Jag: Hey everyone and welcome to the 261st episode of Objectively Speaking. I'm Jag, CEO of the Atlas Society. I'm very excited to have Zultan or Zol Sendes with us today to talk about his book, The Objectivist's Guide to the Galaxy, Answers to the Ultimate Questions of Life, the Universe, and Everything. And as you all can see, I have made quite a few bookmarks. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I'm really excited to talk about it with Zol. So, welcome. Thanks for joining us.

Zol: Hi, Jagazim. Thanks for inviting me.

Jag: Absolutely. And also folks, I did a review of this book on the Atlas Society website, so we're going to put that up through the links as well. So Zol, I I couldn't help but notice some similarities between your family's story and that of Rand in terms of fleeing totalitarian communism. Your parents were Hungarian. How did you come to be born in a refugee camp in Austria?

Zol: Well, towards the end of the Second World War, the Soviets were invading in into Hungary and my father and mother had a wagon with two horses and they my older brother was three months old at the time and they grabbed him and started going toward the the Austrian border and it was quite an experienced line of refugees going along. But before they got to Austria, an airplane came in and strafed the column of refugees. My parents grabbed my baby brother and jumped under a bridge. But one of the horses was killed and the other one shot in one leg. So it ended up being three-legged. And they had to use that three-legged horse to keep pulling the wagon towards Austria. And my dad had to help push the wagon up the hills. But they made it. that they had to go night and day to get into the British sector in Austria. Where they ended up in a refugee camp run by the British. And there wasn't much there. It was a the camp was a bunch of long tents where they had multiple families in in one tent and the families would put up blankets between the various locations to try to get a little bit of privacy. But I came along a year and a half later and of course they didn't have anything. So my crib was a an old crate that had been abandoned. So so life was very hard but I end up being born there in this refugee camp.

Jag: Now your father was a very academic learned man had two PhDs. Um but in terms of getting an immigrate visa that was given on condition of him working in a farm, right? Tell us about that story and what happened.

Zol: Well, there's sort of two parts to that story. One is that Canada actually had a law. We immigrated to Canada, but Canada actually had a law that if you were an educated person, you could only be French or English. um other nationalities couldn't come in and be educated. So my father got sponsorship from farmer to go to a farm in Canada. But unfortunately before we were about to leave in the springtime, I got scarlet fever and I was taken to a hospital and quarantined for a couple of months where I couldn't see anyone other than the nurses. The by the time I got out and we got new arrangements going, we ended up arriving in Canada on this farm in the middle of October and there was nothing there. There's nothing you could really grow in in October in Canada and they had no money, very few possessions, didn't speak English, so it was very difficult. But my my dad found a job in an auto parts factory and went to work there. Uh but the farmer sued saying he had to stay on the farm. And without really being able to speak much English, he had to persuade the judge that well, we'll all starve to death if if we stay on the farm. So he did he did end up working on the farm for several years. Uh it it was still a tough time. I remember one time he was laid off and some people brought some boxes of canned food around so we'd have something to eat. So it was still difficult but eventually we came out of that.

Jag: And eventually your dad did manage to finally get an academic post and then tragedy struck. What happened?

Zol: Yeah, he he ended up um first getting a job at the University of Windsor in Canada and then at a university position in Georgia, then Michigan State and then finally in Carnegie Melon University. That's odd. That's where I taught that the that university was Central Michigan University and things were going well. But on my I was 19 at the time and I he was home and I was home and all of a sudden he collapsed. So I called an ambulance and they took him to the hospital and he had a brain tumor and died three three months later. And I remember on his deathbed there in the hospital is telling my mother, "Gee, I finally got our lives together and now this happens." is all extremely sad.

Jag: Well, you know, with all of these very traumatic experiences that that happened to your parents, to to you, you know, growing up in some cases almost, you know, on the semi starvation level. How do you feel like that influenced you and and how did finding objectivism help you to think about understanding your life, understanding this? I mean, I could I could see that someone might have had these experiences and say, the world is unfair, the world is chaotic.

Zol: Um I the world is not sacrif the interesting thing even though our lives were difficult and poor I I was a happy child. I think partly if you have good parents and mine certainly were they carry along and you know my parents my brother I I was never um I was had a happy childhood I said even though there wasn't much to eat at times so it it's kind of attitude I think in and the way your life develops um I did get out of that um an ambition to do better. I know, you know, my brother and I, we were kind of outsiders and and poorer than most of the people in in Canada. So, you know, we stro strove to achieve things. So, I think it did provide incentive to work hard and and try to achieve something. And of course eventually finding Ayn Rand it really helped make all the ideas clear and beneficial.

