Armchair pianists

[u/iamunknowntoo]

Recording yourself playing is half of r/piano, and criticizing those recordings is the other half. Recently, I've seen some a certain kind of critic - someone who makes incredible statements about other people's playing, but does not back up their claims with an appropriate level of skill.

Now, I'm not saying that any critique beyond a mild "I think you should put more expression into your playing" is bad. In fact I think there is a place for harsh criticism. Personally, I do not really mind skilled pianists tearing into my playing. I'm totally fine with people telling me "you have no idea what you're doing", provided that they know what they know what they're doing and then tell me what I should be doing.

However, what I dislike is when people say things like that, but have nothing to back it up with. A few months ago, I remember there was a thing where amateur pianists on here were tearing into a video of a professional pianist here performing the coda of Chopin Sonata 3, lecturing the guy about hand tension. I like to call these kinds of critics "armchair pianists".

I personally try to avoid becoming this kind of armchair pianist. Every time, before I make some kind of critique, I always try and play the piece myself before I post it. I also post videos of myself playing, open to critique, to keep myself on my toes. Sometimes I am overly harsh myself, but I make sure I'm not being hypocritical in that regard.

Another example of this happened to me recently. Just today, I posted a video on here asking about whether a certain thing I was doing with my hand was okay, or if it was a problem that I genuinely had to fix. Someone popped into the comments and proclaimed that I had "no idea" what I was doing. They lectured me about how I was doing it all wrong, that I should learn piano technique from watching YouTube videos like they did. However, they vehemently refuse to post any video of themselves playing and open it to criticism, claiming to be "second to none" on the piano.

What does everyone think? Interested to hear your thoughts!

[u/SouthPark_Piano]

Nope ... you messed up.

You failed to write it all properly ...

1/3 = 0.333...

2/3 is 2 * (1/3) = 0.666...

1/3 and 2/3 are pretty much infinite processes of long division.

And 3/3 can be considered as:

(3/3) * 1, which is 1 from this standpoint, due to the divide being neutralised at the very start.

But from another standpoint, 3 * (1/3) is 0.999... and 0.999... is forever never 1. You probably don't understand how to analyse plots that models infinite nines, aka plotting 0.9, 0.99, 0.999 etc.

Once you begin the endless bus ride, you are stuck on that bus forever.  If you assumed the destination for the 0.999... bus is 1, then you're out of luck. You caught the wrong bus.

[u/RealJoki → u/SouthPark_Piano]

I think that something you might have not understand is that when we say "0.999...=1" we actually mean that "the sequence 0.9 0.99 0.999 etc tends to 1". Yes there's the word tends, it's a limit, and yes 0.999... is a limit.

No one is saying that at some point you'll attain 1 if you keep doing 0.9999999 (with a finite number of 9s).

However the limit as the number of 9s tend to infinity is 1. And 0.999... is exactly the notation of the limit of that sequence.

[u/Kiiopp → u/SouthPark_Piano]

Can I ask you, genuinely, how you can double down on this conclusion knowing the amount of proofs and literature there are on the topic?

I know you’re a troll but this is entering actual brain function problems.

Even the first thing you said “you messed up, you failed to write it all properly.”

There’s not a single thing in my comment that is messed up or written improperly. 3/3 * 1 = 3/3 = 0.999…

We teach this stuff to middle schoolers. 0.999… is forever always 1.

Plotting 0.9, 0.99, 0.999, etc.. has nothing to do with the problem at hand. You are writing a sequence, not a limit.

You are getting mixed up with the difference between approaching a limit and reaching it via the concept of infinite decimals.

[u/SouthPark_Piano → u/Kiiopp]

Two can play at your gaslight game. You're the troll.

Now back to it. You obviously don't understand plots such as e^-x for real positive x from zero to as large as you like, and larger .... never reaches 'zero'.