| Thursday, December 04, 2008 |
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Activists Learning from Business: Recommendations from John Drake
By Diana Hsieh @ 12:01 AM   
Shortly before Thanksgiving, John Drake of Try Reason posted the following comment on William E. Perry's post How Free Is Speech?:
Yes advocacy is essential. But as with anything, understanding reality is essential. If your goal is cultural change, it is important to understand how ideas are adopted by individuals in society. Are there any over-arching trends that might help guide your efforts into a more efficient programs of advocacy? For a partial answer to this question,
I recommend the book Diffusion of Innovations by Everett Rogers. In Rogers terms, innovations can be technology OR ideas (including philosophic ideas). After 1000s of research projects over many decades looking at many different innovations, some overarching trends are observed as to how ideas and technologies spread through society. Like much research today, the work tends to be highly descriptive, not normative. But there are a few practical applications, such as on page 361, where he very briefly discusses "Strategies for Getting to Critical Mass". I will note that [the Ayn Rand Institute] is explicitly pursuing 3 of the 4 strategies.
A couple years ago, I wrote a few notes on Objectivism in relation to Diffusion of Innovation theory: see here. (As a disclaimer, I no longer associate with some groups or websites listed in that post...many thanks to Diana for helping me see the light). There is much more I would add today if I could find the time to write about it. I ordered the book John recommended, then wrote in reply: "Thanks for the book recommendation. Do you have any other books on business management that you think those of us interested in spreading ideas should definitely read?" I also e-mailed John privately to tell him that I'd be interested in posting anything that he might write up as a NoodleFood post. Here it is, with links added. You can also find it on his blog here.
Although my initial recommendation was from the perspective of how best to spread ideas, I thought it might be useful to suggest books about management that may be helpful when speaking or writing to/for businessmen and women. I also thought it might be useful to suggest books on how to run activism campaigns as a business. I've mixed each perspective, but hopefully you can find what you need.
In all honesty, there really are not a lot of management books I would recommend for the express purpose of spreading ideas. I had a seminar in strategic management where we read many of the classic management books. Except for the one by Peter Drucker, they were a cesspool of bad philosophy propagated as intelligent thought. Peter Selzinck, in Leadership in Administration, gives explicit credit to the pragmatists, Dewey and James. Herbert Simon (Nobel prize winner in economics) has a chapter in Administrative Behavior titled "Fact and Value in Decision-making" that would probably make Peikoff's head explode. It was pure philosophic torture getting through that seminar. Interesting enough, most of the authors were Harvard professors of business. According to the professor of our seminar (who was himself a DBA from Harvard's school of business), these books were all part of a seminar required of all Harvard DBAs back then. I'm not sure if these books are still taught at Harvard, but the influence of these authors is felt in the business schools and business research studies throughout the U.S. today. The Harvard influence over the business research has lead to few useful books, in my opinion.
I mentioned Drucker's above as the exception. Pretty much anything he has written I would recommend. His first book, The Practice of Management, is superbly written and the one best books on management and decision-making that I have ever read. While written in the 50s, it largely defined how business evolved over the next 30 years and the best at describing businesses as they are run today. I would recommend it to any Objectivist activist that plans on speaking to business executives and/or business professionals.
I would also recommend a newer book, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Friedman. This book is about globalization and the role technology has played in changing the world workforce, particularly in the past 10 years. While not as essentialized as it could be, it does offer a good view of the changing nature of information exchange and how its effecting businesses, cultures, and personal experiences. I use parts of this book in my Introduction to Information Systems class.
For running your activism as a business, I would recommend Drucker's book as well as The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber (Chapter 1). The E-Myth (entrepreneurial myth) posits that most entrepreneurs fail because they get into business for the wrong reasons. Its been quite a few years since I read it, but my take-away was that many entrepreneurs fail because they are good technicians, but poor businessmen. They think that just because they know the skill or subject (for [Objectivists], read philosophy), they can be effective entrepreneurs (read activists). This book offers various ways to overcome these common failures. For example, think turn-key when designing your activism. Also, use metrics to measure effectiveness.
I don't know much about marketing, but I imagine a good introductory book on marketing may be useful to activists as well.
From other fields:
I've already mentioned Diffusion of Innovations, which is actually from the field of sociology.
Another book from sociology and psychology fields that uses many of the ideas from Diffusion of Innovations without giving it much due is a recent best seller called The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell. The focus again is on how ideas spread through society, from cool shoes to Sesame Street. It isn't a great book (not as good as Diffusion of Innovations), but it may be of some value.