Jag: How did you get into engineering?

Zol: Well, as a child I was always interested in building things and how things worked and so I had several projects going all on all the time. Um so I studied math and physics and you know decided on engineering as a good career and I was always consumed by technology and science. So it was a natural fit for me.

Jag: How did you come to see the value of computer simulation in the early 1980s? And can you describe the the finite element method um for our audience?

Zol: Well, actually in 1970 I went to pursue my PhD in at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Um working with a wonderful professor by the name of Pete Sylvester. And he was the one of the first to do electromagnetic field simulation. Um just the comment electromagnetics is all around us. I mean light is an electromagnetic wave but but of course the the signals that are propagating taking our image back and forth are are electromagnetic waves as well. And back then the computers were really primitive by today's standards. I remember being outside the there was a huge room with an air conditioner that you couldn't enter and we used punched cards which you had to submit and then wait for it to come back um to solve these problems and so it was a very different experience. I worked on electromagnetic field simulation during my graduate work and then continued to work on that afterwards.

Jag: Yeah you started off in in academia. um tell us a little bit about what your area of of research and and teaching was and then uh how you ended up founding Ansoft and what the company does.

Zol: Okay. Um I I guess the you know I was always interested in electromagnetics. Now there the equations were developed in 1860 or so um and they describe how electromagnetic fields work but they're they're very difficult to solve. They're partial differential equations. And so in the computer what you do is you you break it up into a bunch of smaller pieces. Um, I guess I just realized, you know, like the the bricks or the stonework behind me, you you'd have this lump and you break it up into small pieces and then model the fields in each one. The computer puts it all together. In any event, um I ended up at Carnegie Melon University in 1982 and doing research in this area and an individual came by from Alcoa. Um and Alcoa makes aluminum and they're they're they make the aluminum. The molten aluminum is poured into a mold and that then forms an ingot which when it's cooled is solid. But as it's going through the mold, it'll have all sorts of distortions from from the mold. So they want to develop a contactless mold system. If you put a coil around the molten aluminum and put an alternating current in it, it will just induce the opposite currents in the molten aluminum and the force from the opposite currents will push it apart. So the electromagnetic field in this case this magnetic field will actually hold the molten aluminum without anything touching it. And so they were designing this technology and they wanted a computer program to to model it. And so I said, "Well, uh, I'll go get a graduate student and we'll start working on this problem right away." And he said, "No, no, we don't want you to do research. We want you to start a company and create a commercial program that we can actually use to design products." And so that's what I we I did. I accepted his proposal. He gave us a contract to start a company and create the software program. And of course he he used it for this particular application. But electromagnetic applies to thousands of things, millions. And so we could sell the software for other applications. And so slowly, one set at a time, we kind of grew the company from this initial beginning with Alcoa.

Jag: Wow. But that is one of those forks in the road that um if you had not met that person, your life would be on a different trajectory. So speaking of things that put one's life on a different trajectory, how and when did you discover Ayn Rand? Was it the fiction, the non-fiction? Was it a friend?

Zol: I guess I was about 30 at the time and there was a colleague at work um that was an objectivist and he was trying to persuade me all the time to read something by Rand. But, you know, it's one of those things that unless you until you read it, you don't really realize what you're missing. And it took me a while before I read. And the first book I read was The Fountainhead and of course I loved it. I think it's a fabulous book and you know as we all know and then I read Atlas Shrugged and the other works. So it it really was a a wonderful experience.

Jag: So um and it ultimately inspired a book about the ultimate answers to the ultimate questions of life, the universe and everything. So let's talk about your new book, The Objectivist's Guide to the Galaxy. And as I mentioned from all of the bookmarks, you gave me a lot to chew on. What inspired this undertaking of a book originally? And what what most surprised you about the process of writing a book?

Zol: Well, I I guess there's a saying among professors, if you want to learn a subject, teach it. Now, I'm not teaching anything anymore, but I thought, well, I want to explore the relationship between science and objectivism, so let me write a book about it. And I thought that it would be very helpful because I know many objectivists have very low education in terms of scientific principles. And so I thought it would be very useful for objectivists to have a better foundation in science. And then it occurred to me that it works the other way as well. Perhaps there'll be a lot of scientists who read the book and then discover objectivism.

