Try "all her novels and at least 4 books of essays". In fact, I seem to have read more Rand than many Objectivists. It was a while ago, though, and the books have long since left my possession.

Let me guess - your next argument will be "you didn't understand it then". If so, we're done here, for the same reason I don't argue with Christian fundamentalists who claim I don't understand Christianity.

edit: Sorry, some of your other assertions amuse me.

> Also, it's interesting that you don't try to reconcile the fact that the Y Combinator is one of the most successful startup incubators ever, and that there is a large presence of Ayn Rand fans on here.

I guess you found "maybe the ability to believe bullshit... is a strength" confusing. I chose the word "strength" for a reason, although "advantage" would fit well too.

I also covered that in another thread, where you were perfectly welcome to reply. Nobody did.

> Do ya think there might be a connection there?

Correlation? Not without better data. But even if there is a correlation, that is not causation; and I find it hard to take someone who would assert otherwise seriously as a thinker.

So here's one for you. What proportion of successful YC startups were founded by Objectivists? What proportion of failed or abandoned ones were?

> In my experience it's very rare to meet a person who calls themselves an Objectivist who isn't way above average in intelligence and ambition.

In my experience it's very rare to meet a person who ridicules Objectivism who isn't way above average in intelligence, perceptiveness and sensitivity.

Shall we get into a pissing match about whose experience is better, or shall we simply agree that personal experience is not a useful data point?

> All the guys I knew from university who were Objectivists are now either working at Google

...so no self-compromise there, then...

> some big time law firm

...where integrity is so highly prized...

It flies in the face of economics - while many economists tend towards the libertarian side of things, the honest ones acknowledge things like externalities, merit goods, and other market 'abnormalities'. People live in communities and have for thousands of years, and there are aspects of that that you can't simply throw out the window in favor of The Individual. Her thinking strikes me as some sort of utopia that is about as relevant to the real world as Karl Marx, albeit in a direction that I personally find more appealing. However, I find the writings of people like Milton Friedman more compelling, because they discuss the real world, human frailties and all, and are less absolute/extreme.

I also find all the scenes involving female protagonists being more or less raped as weird and disturbing. But that's perhaps tangential to her philosophy.

All told, though... I'm just not interested in "philosophy" as this wishy washy thing, that's not my thinking style. I prefer things like economics, or at most, going one removed from that and talking about what a society wants to accomplish and how it wants to treat its citizens.