I give a very limited recommendation of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn. If you have ever heard the phrase "paradigm shift", Kuhn is the one who invented it. Philosophically, the book is way off base. Essentially, Kuhn claims scientists fail to integrate new facts of realty due to their adoption of inbred intrinsicist thinking. The only way to overcome this inbred intrinsicism is with outsiders who come up with new ideas and create scientific revolutions. This leads Kuhn to suggest the cure for intrinicism is subjectivism. That being said, the book contains a number of interesting historic examples about how radical new ideas are rejected and/or adopted by a community. If you can ignore Kuhn's philosophy and focus on the facts illustrated in the book, you may be able to take away something of value.
I've also read a number of other good business books, but I'm not sure how useful they'd be for [Objectivist activists]. And I'm sure there are plenty I haven't read. Thank you, John! That's a very helpful bit of sources and commentary. Anyone else want to add their own recommendations? As always, the comments are open!Labels: Activism, Business, Recommendations
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| Wednesday, November 26, 2008 |
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Sowell on Economics?
By Diana Hsieh @ 12:20 AM
A question: Are Thomas Sowell's books worth reading? I'm particularly interested in his books on economics, namely Basic Economics, Applied Economics, and Economic Facts and Fallacies. I don't need these books to be philosophically perfect, but I'd like them to be good and clear on the economics.
I'm skeptical because I read his book Marxism: Philosophy and Economics some years ago. Although I read it carefully, I learned absolutely nothing from it. It was just a long string of floating abstractions that illuminated nothing. So I'm reluctant to try again, but I'd like to read some economics -- or rather listen, and he seems to be the only potentially decent author available on Audible.
So what say you?Labels: Economics, Recommendations
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| Friday, August 08, 2008 |
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Values of Harry Potter
By Diana Hsieh @ 12:38 AM
I'm delighted to announce that Ari Armstrong's book Values of Harry Potter is now available for purchase. I read an advance copy of the book last month. I loved it. Here's my official endorsement of it.
I've read all the Harry Potter novels multiple times, discussed them at length with friends, read essays analyzing them, and even published an essay of my own. Yet Ari Armstrong's Values of Harry Potter offered me a delightful array of fresh insights into J. K. Rowling's works. It offers fans of Harry Potter a unique opportunity to explore the core values of the novels, to discover why we find them so captivating and so inspiring. Readers will develop a deeper appreciation for Rowling's achievement in portraying life-loving, courageous heroes. They will discover compelling answers to any half-formed questions and doubts about the significance of her Christian themes. When I re-read the Harry Potter series -- as I'm eager to do again -- I will gain far more insight and inspiration from them than ever before, thanks to Values of Harry Potter. For a bit of a taste of the actual item, Ari has posted a PDF with extracts of the book on his web site.
I recommend the book to all fans of Harry Potter, but particularly to people interested in Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. You'll find much of interest in it -- much that you didn't notice on a first or second or third reading of the books. So go order your copy now!Labels: Fiction, Recommendations
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| Friday, June 20, 2008 |
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Software Recommendation: EndNote
By Diana Hsieh @ 1:27 AM
Sometime early in graduate school, Paul recommended that I buy EndNote, a program for managing citations in writing. Since I've found it an invaluable time-saver, particularly for large projects like my prospectus and dissertation, I'm passing on the recommendation to other academics and writers.
The program allows you to maintain a database of citations, easily insert them into your papers, and then format them in whatever format you want, e.g. Chicago 15th A. In addition to standard formats, you can customize existing formats or create your own. It handles parenthetical citations, footnotes/endnotes, and bibliographies. In addition, it allows you to make notes on sources, include keywords and abstracts, etc. So for my dissertation, EndNote has served as a master database of sources. So I know that I've skimmed, read, and/or taken notes on a source; I know what sources I need to review or read as I write each chapter; I know whether a source will likely be helpful. For me, EndNote is software that I cannot write without.
The program is available for Mac and Windows. EndNote "X1" is a bit pricey: $110 for students and $220 for non-student educators from the Academic Superstore. However, I've found that it's well-worth the price. With every paper I write, the program has saved me enormous amounts of time in preparing citations and bibliographies.Labels: Academia, Recommendations
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| Wednesday, May 23, 2007 |
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Good Stuff and Awesome Stuff
By Diana Hsieh @ 7:05 AM
Registered users of the Ayn Rand Institutes's web site now have access to...
The Ayn Rand Multimedia Library
Thanks to an exclusive permission generously granted by the Estate of Ayn Rand, aynrand.org is now able to offer its registered users, free of charge, an expansive collection of Ayn Rand audio and video recordings. This unprecedented selection includes lectures, interviews, and the complete series of Ayn Rand's Ford Hall Forum lectures.