Jag: So is that your target? You kind of had a segmented target audiences, both objectivists and also non-objectivist scientists.

Zol: I think it's useful for both. I I really had the objectivist in mind who really wants to learn more about science and how objectivism relates to science and vice versa.

Jag: So in your acknowledgements you mentioned consulting with Atlas Society founder David Kelley and our senior scholar Stephen Hicks. How did they help contribute to your thinking?

Zol: Well, Stephen read some early drafts of what I wrote and was very helpful in straightening a few things out and also his philosophy chart where he provides the essential elements of medieval modern and postmodern philosophy. I found that to be a very useful concept or item to be working with in the book. David and I had some conversations on induction and on the nature of space and so he was very helpful in in a couple of the chapters that that I wrote.

Jag: So the title of the book is sort of a playful nod to the cult favorite Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In your introduction, you describe feeling disappointed with the Hitchhiker's Guide. I couldn't help connecting Adams's post-modern meta narrative with the despairing "Who is John Galt?" when it was expressed to mean that the universe is unknowable, unfixable, really a verbal shrug to express the futility of seeking answers. Do you see that connection? And how does objectivism and your book offer a radically different proposition?

Zol: Yes, that's a very interesting question. It never occurred to me this this connection, but you're right. In both cases, the the question is really talking about how you don't know. It's it's impossible to answer that question. Now, of course, Rand answered the question. Atlas Shrugged in Galt's speech, but Adams basically just wrote the number 42 is the answer to this ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. And recently I saw a post where someone wrote, "Gee, when he read the number 42 in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, he laughed out loud. It was so funny." And it puzzled me. What? There's nothing funny about the number 42. But then I realized he laughed because the number 42 is kind of poking in the eye anyone who says, "Gee, they have any real fundamental knowledge." Anyone who says, "Gee, I I know the answer." They don't believe it. And so they have to laugh and and make a joke of it.

Jag: Right. Well, it's it's probably laughter that covers up a deeper anxiety, I would say. And the way that "Who is John Galt?" is used by many of the characters in Atlas Shrugged that there's a reason why Dagny finds it so infuriating because she herself is on a search for answers. And um this kind of resignation that answers are not possible is anathema to her. And one of my favorite scenes in the book is when she and Rearden are about to take the first train on tracks made of Reirden metal and she's decided to call it the John Galt line in order to reclaim this message. And when a reporter asks her "Who is John Galt?", she shoots back defiantly, "We are." So I think that's why so many people have connected to the the phrase to the question less as a admission of futility and more as kind of a defiant response to to those who would say things are are otherwise.

Jag: So, um, what's remarkable about your book is how you integrate the hard sciences like physics, math, biology, and engineering with philosophy? Um, I was wondering, do you consider philosophy to be a science? And therefore, is objectivism a science?

Zol: Both philosophy and science begin with the three axioms that existence exists, consciousness exists and identity exists. And so they all have the same origin. Now science focuses more on the metaphysics what exists but it has to use epistemology to figure out the answer. Philosophy is more on the epistemology side. How do we know it? But then to the it in that statement requires science to figure out what it is. So I think the two are are together. It's very hard to decouple science and philosophy. They work have to work hand-in-hand and glove to give meaningful answers. So is one or the other? I I just say both are together. Uh essential to arrive at truth.

Jag: Yes. Yes. I I agree with that. Um to me that's why and you might disagree that we tend to see philosophy as a science. Um and that science must be you know open to inquiry and elaboration. Um it's science and philosophy are different than let's say a body of literature right that that was created by one person and you know has copyrighted and cannot be changed as opposed to science and philosophy which needs to is not necessarily about consensus it is about it is about inquiry. So um you describe philosophy as divided into four historical movements with a 250 year battle between modernism and postmodernism. What are the roots of modernism and how did Isaac Newton's Principia change the relationship between man and his thoughts of existence?

