ago: the language, the actions, the outcomes. I simply don't care if she actually had unpopular opinions on nobility or whatever. I think she should get considerable credit for calling our present society.

Sort of. There is a lot of overlap, such that a deep intellect of, say, IQ 2000 could provide insights that would allow each member of humanity to make better decisions, such that humanity with a collective IQ of 700,000,000,000 + ASI IQ of 2000 is more economically effective than humanity with 14 billion people and 100 IQ average. But for ASI to make better decisions than everyone else put together, you need it to have linear computing power greater than all of humanity combined (where higher IQ scores may require exponential advances in computing power).

Zey vere yust followink orders.

Zu Befehl!

There is no constitutional authority for border control (only naturalization) or data monitoring.

Of all the features to make optional, "pedestrian detection" is not one of them.

Either include that in the auto parking feature or do not include an auto parking feature.

Really... these auto driving features are premature in most cases. People need to take responsibility for what their own cars do and not fob it off on dubious auto pilot systems.

That said, I don't even like automatic transmissions... I'm convinced that they're responsible for stop and go traffic. People with manual transmissions do not accelerate and then jam on the breaks over and over and over again. Instead, the whole highway keeps a consistent speed.

it is why in such traffic I get behind the biggest semi I can find. That semi is NOT accelerating and stopping over and over again. That guy is going to go the average speed of traffic. I get behind him... and an otherwise stressful drive becomes quite peaceful.

When we have fully automated cars, I think it might get better just because I'm convinced that most issues on the roads are caused by fucktard drivers. And maybe the robots will be less stupid. But who knows.

The laundry list of shady deals is so long as this point that the organization itself has lost all credibility.

Please come and show us your CS skills so lovingly inculcated by your parents. Also, we would like to know how they helped you in your career so far? Or were there other factors in your success?

So just how badly are you trying to lose this argument?

No, give me an example. We can make this about my refusal to do your work for you, or we could make it about this alleged evidence you speak of.

We must shut down society until this breech is contained!

Then you haven't seen many medias. I'll just note that there was a very relevant society who once named their chief propaganda outlet, "Truth" which just happens to be "Pravda" in anglicized Russian.

"Try solving the Travelling salespeople problem twice as big with merely twice as fast hardware, it will slow to a grinch."

Yes, but solving it with twice as much of something that scales the same way (logarithmically), and its fine. You know, like doubling the number of "neurons" in a neural net. "We know the substrate of brain power, gray cells"

No, we really, really don't. That's like saying we know computers because we know silicon. But none-the-less, more "silicon" processors==more computing power, and more neurons==logarithmically or exponentially more computing power. Of course, that is when they are concerned with thinking, rather than coordinating the movement and processing sensory input from 450 cubic meters of flesh--a herculean task by animal measures.

A computer that is twice as fast is twice as fast. What part of this do you not understand?

If A is like B, then B is like A.

I quite agree. But I think the book serves a purpose past just expressing Ayn Rand's fantasies. For example, notice dbiii's obsessive focus on nobility despite obvious problems with the assertion. Ayn Rand caricatures such beliefs intentionally and unintentionally in Atlas Shrugged.

It's not the French Revolution any more. If your beliefs are so immature, silly, and ancient that a hack writer like Rand can accurately portray them 50 years ago, then maybe you need to up your game.

The Amiga CD32 Set Top box did high resolutions... What's your point?