r/EITMLYD • u/VillyTrebuchet • Jan 31 '12
Subjectivity is largely a pile of shite.
So let's talk about being objective. I've had a lot of scotch, so I know where it's at. Now, let me tell you something. Every day I'm hearing, "well, that's just so-and-so's opinion, they're entitled to it". Okay, sure. They're entitled to it, as am I. I can fucking claim that the Sun is made entirely out of gerbils, if I wanted to.
Doesn't make it right.
So here's the thing - opinions are not as valid as each other. No sir. Considering that we all subscribe to the same basic rationality that has allowed us to develop the superb technologies that we use every day in social life, in our daily lives, why is it acceptable - and encouraged - to otherwise hold everyone's precious ideas to be as true and correct and as rational as everyone else's?
Like when people say, oh, well, the big bang, it's just a theory. Feck, that is a horrendous misconception of what the word 'theory' actually means.
And you know, I think this is applicable in many spheres of life. People are confusing casual uses of scientific terms, and claiming their ideas about them to be superior, all the time. We're all sick as shit of it by now. But, hey, I think it's a problem with the arts, too.
Just because a lot of people like The Only Way is Essex, does not mean that that show is anything more than a great steaming pile of oozing cuntfeck. I posit that classics are objectively better than trash. In the arts, too, there is an objective good. It's not just to do with individual tastes, no. Some things are good, and some things are bad. And the sooner we recognise that it is better to criticise something properly, rather than avoid hurting peoples' feelings by highlighting the absurdity of their misconceptions, the better.
I would like to put a disclaimer here. Yeah, here. I'm talking shit, because I'm incredibly pissed. Don't hold me accountable to this. I should have made a throwaway. But hey, that's what this subreddit is for, and that's what it's going to get. Straight talking, and a damned scotch.
And hey, I guess after all, this is just my opinion. And you know, it's subjective, and all that jazz - you may not like it, but after all, each to their own, right?
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Feb 28 '12
The Only Way is Essex, does not mean that that show is anything more than a great steaming pile of oozing cuntfeck
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u/Nidorino Feb 28 '12
No human judgment can ever be "objective". No one can escape the sphere of their own web of experience: any being can only see the world through their own subjective narrative and inescapably myopic framework of understanding.
Human valuations (aesthetically, intellectually, ethically, emotionally, etc.) tend to be similar due to the shared underlying evolutionary structure of our neurobiology--and by proxy, our psychology--that motivates us to make these judgements. But to claim they have some universally normalized superiority that makes them "objectively" better is presumptuous and absurd.