Zol: Well, Newton's work the Principia Mathematica really took nature and how things move and explained it using first principles and and mathematics and particularly in terms of orbits of the planets. He showed that they work through natural laws and that all movement is really through a natural law. This showed that you don't have to go to um to find God to find the truth. You can find the truth by examining this world reality. And because he did that, the age of enlightenment developed that led into the modern world where people are really looking at things that exist, trying to understand them and trying to work with them. So it really changed from uh the medieval philosophy or religion and superstition to to reason and logic and experimentation. I think Newton's book is by far the most important book in human history to transform the world from a backward superstitious era to the modern era that we enjoy today.

Jag: So that we've talked about the roots of modernism. Um how would you describe the roots of postmodernism?

Zol: Well, it's a that's an unfortunate turn in history. Um, postmodernism was a term coined by Jean-François Lyotard, a French philosopher who didn't like the result of science. And so he he kind of developed this new postmodern philosophy, but he really drew on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant from the 1700s where Kant basically said that you can't really know things as they are because everything you know comes through your senses and your senses will distort what you see. So there's there's the the world we live in, but we can't really know true reality. And Lyotard then said, "Well, how do you know truth?" Well, it's it's the collective truth. The only only truth you have is is the group. And every group has its own truth. And whatever most people think that's how you define truth. But of course when it's group truth then you have conflicts and communism and collectivism and all sorts of horrible things. So postmodernism has been has its origins in Kant's philosophy but has got grown more and more destructive through the decades and now as you probably know a lot of postmodern philosophy drives the academics and a a great deal of of bad events around the world.

Jag: Yes, of course. Uh as I think Stephen did a wonderful job of in his definitive book explaining postmodernism and which we tried to distill in our Pocket Guide to Postmodernism after the you know failure of communism and Soviet Union became so apparent that there was an effort to repurpose class division, class struggle, oppressor/oppressed to all kinds of identity groups and this idea of lived experience and that structural racism, structural—all of these nebulous and nefarious forces—that I think those who buy into it really develop a victim mindset and it's one of the reasons why you you see so much unhappiness and confusion among the left who've been indoctrinated with these philosophies.

Jag: So going back even earlier from postmodernism, modernism, you talk about the Chauvet caves discovered in 1994 which contain prehistoric drawings, paintings dating back some 30,000 years. What do they tell us about cognitive development um and the cognitive revolution in human beings and what is the relevance to modern man in terms of how we form concepts?

Zol: Yeah, it's it's a fascinating question in terms of evolution. When did conceptual thinking originate? I mean animals are on the perceptual level. They don't have concepts. And the question is when did people first develop concepts? Now Homo sapiens have been around for about 330,000 years but there's no evidence of concept formation way back then. And until about 30,000 years ago, there there was no art, nothing of substantial that was created by Homo sapiens. But then around that time period, you have cave paintings and figurative models being formed. So all of a sudden, people are making objects which shows a conceptual ability. Art is—you have to have concepts in order to appreciate art. Animals simply can't appreciate art. And so the archaeologists maintain that there was a revolution, a cognitive revolution or the tree of life mutation as they call it around 30,000 years ago that changed Homo sapiens from thinking on the perceptual level to forming concepts. And ever since once you're able to form a concept, the brain develops more and way more ways of thinking higher level concepts. So it's really been a 30,000 year evolution to develop the conceptual ability that we have today.

Jag: So, speaking of caves, I thought you made a provocative connection between the 1999 sci-fi blockbuster The Matrix and Plato's allegory of the cave. What do they have in common? And why the persistent impulse in philosophy to doubt the evidence of the senses?

Zol: Well, I I think in terms of mathematicians in particular, they're very much Platonists. And the reason for that is that, you know, you can see two dolls over here or two balls over there and and you can count to the number two, but the number two doesn't exist as such in metaphysical reality. It's a higher level concept. First level concepts are things you point at like dolls or balls. But the number two you can't point at. Now there is good reasons to say that it's derived from reality and we can go through that but the point is all these higher level concepts—and mathematics is 100% higher level concepts—are things you can't really point at. They're just concepts formed in man's mind as tools or knowledge to help interact with reality. So there's a lot of people particularly you know mathematical oriented they don't understand the connection between reality and numbers and so then they they say well there's a Platonic universe and you know like in The Matrix it's all a simulation. Serious "scientists" have actually written books saying that the universe is just a mathematical simulation that nothing is really real. So it's a stupid idea, but it doesn't seem to be—we don't seem to be able to stamp it out, even though it is a stupid idea.

