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GeekNights Thursday - Hats
Tonight on GeekNights, we consider hats. That, however, is mostly an afterthought as we GeekBite Prometheus, complain about GoPro's extra shoddy bicycle mount (three broke between us just recently), and the Department of Justice is finally going after the big cable companies over their monopolistic and anticompetitive practices.
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The problem with these conversations is that while the standards may be objective, they're hard to measure. We'll get into a loop about what makes one person qualified to make the objective measurement.
So I propose we change the topic to PEOPLE WHO DON'T BEND THE FRONT OF THEIR FUCKING BASEBALL HATS. Also, leaving the sticker on? I have a theory, which I am pulling completely out of my ass, to explain this: It originated in lower-income society where people wore their hats this way either to A) prove via shiny sticker that they could afford an authentic hat, not a knockoff or
For those of you who argue that there is no such thing as best, you are also wrong. If that were the case the Mona Lisa would be on the same footing as a stick figure I drew with crayon a minute ago. It is obvious that the Mona Lisa is far superior, but why is it superior?
Without using your emotions as a reason, answer why the Mona Lisa is better than my stick figure. Then apply those reasons to compare other drawings and paintings. As you proceed, you are going to discover more such reasons for one thing being better or worse than another. If you apply the same reasoning consistently in all cases, you will be well on your way to solving for X.
But wait, that's not objective, right? Those are just YOUR reasons. Except that people who do this for their entire lives almost universally arrive at almost the exact same reasons. Have a class of art students have projects graded by three different art professors from different universities. There will be differences for sure, but for the most part there will be projects that consistently get top grades, and clearly inferior projects that consistently get bottom grades.
But if it's objective, it would be identical every time! Some things in life, even in clearly objective arenas, are too close to call. Who is better at Tennis Rod Laver or Roger Federer? Laver won the Grand Slam in '62 and '69. Nobody else has two Grand Slams. He didn't participate from '63-'68. He won 11 major titles in total. But we assume if he had participated he would have won 8 Grand Slams (he really probably would have), for a total of 35 major titles. But he didn't actually do it, so we don't know for sure. He quite possibly could have ended up with the same 11 even if he had participated. Roger Federer has 16 major titles. That's 5 more than Laver. They lived in different eras, with different equipment, and could not play against each other.
The same goes with objective measurements of art. Rod Laver is the Sistine Chapel and Roger Federer is the Mona Lisa. It's too close to call.
Edit: I'd argue that the Mona Lisa being better than a stick figure is still a subjective judgement. Most humans would agree that it is superior of course but that's just because most humans share some base level of similarity.
If it was objective you should be able to get any alien with a completely different culture, completely different art history, completely different mindset (provided that it was still sufficiently rational) and have it come to the same conclusion every time you did so. I doubt this would happen.
A more normal way of arguing objective quality is to set a series of criteria that define something as good. It's easier to start smaller, good lighting for example would be lighting that allows for optimal color quality and image clarity. We can reduce that down to a set of reasonable measurements, and then we can write up a fairly specific set of rules for measuring the quality of the lighting. I might prefer the lighting in some other configuration, but we've set a standard for "good" lighting by which we can objectively measure it. So the lighting can be objectively good in spite of my preference.
With art, you have a complex variety of different measurements you can use as tools to measure bits and pieces of objective quality. When you have a significant consensus of those measurements, you can make a statement like "This painting is objectively good." But you should be able to discern and explain exactly why that statement is made. Otherwise it's not a measurement at all. And once you have enough of that data, you will see repeated cases of the "art experts" agreeing on a particular interpretation of this quality.
Basically, what I'm getting at is that you're starting from the conclusion, not the premises. You can't then use that conclusion as evidence itself. It doesn't tell us anything that there's a consensus. But when we break down all the pieces that yield that consensus, that's why something has some level of "objective quality". At least, as I've come to understand the use of that term.
This is how come lots of people who graduate from some art school can't get a job. And also how some people who never went to art school become super famous. You can go to art school and get all kinds of passing grades when nobody likes your work. You can also go and completely fail even if everyone likes your work. It's also why you get Justin Bieber, whose fans pestered me on the way home yesterday. Lots of people like him, but he isn't that good. But you also get other musicians who are insanely talented, but have to work at Starbucks.
Objectively judging art is most like judging Figure Skating. Figure Skating is a sport, but there is a panel of judges who give a score. There is no easy measure like crossing the finish line first or number of goals scored. That means it's subjective, right? No. There are criteria for judging. Do you notice how even though the judges can't communicate with each other they are almost always within .2 of the same score as the other judges? You never see one judging tossing out a 1.0 when all the other judges give 9.0, unless there is corruption. But at the same time you might really like the bronze medalist performance the best because it was a fun dubstep routine, but the gold medalist did something very boring that you do not like. But if you had the eyes of the judges, and divorced yourself from your feelings, you would be able to recognize that the gold medalist's performance was superior, albeit less enjoyable.
You once again seem to take a thing where you are basically correct and stretch it to the extremes so your argument becomes ridiculous.
Also do you believe that theoretically there could be a greatest work of art ever which is such that no person actually likes, or enjoys experiencing it? I actually meant to write surrealism, but some weird brainfart happened and I wrote symbolism instead. Doesn't really change my argument.
So if almost all film critics agree that Citizen Kane is the best movie, they might be on to something. If critics and film-makers agree, that'd even more likely. And when there is a lot of agreement among fans, creators, and critics, you've come close enough to objectivity that it's silly to think otherwise.
You get objective criteria by parsing all the common criteria among diverse opinions. That will indicate the things that people judge. From praise and criticism, you derive a scale. Then we compare works and modify as we go.
Objectivity can be organic.
Basically, you can get close enough for practical purposes.
Evidence: Billy Zane
When your primary argument hits solipsism or "pure" objectivity's nonexistence, you've basically ceded all practical ground and ceased to be relevant to the conversation.
Yes, there is no truly objective measure of anything. Yes, there is bias and prejudice. But you know what? Experts converge on deeply similar opinions over time for many works of art, and the bias starts to cancel out. Experts in aggregate tend to properly separate personal feelings from relatively objective analysis.
I personally didn't enjoy reading The Scarlet Letter. I disliked the characters and the story wasn't terribly engaging to me. But, I recognize the technical marvel that is Hawthorne's writing. The work is a wonderful classic, and though I personally dislike it, I recognize the, for all practical purposes, objective superiority it holds in many realms and to many other works.
The important point to be made here is that there's far more to human brains than just "opinions".
Best possible scenerio:
100% of art critics agree on the quality of 100% of all art that has ever existed.
I create a new "arts".
X is the first art critic ever to judge this "arts". He cannot make a statistically based valuation. All previous judgements based on that tell us nothing.
Wut do?
It's only a useful tool if you can actually put it to use.
That's what I'm saying. Starting from the finality of it (the result of the judgements) doesn't tell us anything. This is the point I'm trying to get across. That is why I said from the start that Scott was attacking this from the wrong direction. How the consensus is formed is more important than that the scores at the end come out the same.