Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Rereading Atlas Shrugged, published by Vaniver on the AI Alignment Forum. Write a Review This post will not attempt to avoid spoilers, and will be much more comprehensible if you've read the book or are familiar with its basics, but I also hope it'll be somewhat understandable if you haven't read the book at all; to aid with that I'll put summaries after all the names. I first read Atlas Shrugged as a teenager, I think for an essay contest. I was already a libertarian from reading Free to Choose, and found Rand's moralism offputting and her characters strange. I was a 'technical' libertarian,[1] in that I was convinced that decentralization led to better decision-making and better results, and didn't see how the moral libertarians made a better case than the moral statists. And even when it came to morality, the people I saw at church were putting in significant effort to try to be better, and yet Rand's heroes didn't seem to have any sort of moral development; the good people were good, and the bad people were bad, and there wasn't any engagement with the question of how to become good. I think that was the main content of my essay, and unsurprisingly it didn't win anything. But a friend recently mentioned that they had read it and were surprised about how much it was about rationality; I remembered some bits and said "yeah, that checks out," but when I reread it recently was surprised at just how much there was, and how topical much of it was to current events and decisions I'm facing. A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight. ― Robertson Davies For this post I expect to slip between "how I saw Atlas Shrugged as a youth" and "how I see it now", with the first mostly to explain by contrast. Creators revisited In youth, I thought Galt's Gulch (a hideout in the Rockies accessible only to the creators on strike) was ridiculous. You have people whose primary skills are being executives, and they become manual laborers, and they're better off? Why think a mining executive would be any good at digging copper himself, or an aircraft executive would be good at raising hogs? I think I was confused instead of enlightened by having the category of "executive." James Taggart (the 'villain' railroad executive) would be denied entry to Galt's Gulch, and starve if he ended up there. The primary characteristic of the creators is that they operate off their inside view and own responsibility. Rearden (the 'hero' steel-maker) invents a new variety of metal, not by seeing it in a flash of insight, but by believing that it's possible enough to remain determined through ten years of obstacles and setbacks. Dagny Taggart (the 'hero' railroad executive) provides value by making decisions using her own judgment, by paying close attention to details, and turning towards instead of away from problems. Some of the scientific and engineering inventions are fake, and I think in youth I overestimated how much the characters were supposed to be mutant superheroes instead of doing something that could be copied. Sure, you might not be able to sleep as little as Dagny, but you could try to actually succeed in your work, and work in a field where that's noticed and rewarded instead of punished. It reminds me of simulcra levels; the heroes are the people who live in 'reality', and the villains are the people who live in 'society'. The heroes look at the world to determine what is true; they say things they think are true so that other people will have a more accurate model of the world; they try to enter honest competitions, they try to win, are sportsmanlike when they lose, and think there is no honor or profit in dishonest competitions. When selling things, they assume buyers ...