Jag: Well, I think your book will take a a good stab at stamping it out. Um, now I'm going to get stamped out if I don't answer or at least bring up some of these questions that we have from the audience. I'm very thrilled to see that we have a lot of people here saying, "I was looking for a good book and they're going to be picking yours up." Um, so Ilishian asks, "Reflecting on your family's experience as an immigrant, do you think the issues surrounding immigration today um parallel the past or is today's situation unique?"

Zol: I I think there are parallels to be drawn. I think even back in my day not anyone would come—it was limited to you had to have some qualifications or some ability—in our case have some farmer sponsor our way here. So you know immigration of course should be allowed but there has to be controls so that criminals and terrorists don't get across the border. But I think in terms of parallels it it really was much more restricted earlier on than it is today.

Jag: All right. Alan Turner asks, "Having seen the rise of computers over the past 50 years or so, do you think progress is still advancing at the same pace, or are we starting to slow down?"

Zol: Progress is still advancing. And one of the comments there is computers get faster because there's software to simulate. You could not build a say an iPhone that you have today if it wasn't simulated first. They're so complicated that it's only through computers and the the physics is so involved. It's only by simulating these things that we can build them. And now when the computer gets faster then you can simulate more. So it's a process that just speeds up the simulation. So the computers will keep increasing. Now of course the the big event which everyone is aware of is AI is all of a sudden take this dramatic turn and I think everyone sees it's one of the few times in history where something comes out ChatGPT and people can see right away that year that this is going to change the world dramatically. And so I think that that technology in the hardware but also in the software especially AI now is going to revolutionize the world over the next few decades. It's very exciting.

Jag: Yeah. So uh getting back to your book, let's talk about Tabula Rasa. The fact that humans are born without innate ideas. Is that consistent with genetic variability in intelligence, ability or temperament? Uh and does such variability present any challenges to the idea of free will?

Zol: Um I don't think that those two ideas are really in conflict. Uh Tabula Rasa and and the variability in intelligence and such. You know, a a baby is born with billions of neurons and trillions of synapse connections, but they have to think as they grow and make the connection stronger and weaker. There's someone with more genetic ability for intelligence or some trait may be able to perform that better. But it's available to anyone. Any anyone is free to think the way they like and promote the positive features of their their character or or emphasize the negative ones. So I don't think there's a conflict between those two.

Jag: Yeah. So, you know, I was uh reflecting back on a dinner we had a while ago in which you shared a coin a term that you had coined to the term was "Selfsmart" as a way to encapsulate the ethics of long-term rational self-interest. Of course, Rand chose to provocatively capture this with her virtue of selfishness. Do you think that such branding has contributed to misconceptions about objectivism?

Zol: Well, I think you know Rand was a a genius in terms of philosophy and and literature and and we all owe her a great debt but unfortunately she wasn't the best at marketing and I think it's the most unfortunate thing she did was say that "Gee, I am selfish." Because as she writes in The Virtue of Selfishness, for most people when you say selfish, it means the brute who's going to trample over people and steal things and be a horrible person. And yet that's the word she uses for describing pursuing your own interests. So I think that word is very very difficult to work with. I think if Rand hadn't used that word, we would be much farther along in being able to spread objectivism through the wider society. But today, if you tell someone, "Gee, um, Rand is a selfish person. Why don't you read her books?" It turns them off. It's a word that it's very difficult to rebrand a very negative word like that. No one wants to be thought of as a brute.

Jag: Yes. Well, you know, I think just as Rand described Dagny as overconfident in assessing her ability to save her railroad, to you know, save the world, to keep it steady on her own shoulders. I think perhaps Rand also may have had a bit of overconfidence in her ability to change a perception of a word which was you know deeply ingrained as a negative into a positive but at the same time she also certainly captured people's attention. So, speaking of Rand, as we did in our most recent video, she we showed that she obviously was the victim of a lot of viciously unfair attacks. Now, for her admirers, this may have contributed to this kind of siege mentality in which there's a fear of acknowledging any mistakes. And I fear that that fear presents a danger of conflating a personality with principles whether with regard to Rand or other thinkers. Do you see that as well?

Zol: Well, I think principles are—if you go through the logic and begin with existence and work your way up—the principles are sound regardless of other character personality traits. So, I think the philosophy stands the basic principles on their own. Now I wouldn't want to say anything negative about Rand because I owe her so much and she she was such a great and wonderful person, but she she was a human being, not a god. And so any human being is going to make a mistake here or there, but for us, we shouldn't emphasize anything like that. There are plenty of people who will criticize her.

