First, I dont know why it autoposted to round #3, and I am sorry if that was my fault.

We can continue this debate if you wish in a second debate. The opponent's condescending attitude is off-putting. I don't know what civility there is in calling one's opponent "a feisty one". I'm afraid if you do not understand my humour there is little I can do to improve my humour. I'm sorry that you found it condescending, whereas it was meant to lighten the debate with a touch of trash-talking. If you think there is a double-standard in my civility, I thought that my humour stayed on the side of lighthearted jesting versus offensive attacking, but it seems I may have crossed that line. I will be careful to refrain from further attempts at humour which may offend. First, I note how pedantically charged in semantic Pro's argument is. Even though he says the argument is informal to the degree that ad hominem is allowed (since Rand's character is the main subject here), Pro argues in such a ostentatiously formal way that it only serves to show off his "skill" of deduction and is not the least convincing. If I were in your position, I note the use of words like "condescending", "ostentatious", absurd and "pedantical" used to describe my argument only undermine your credibility as an impartial commentator, especially one who critiques the word choice and attitude of another. It is up to the voters to decide who is being condescending, not yours to try and portray me as a hypocritical fool who views his own argument as overly skillfull. I dont think my audience is stupid, I dont think you are stupid, and I am most certainly not a moron (as far as I can tell.) I was showing how this debate is different from a purely ideological debate on the grounds of Rands philosophy, in which critiques on Rands character would be considered ad hominem. Instead, this is a debate on Ayn Rand herself and her life choices, and whether they could be considered grounds for calling her a crackpot. It isnt a debate where style of language is the centre focus, and I impel you to stop conducing attacks on my rhetoric. Pro bases his argument off of the definition given by popular dictionaries of crackpot. He says that crackpot consist of being eccentriic, lunatic/unrealistic, or foolish/crazy. He says that if he proves these three conditions, he will have proven that Ayn Rand was a crackpot. Let me grant him that, even though dictionary definitions are not written in such logical method as would befit pro's hyper-rigorous treatment. My accusation rests not so much on his definition of crackpot, but how absurdly he treats and "proves" each individual components. It is here that Con flies off from a track of semi-valid argument to a completely ludicrous one. If you would like to redefine crackpot, feel free to do so. However, I thought that 4 separate common definitions of crackpot by popular dictionaries were sufficient. Do you have a more common, correct source and/or definition? Dictionary definitions are meant to give a common, mainly bias-free definition of a word as used in different contexts. I think my logic was perfectly reasonable. If you open a thesaurus and look for crackpot Im sure that you would find eccentric, lunatic, unrealistic, foolish and/or crazy. After you decided that my definition was not unreasonable in the least, you conceded that argument to me. In proving that Rand was eccentric, Pro makes a huge and indeed fallacious assumption. First, he cites a definition from the apparently philosophically-authoritative source of Merriam-Webster, where eccentricity is basically when one deviates from the convention. Again, another ill-fated source critique. Great language though, I commend you on huge and indeed fallacious assumption. If you dont like Merriam Webster, give me a better source and a better definition of eccentricity. Let us say we accept this definition. Now, take a look at how Pro argues that Rand was eccentric. Let's take one example: he says that Ayn Rand was eccentric because she was an atheist and only .03% of the people were atheists at her time. This argument is absurd, because it judges Ayn Rand's eccentricity from the standard of her time--this we must not do; we should rather try to judge whether Rand was eccentric from our convention in the modern time. Why? Because if we try to judge an individual by the standard of their own time, then many others of greatness were crackpots, or at least eccentric, who we would not take to be so. Take Galileo, for example. He proposed and believed that the earth was round when almost no one of his society believed it to be so. Would in our modern day of the heliocentric theory, say he was eccentric? We may say he was an eccentric in his time, but we would not consider him, if he were among us, eccentric. After all, what is the

