toohiptohipster:
Proops: Do you have a favorite author?
Audience Member: Uhh.. In college it was Rand.
Proops: Ayn (Anne) Rand? And you’ve come to this? I love it. This is a meeting of the minds! In college it was Ayn Rand, and then what? You woke up and realized that you wasted fucking hours of your life reading her bullshit diatribes?
AM: It’s pronounced Ayn (aɪn), and—
Proops: Whatever.
AM: I’ve evolved a little, I don’t love her.
Proops: Yeah.
AM: She has some good points.
Proops: What were her good points?
AM: [Awkward Laughter]
Proops: You brought it up.
AM: Uhhm…
Proops: You said she had good points.
AM: Efficiency.
Proops: My goodness. That’s a marvelous point. You’re right about that.
This sounds like one of my break-ups. If you could even call it a relationship in the first place. But either way I called Atlas Shrugged “an unrealistic, delusionary, free market capitalist wet dream that gave me more brain damage than the one time I accidentally read an issue of the National Enquirer at the doctor’s office.” He told me to “get the fuck out of the house.” I think I won than argument, thank you very much.
(Source: )
Today, I got into an argument with a 9-year-old over who is the best non-super superhero. I took the side of Batman, and he took the side of Iron Man.
His logic? Iron Man is made of iron. He can kick Batman’s butt with his iron foot.
My logic? Batman is a ninja. Not only is Batman a ninja, he was taught by Liam Neeson, who also played the Jedi Qui-Gon Jinn in Star Wars: Episode I. Therefore, not only is Batman a ninja, he’s a Jedi.
The nerd is strong with this one; this is not the nerd you’re looking for, etc.
Yesterday, in my economics class, this guy started arguing that people have an intrinsic need to want. That people are born wanting to do nothing more than consume. In this way, advertising and other influences from the media do nothing to make a person want something more. They just want it.
The professor started arguing with him, asking the student how long advertising has been around. Turns out that, in the course of all humanity, advertising has been around for a fraction of the time that people have walked the earth.
He then mentioned that the first people were hunter-gatherers that worked in a team to share everything that they could kill just to stay alive. They didn’t have possessions, they just had relationships and what they needed to survive. He explained that the communal living of early human tribes were the basis of what humans intrinsically need or want.
The whole time this is happening, I’m in the back of the room with my mouth agape. Normally I’m the person who argues with the student who says anything like this in class. Yeah, I’m that douchebag. But this guy, with a doctorate and a nice suit, just completely leveled this kid. At best, I would have kicked him in the shins and run away. At best. His was a completely rational argument based in reality and there was no way to rebut it.
It may not be economics, but I think I can learn a lot from this guy.