Jag: Yeah. Now my point is not that we should criticize her or go out of our our way to but that being through a sense of justice wanting to repay the debt that we have incurred by benefiting so much about her shouldn't lead us to try to evade things that that were true or that were unfortunate or that were contradictory. We should also be in touch with reality. Uh so now my personal favorite chapters in The Objectivist's Guide to the Galaxy concern character and ethics. You argue that character is built through repetitive choice of where to focus the mind. You write, quote, "Thinking about something modifies the neural connections in the brain, reinforces your thought patterns, and locks in good or bad behavior. Each person is responsible for what they think about, and hence the type of person they become." End quote. Can you give us an example um even a hypothetical one of how this works in in practice?

Zol: Well, first off, let me just say that the common saying in biology is that neurons that fire together get come to be wired together. Basically—and there there are experiments that people have done in animals to show that the neural wiring in your brain is dependent on where you focus, where the brain is focused sort of. So it's a scientifically established fact at this point. Now I'll I'll take my own personal case because I know that one. As I mentioned at a young age I was very interested in science engineering and I I worked on math and physics and of course the more I did that the better I became at it and the more more skilled I had. Obviously the neural connections get strengthened by by using it. So in terms of character doing positive things like studying and and trying to apply oneself I believe leads to a good character where someone who says "Oh I don't want to study for that math test, I'm going to figure out a way to cheat," that person is strengthening the parts of his brain that focus on "How do I cheat?" and ends up with a bad character. So it it really is the thoughts you have literally rewire the the circuits in your brain and then will make you a better person or worse person.

Jag: So Rand's quote that "Art is the indispensable medium for the communication of a moral ideal" is probably the quote that I use the most in trying to explain the Atlas Society's strategy of leveraging artistic content like graphic novels or animated book trailers—even music videos—to reach new audiences. But your chapter gave me a much deeper understanding of why art is so indispensable because it helps humans grasp normative concepts concerning alternatives on how to behave. Perhaps you could walk us through this process using one of Rand's novels of how the characters and their choices concretize normative concepts and choices for the readers.

Zol: Well, probably the the best one there is The Fountainhead, my favorite book. Because The Fountainhead really is about integrity and—as she says—the integrity not just in architecture or building but in a man's soul. And Howard Roark goes through many struggles. I mean he's expelled from university. He's offered commissions that he can't accept because they're they destroy his his values. He he has many of these struggles and yet he perseveres with his vision and comes out with a heroic end. And I think that's a character that I certainly have related to in thinking about things when I when I did have a conflict. Sort of, what would Howard Roark do? How would he handle it? And I think it's very helpful to have a character like Roark in mind when one is facing difficult conflicts and decisions.

Jag: Yes. You know, it reminds me of Rand's explanation of the mass appeal of James Bond. She said, "The obstacles confronting an average man are to him as formidable as Bond's adversaries." But what the image of Bond tells him is quote "It can be done." The the sense of life it conveys is not one of a chaotic malevolent universe in which we are at the mercy of capricious forces but a benevolent one in which the right choices can help us ultimately prevail against great odds. Are there other works of art that have connected with you in that sense?

Zol: Before I go there, I just want to mention that art and movies have gone downhill so much. I mean, there's a sick mentality. Even James Bond in the latest movie is kind of a weaker character than than before. And you know gangsters and various criminals are treated with respect or—I'm not sure what the right word is—but semi-heroes in in many movies today. So unfortunately we're living in a very bad time for art. In terms of positive I would recommend the novels of Wilbur Smith. Wilbur Smith is a South African author and he writes very dramatic scenes with great characters doing wonderful things and he's got several series of books that are very enjoyable to read. Obviously they're not as intellectually stimulating as Rand's books. Nothing even comes close to that. But he does have a great sense of life and positive image for heroes.

Jag: So looking back over your involvement with objectivism, what are some of the ways in which you've seen the movement change over time?

