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Eh. I think you're intentionally making things fuzzy. If you have a bunch of Bowerbird watching the movie, it better have the color blue to be popular with th

Eh. I think you're intentionally making things fuzzy. If you have a bunch of Bowerbird watching the movie, it better have the color blue to be popular with them. We can reduce their "shit-test" list to something simple which obviously overlaps minimally with what is a reasonable definition for quality. I'll yield that the Transformer movies do have phenomenal CGI, and that people who like them are in fact discerning of the quality within that. But this is just one dimension of "quality," and I highly doubt the critic is unaware of it. The truth is that modern popularity is based off a narrow subset of shit-tests which are easily duped (Trump passed). Meanwhile there are many critics who aim to have a much broader and accurate shit-testing system. Some of them get up their own ass about trying to be above common shit-tests, and in the process they debase critics as a whole. All shit-tests matter. But the point is that most people are really, really easily hackable and calling something that gets through their defenses a "quality hack" is lame. It's like hacking peoples wordpress sites from 2000.

coldtea 6y ago
>The truth is that modern popularity is based off a narrow subset of shit-tests which are easily duped (Trump passed). I don't think quality, or, for that matter, political choices (as in your example), are that simple to judge. E.g. Trump might have won, but not necessarily because people were "duped", but because they was not much better on offer -- it was either a Rob Schneider fart movie (Trump), or a pretentious emotionally-dead tone-deaf to many issues Hollywood oscar-bait (Hillary).
- seph-reed 6y ago
  > I don't think quality, or, for that matter, political choices (as in your example), are that simple to judge. Of course not. Every judgement is ultimately a failed attempt at omnipotence. But we try anyways, and there is such thing as progress. We can get closer, especially relative to each-other. There's a great joke that the only probabilities humans believe in are 0%, 100%, and 50%. Basically anything that isn't certain is likely going to be treated like 50% by most people. It seems to be central in "equality of opinions," or "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." To summarize, I think the following is a fun reductio-ad-absurdum argument, but ultimately not true: "There is no 100% accurate way of measuring quality, therefor all means of measurement are equally meaningless." If it was true, there would be no point in symbols or abstractions of any sort.

coldtea 6y ago

>The truth is that modern popularity is based off a narrow subset of shit-tests which are easily duped (Trump passed). I don't think quality, or, for that matter, political choices (as in your example), are that simple to judge. E.g. Trump might have won, but not necessarily because people were "duped", but because they was not much better on offer -- it was either a Rob Schneider fart movie (Trump), or a pretentious emotionally-dead tone-deaf to many issues Hollywood oscar-bait (Hillary).

seph-reed 6y ago
> I don't think quality, or, for that matter, political choices (as in your example), are that simple to judge. Of course not. Every judgement is ultimately a failed attempt at omnipotence. But we try anyways, and there is such thing as progress. We can get closer, especially relative to each-other. There's a great joke that the only probabilities humans believe in are 0%, 100%, and 50%. Basically anything that isn't certain is likely going to be treated like 50% by most people. It seems to be central in "equality of opinions," or "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." To summarize, I think the following is a fun reductio-ad-absurdum argument, but ultimately not true: "There is no 100% accurate way of measuring quality, therefor all means of measurement are equally meaningless." If it was true, there would be no point in symbols or abstractions of any sort.