The ARI Lecture Series: The Complete Video Collection
On September 12, 2002, Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, inaugurated the ARI Lecture Series before a crowd of 600 with a lecture titled "9/11--One Year Later: Why America Is Losing the War!" Since then ARI speakers have delivered about six free public talks per year on topics ranging from ethics to foreign policy to history. As a registered user of aynrand.org, you now have access to the lecture portion of each of these talks. A complete selection of full-length video and audio recordings, including the Q-&-A sessions that followed, is available at the Ayn Rand Bookstore. The second is cool, but the first is simply awesome. I've listened to most of the recordings of Ayn Rand already. I particularly enjoyed the Ford Hall Forum lectures, for the reasons explained here. Even those well familiar with the in-print Objectivist corpus will likely find interesting tidbits to tweak their brains in these recordings. And, as I said about the Ford Hall Forum lectures, "those who wish for some small first-hand glimpse of the real Ayn Rand, undistorted by ax-grinding critics, will find these lectures to be an invaluable treasure."Labels: Announcements, Recommendations
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| Monday, January 15, 2007 |
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Conservatism
By Diana Hsieh @ 6:13 AM
Hooray! Brad Thompson's excellent 2006 OCON lecture "Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea" is now available from the Ayn Rand Bookstore. Here's the description:
This lecture examines the intellectual history of the neoconservatives and their plan for governing America. Dr. Thompson introduces the neocons by tracing the evolution of their thought from their youthful Trotskyism in the 1930s to their anticommunist liberalism in the 1940s and '50s and finally to their development of a new kind of conservatism in the 1960s and beyond.
The neoconservatives are generally regarded to be the most intellectually impressive faction of the post-war intellectual Right: they seem to take ideas seriously, they seem to be principled, they seem to support the principles of the American founding, and they seem to support capitalism. But, as Dr. Thompson demonstrates, behind their rhetorical facade, the neocons scorn principles, they scorn morality, they scorn capitalism and, ultimately, they scorn America. Despite their pro-American rhetoric and their appeals to, and defense of, America's ideals and institutions, Dr. Thompson demonstrates that the neoconservatives advocate singularly un-American principles: mysticism over reason, altruism over egoism, duty over rights, collectivism over individualism, socialism over capitalism, war and empire over peace and trade.
Dr. Thompson's lecture focuses on the neocons' attempt to transform the Republican Party and the conservative intellectual movement into a permanent ruling majority, their pragmatic philosophical method, their advocacy of a conservative welfare state, and their attempt to turn America toward a form of Platonic republicanism. Ultimately, he argues, the neoconservatives are a threat to a free society.
Audio CD; 2-CD Set: $21.95 (90 min., with Q & A) Also, someone recently pointed me to this conservative attack on Brad Thompson's excellent article "The Decline and Fall of American Conservatism" from The Objective Standard. The critic begins with some serious confusions about Thompson's basic position, plus some Divine Command Theory: "As always with libertarians, he offers a subjective philosophy rather than an objective set of standards for behavior, which is what morality requires and is why morality is dependent on God." More inanity ensues. And to top it off, the post ends with the following: "For all his talk of conservatism, there is nothing of America or its Judeo-Christian/Western inheritance that his egoism would conserve. This kind of extreme selfishness is the rot that has destroyed the rest of the West and conservatives do well not just to reject it but to fight against it tooth and nail."
Well, at least he knows who his enemies are.Labels: Recommendations
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| Friday, August 18, 2006 |
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Darryl-Wright-O-Rama
By Diana Hsieh @ 9:52 AM
It's Darryl-Wright-O-Rama at the Ayn Rand Bookstore.
Dr. Wright's very fascinating -- albeit dense and technical -- lecture from the 2005 OCON has just been released:
"Ayn Rand and the History Of Ethics"
Can reason prescribe the ends human beings should seek in life, as well as the means to those ends? This has been a central question in the history of ethics, and it is also a central question in Ayn Rand's Objectivist ethics. This lecture explores Ayn Rand's view on this question, bringing out its distinctive and important features and contrasting it with some of the most influential historical views, including those of Aristotle and Hume.
100 min., with Q & A -- Audio CD; 2-CD set: $23.95 or Audiocassette: $19.95 This lecture is fascinating, but also quite dense and technical. So if you don't have some familiarity with the history of ethics, including the standard categories of "consequentialism" and "deontology" and the standard questions about ultimate values, then you'll probably have trouble understanding it. However, if you have those meta-ethical basics, you're sure to find it worthwhile.