Zol: Well, I wish it had changed more in in many ways. Even 50 years ago when I first became aware of it, it was always an outside movement with a very small percentage of people understanding that it's a true philosophy. The world really does work like that. But the vast majority of people around us just don't pay attention and don't understand it. And we're still in that in that phase. We haven't reached a critical mass. Now, what you're doing in the Atlas Society, I hope can can bring us to that critical mass. So, we certainly need more people to understand objectivism, to be aware of what it what it means and what it stands for. And hopefully what you're doing will allow us to to get there and really make a change in the world. But it's been disappointing for me that here this wonderful new philosophy—and it really hasn't taken over the world by storm the way it should have.

Jag: Well, it—if to the extent that the Atlas Society's growth is a proxy for the potential of the growth of objectivism—quadrupling our revenues, growing our student conference by 50% year-over-year, putting out things like our animated book trailer of Atlas Shrugged and drawing 12 million views and doubling book sales of the novel. I'm feeling pretty optimistic and one of the things that I wouldn't say that I have seen as a change but definitely this—our scholars who have been involved with objectivism for for decades is just the remarkable growth and interest in objectivism overseas. I mean we we have our videos in English but then we've translated them into 12 different languages and in particular a video that gets a million views in English will get 5 million views in Spanish and 6 million views in Hindi and 8 million views in Arabic. So I think the world is changing in ways that aren't necessarily perceptible on the surface. I think a lot of that has to do with preference falsification and collective illusions.

Zol: That that's wonderful news but surprising to me because somehow I guess I've been United States centric and thinking Rand wrote here it's really the USA that has well for almost 250 years led the world in freedom but I think today it is floundering as as we all know and it may be that there is there are other places in the world where freedom can can come about. I'd be certainly thrilled if if it happens and we really do do see a rise in liberty around the world.

Jag: Oh, I I definitely. Earlier this year we launched Atlas Society International with our 20 John Galt schools around the world and our new European conference and I mean we could have easily 50 schools given the demand in Africa, in Latin America, in Asia, in the Middle East, in India. But you know what you're saying is important because it's going to be American philanthropy that's going to be able to fund that kind of expansion because sadly the the philanthropic tradition is not the same in in Europe and understandably American donors are interested in funding American programs. So 50 years ago this is another challenge that we're facing. You know 70% of young people read novels on a daily basis for fun. Today that percentage is 12% with young people spending upwards of nine hours online a day. How should those who care about Ayn Rand's ideas go about connecting with new audiences?

Zol: Well, I think what you're doing is going online and creating the videos and the graphic novels and such. I think that's the right direction. I'm not the probably the best to figure out how to reach better that way, but I think what you're doing is definitely the right approach.

Jag: Well, it's—as as opposed to what you're doing, which is if not rocket science, then you know, definitely science. Marketing is not a science. It's just a matter of looking at your market, looking at your product, looking at you know, consumption patterns, and then finding a way to serve an your target audience with the kinds of products that they want. I used to work at Dole Food Company and I I remember that there were you know governments and charities that were concerned about certain deficiencies in certain countries and so could we find a way to have bananas that had more iron to help with blindness in certain countries because people were eating bananas. So in a way it's similar. It's like, okay, people are eating bananas or people are reading graphic novels, people are watching, you know, animated videos, then I'll just find a way to make sure that they contain—we adapt Rand's novels and find a way to make our banana contain objectivism.

Jag: Well, in just the few minutes that we have, I I don't know either if there was anything else that maybe we didn't get to, that you wanted to mention about your book or, perhaps again given that our audience, at our conferences and online is made up of young people and students and young adults. Perhaps any advice that you'd give to young engineers or entrepreneurs aiming to make a transformative impact on their field?

Zol: Well, I think in terms of advice, the the best advice is to follow your dream and pursue it. You have to think long range. I know when when I started the company, there are all sorts of data issues that come up and and produce impediments, but you've got to have that vision for where you want to go. Think long range. Find something that you're really interested in, something new and original, and pursue it. And don't be sidelined by some minor issues that come up along the way. You really have to have the vision and stick to it.

Jag: Well, I I agree with you. Find the thing that you love doing that you would do even if they didn't pay you. Just don't let your bosses know that. Fortunately, I think they do know that at the Atlas Society. Do the thing that you will just lose yourself in for hours. Find your default mode and then and then just keep persevering against all odds and being mindful of what you focus on and you know as the old adage: sew a thought, reap a habit; sew a habit, reap a character; and then reap a destiny. So I think that's really great advice and I am going to be—he's not giving me an answer now but between now and June of next year, I'm gonna be working on Zol to see if we can get him to come and give some of that advice to our audience at Galt's Gulch next year and sign a few of these. Because again, I'd love to get these into the hands of more people. So those watching, don't deprive yourself. Go out and get the book. Zol, thank you very much. It's just been a wonderful hour to spend with you and thank you for the amazing achievement that is your book.