point of considering whether someone was eccentric/stupid/crackpot or the like? Because we wish to know whether or not to take him or her seriously in the modern day. Otherwise, there is no point--Galileo was an eccentric during his time, so what? We would not call people, who were eccentric (as defined in the given definition) in the past but right all along, eccentric as such, but would call them pioneers. When Rush Limbaugh is hailed in 2055 as the defender of patriotism and common sense, you will have been right all along. This argument, while calling mine absurd, is equally absurd. You twist the example of Galileo to fit your argument, when this case is different. You mix up opinions and scientific fact- when Galileo proved with scientific fact his ideas, the people around him disagreed, but naturally his ideas were sound. When Ayn Rand said that Arabs were savages, nobody in 2055 will say Oh! Yes! She was right all along! Because she simply has no proof. But,if she said that based on longitudinal, wide-volume study on a case-by-case basis Arabs held beliefs conducive to barbarism, people later on would take her more seriously, and in her own time. This is why your argument is, as you described best, huge and indeed fallacious. In fact, the definition given of eccentricity does not suffice. It may be from a published dictionary but a purpose of a dictionary's denotation is to give the reader the basic connotation, the basic gist of the word. It is not meant to be enforced in a pedantic way. I say that eccentricity in terms of belief (because that appears to be our focus here) should be "the propensity to be given to unjustified and wrong belief". This fits best to our conception of eccentricity, because concept of Brownian motion is known only by the narrow subset of the population who are versed in physics. Yet, one would not call them eccentrics for believing that because it has been scientifically justified through countless calculations and observations. But any enlightened or scientificallyeducated person would call the creationists eccentric, even though they consist of 46% of United States citizens according to the gallup poll [1], because we find their belief to be unjustified. In fact, Ayn Rand's atheism is justified, as Pro cited, by her belief that God's existence has yet to be proved. She also states her belief in the perfection of man as such, and using it as a fulcrum, rejects the notion of God as "degrading". Of course, the "perfection of man" needs some expansion and that is provided by her metaphysical statement that none can transcend existence, which God does. Of this, she says " "A leaf ... cannot be all red and green at the same time, it cannot freeze and burn at the same time... A is A." [2] Again, you agreed with my argument, that scientific fact and sound opinions matter more than subsets of population over time in eccentricity. However, discard for the moment Atheism, which, by the way, is not scientifically sound. She ignored the wide volume of scientific fact proving that smoking was detrimental to health. I believe I need not cite any studies proving this, however I am able to, as far back as 1950. (She got treatment in 1974 for comparison) YET SHE DENIED THIS AND CONTINUED TO SMOKE, as you say But in the 1970's, cigarette consumption was still in its heyday [3]. The brainwashing pro-smoking advertisement was banned just in 1970 [3]. One can surely understand her ignorance, as one would the ignorance of a child brainwashed by a skinhead his entire life. The ignorance of a child brainwashed by a skinhead his entire life. Doesnt this go against your argument that Ayn Rand held justifiable beliefs? Instead, here is a clear and present example of DENIAL AGAINST SCIENTIFIC FACT. This is clear proof of my argument- let me explain. If, as you argue, as in Galileos case, we should study her beliefs against what is the common knowledge of today versus the wide range of human opinion, this goes directly against your argument. You even say cigarette consumption was in its heyday, proving that it was the common virtue to continue to smoke. Yet, science had already proven smoking carcinogenic and perhaps fatal, yet she continued to smoke, as it fit her FOOLISH BELIEFS OF HOLDING FIRE AGAINST HER LIPS, PROVING MANS TRIUMPH OVER NATURE. Huge and indeed fallacious. a. Of course, here, perceptive readers will point out the seeming double standard on my part. Why do we consider whether Rand was a lunatic or unrealistic with the past standard, while we judge her using the modern standard in the case of eccentricity? This is because the purpose of inquiry is different--whereas the purpose of questioning an individual's eccentricity is to see if we should take him seriously in the modern world, the inquiry of whether an individual was lunatic/unrealistic is dependent on the intellectual environment in which the person lived and given the context, the way in which the person drew his or her conclusion. In this case, Rand, as was many people from the 1950's~70's, could have been brainwashed by the cigarette company and thus reluctant to the counter-advertising, which began to surface in 1967 [3]. By that time, she was 62.

Could Galileo have been brainwashed that the Earth was the center of the universe and that the Earth was flat? Yes, most certainly. But he didnt, he instead developed scientific inquiry. This was already available in large amounts to Rand. Yet she lived in denial. Your argument here needs no further rebuttal.

3) I do not defend racism. Nonetheless, can we say that because of this, Ayn Rand was a lunatic and an
unrealist? Remember the time period she was born in and grew up in--it was a homogenized America, where racial slurs were not looked down upon, and where America was the supernation of the world. She was 58, when Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. Many thinkers had racist/sexist/straight-out-weird thoughts, but this does not deter our belief in their rationality and awareness. Aristotle had sexist view of the genders. Heidegger was a Nazi officer. Pythagoras and pythagoreans killed over irrational numbers. If she held justifiable beliefs, as you so eloquently stated, she would have been against racism. I note that Pro ignores the third point of his definition of crackpot: foolishness. Indeed I did. HOWEVER, reference above foolishness against scientific fact. I think that is enough to prove her of being a fool. Seeing as that I do not have much characters remaining, I find no room for my counter-argument. I remind the readers that if Pro has not proved his burden of proof, i.e., prove that Ayn Rand was a crackpot, Con wins by default. I have proved that Pro's argument that Rand is eccentric and that she is a lunatic is insufficient. Not only that, his argument is insufficient even by his own standard, seeing as that he has failed to consider whether Ayn Rand was "foolish". Pro has thusly failed to fulfill his burden of proof. I don't know why we skipped Round 2, but I look forward to Pro's conclusion/response. Let us keep the condescension and snarkiness down to the minimum this time. It aint over till its over! You havent proved that Rand isnt eccentric and holds such ideas, and I did just prove that Rand was foolish above. I did not fail to fulfill my burden of proof. If you read everything I wrote, you would see that. Huge and indeed fallacious.