The lecture does have a particularly interesting discussion of how to think of Ayn Rand's metaethics inductively. That's helped me understand it better, since before it always had something of the feel of a floating abstraction.
Dr. Wright's other lecture courses are also on sale -- 50% off!
Bonus clearance sale: 50% discounts on four other Darryl Wright titles!
Offer good through October 1, 2006
Reason And Freedom
This course extensively analyzes Ayn Rand's groundbreaking principle that the mind cannot function under coercion--and uses this principle as a case study in philosophic methodology.
Audiocassette; 6-tape set; 7 hrs., with Q & A -- Regular price: $79.95, Sale price: $39.95
Advanced Topics In Ethics
This course develops new perspectives on key topics in the Objectivist ethics. It focuses on two broad issues: the significance of the fact that everyone acts on some philosophy, and the dependence of the concept "value" on the concept "life."
Audiocassette; 5-tape set; 6 hrs., with Q & A -- Regular price: $68.95, Sale price: $34.45
The Philosophy of Motivation
Is achieving a value equivalent to avoiding a disvalue? Is pursuing life the same as avoiding death? This course, given by Dr. Wright, explores Ayn Rand's important distinction between "motivation by love" and "motivation by fear."
Audiocassette; 6-tape set; 7 hrs., with Q & A -- Regular price: $79.95, Sale price: $39.95
Modern Political Philosophy: Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau
This course contrasts Hobbes' and Rousseau's arguments for political absolutism with Locke's intransigent defense of individual rights and limited government. Dr. Wright corrects standard misinterpretations (such as the assertion that Hobbes' theory is egoistic and pro-capitalist, or that Locke endorses altruistic limitation on property rights), and compares their views with those of Ayn Rand.
Audiocassette; 6-tape set; 7 hrs.,with Q&A -- Regular price: $69.95, Sale price: $34.95 I can't say anything about Modern Political Philosophy: Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, since I haven't listened to it yet. However, the other three courses are excellent. I would particularly recommend Advanced Topics In Ethics first and foremost, then Reason And Freedom, then The Philosophy of Motivation.Labels: Announcements, Recommendations
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| Thursday, August 03, 2006 |
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Two Lecture Courses on Sale
By Diana Hsieh @ 7:04 AM
The Ayn Rand Bookstore is selling two of Leonard Peikoff's excellent lecture courses at a substantial discount:
Induction in Physics and Philosophy
By Leonard Peikoff
These historic lectures present, for the first time, the solution to the problem of induction--and thereby complete, in every essential respect, the validation of reason ...
(13 hrs., 42 min., across 7 sessions, with Q & A)
Audio CD; 14-CD set:
Regular price: $210
Sale price: $145
Audiocassette; 12-tape set:
Regular price: $180
Sale price: $125
The Dim Hypothesis: The Epistemological Mechanics by which Philosophy Shapes Society
By Leonard Peikoff
This 15-session course--part lecture, part discussion--was presented live to a worldwide audience by phone and on the Internet. It is based on Dr. Peikoff's The DIM Hypothesis (book-in-progress), in which he looks at the role of integration in the culture and in practical life ...
(22 hrs., 9 min., with Q & A)
Audio CD; 30-CD set:
Regular price: $310
Sale price: $215
Audiocassette; 15-tape set:
Regular price: $265
Sale price: $185 The sale ends on October 1st.Labels: Announcements, Recommendations
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| Tuesday, May 23, 2006 |
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Virtue is Expensive
By Diana Hsieh @ 7:01 AM
Tara Smith's new book, Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist, seems to be selling reasonably well, despite its painful price tag of about $80. The Ayn Rand Bookstore has sold out of copies for the moment. And its sales rank on Amazon has been amazingly strong for a book of that price for the past few days I've sampled: #14,903 on Saturday, #35,080 on Sunday, and #65,420 on Monday.
I haven't had a chance to read it in full yet -- and I don't expect to do so for a few weeks. However, both Paul and I read the chapter on integrity for the 1FROG meeting this past Saturday. I thought it exceedingly well done. It was clearly and engagingly written with a good presentation of the core ideas, plus more fascinating little tidbits than I could count. As I was reading, the thought that stood out most clearly in my mind was that the chapter didn't just illuminate the nature, justification, and requirements of integrity in an abstract way. If a person reads it with an eye toward his own life, i.e. without sinking into detached rationalism, the chapter will help him practice the virtue of integrity better in countless ways in his own life. I expect similar delights from the rest of the book.
For folks unable to afford the present hefty price tag, you might request that your (university) library purchase the book. Also, I strongly suspect a cheaper paperback to appear within the next year or so. However, if you can afford the current price tag, the book looks to be worth it.Labels: Recommendations
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