Zol: Well, thank you very much, Jennifer. Very pleasant talking with you.

Jag: All right. Well, thanks all of you for joining us today. Be sure to join us next week. I am going to be—well actually I'm not going to be off on Wednesday. We are going to have Atlas Society senior scholar Stephen Hicks and Richard Salsman talking about public choice theory and the politics of self-interest. I know you guys were really patient last week with our planned interview with Martin Gurri, author of Revolt of the Public. We've got him rescheduled. So check that out on our events page and I'll see you for that interview as well. Thanks everyone.

n5321 | 2026年2月13日 00:56

appealing这个业务只能用contour plot来实现！

对于电机工程师来说，目标是设计好的、理想的、完美的电机，不是用好软件！

Ansys Maxwell实现的只不过是提供一个照妖镜的价值！价值就是在后处理的时候看哪几个图，能够帮助电机工程师发现问题！帮助电机工程师做设计迭代！

工程师的工作

性能设计本质上有两项：磁路设计，绕组方案设计，（板子的设计给电控了）。通俗的类比是管道设计(磁路)，以及水压控制（绕组）——这个概念来自于faraday and maxwell，他们说这是analog of nature！

流体里面水是显性的，空气有点摸不着，磁路是完全隐形，背离instinct的。CAE的实质是通过数学工具来做照妖镜，把整个磁路显示出来！要看这个磁路，就必须要看2D的FEA 获取的field contour plot。看的目的是发现问题，优化设计！

有意思的点是大家其实都看不懂contour plot，原来是办公室的本科系的科班生看不懂，现在的接触是好像博士们也看不懂，实际上好些名校的博士发在IEEE上的论文有一些明显的硬伤。从这个点上面看，做一个系列contour plot的解说article，应该是有吸粉价值的！附带的要把magnetic  flux解释清楚。

2D FEA的点是给user 看磁路，但是user更关心的是torque！所以本质上应该是二者的耦合。因为磁铁存在损耗(core loss)，

在transient analysis之中为什么是空的？https://www.anxpert.com.tw/support_view/27

同样还是要时间上的变化！

所以总的是看三个东西！看力的分布！看磁场的分布！看损耗的分布！看时间线下的变动！

工程师的目标是设计一个ideal machine！

这里实质上是三个点：1 ideal magnetic flux(定子，磁铁)， 2 ideal winding（绕组）  3 ideal excitation（班子）

理想上的磁路！

搞了一天，给Ansys加外挂，不好加！在加的方式方法上，还是要做一点点迭代！它本质上是一个10年前、面相高端用户群的产品。前面在rmxprt上改装，因为数据都是CSV，处理起来简单轻松，现在是存了很多2D的2进制数据，不好弄，看上去像是要在它自己的visualization之后再做处理。

它本身的render做得就不行！然后提供的API又不全面，实在是！另外有一个在数据处理上的小工具，叫fields calculator，一个轻量型的小工具，跟mathcad，matlab等等比较真实隔了十万八千里！

我想要看定子冲片上B大于1.7T的位置！要怎么弄？！

再就是高清大图在blog上应该要类似twitter，加一个放大、全屏的功能出来！

再做一个Ansys的Bug系列！

生成什么图？具体解决什么问题？！

Ansys maxwell的Bug

贴在磁铁外缘线上的应力理论上应该是这个。

可是在动态下的edge force desity显示成这样子。error

n5321 | 2024年12月27日 22:42

有一阵子 没有用这个blog了。

上一次怎么好像是考虑用这个blog改装成travel，然后整个东西就崩溃了。正是应了那一句，代码写起爽，系统崩得快。

所以application的平移，改装应用其实还是比想象之中的要复杂一些。

四个月以来，自己大概熟悉了django，web application的框架，但是对于内部的逻辑，本质的原理理解得还是不够。算了。

这个blog前头应该是写了好些篇东西，现在都找不到了。

数据的备份还很很重要。数据的崩溃比想象中的容易、快。算了。从来再来。

n5321 | 2024年8月30日 16:09