We don’t need to rely on Huemer’s gloss; the distaste for map-territory distinctions and reasoning under uncertainty being too subjective can also be seen in the source material. Consider this line from Atlas Shrugged:
“Dagny”, he said, looking at the city as it moved past their taxi window, “think of the first man who thought of making a steel girder. He did not say, ‘It seems to me’, and he did not take orders from those who say, ‘In my opinion.’”
(Psychologically, Rand is totally in the right in that people very often do use such language to evade responsibility for thinking, but reversed stupidity is not intelligence.)
Barbara Branden’s biography The Passion of Ayn Rand also describes this amusing moment from the writing of a planned miniseries adaptation of Atlas Shrugged:
Only once during their association did Ayn’s wrath descend on Stirling Silliphant. He had added the word “perhaps” to a statement made by Dagny—and Ayn angrily shouted: “You’ve destroyed Dagny’s character on this page! You’ve made her qualify her thinking! She always knows what she’s doing—she doesn’t use words like ‘perhaps’ or ‘maybe.’” The offending word was removed.
We don’t need to rely on Huemer’s gloss; the distaste for map-territory distinctions and reasoning under uncertainty being too subjective can also be seen in the source material. Consider this line from Atlas Shrugged:
(Psychologically, Rand is totally in the right in that people very often do use such language to evade responsibility for thinking, but reversed stupidity is not intelligence.)
Barbara Branden’s biography The Passion of Ayn Rand also describes this amusing moment from the writing of a planned miniseries adaptation of Atlas Shrugged: