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The problem is that you are playing a word game that ignores anything that actually matters. Thereby destroying any interesting conversations that could be had

by stale2002 3y ago

The problem is that you are playing a word game that ignores anything that actually matters. Thereby destroying any interesting conversations that could be had about a topic. And you are doing it in the worst way possible where you get to be technically correct, but correct in a way that is completely irrelevant to what anyone else is saying and is also worthless. Here is how this conversation basically went. Other person: "I like these very common qualities about housing that many other people also like. This is proved by the fact that houses with all these qualities have much higher demand and price". You: "Whoa dude. Have you consider that everything is relative? And that there is no way to prove that those qualities are better than other qualities? What about a person who really likes their house to be burnt down. Or to have rats in their walls. Or to have high crime and being in constant danger. Nothing is better or worse dude!" All of this is completely worthless commentary. Yes, it is technically true that I cannot use math or science to prove that certain qualities about a house are better or worse. But that doesn't matter. Because we live in the real world and it is perfectly ok to generalize preferences without getting into the fact that I cannot prove to the universe that some qualities are better than others. Instead, we can just generalize things based on obvious and common preferences.

wolverine876 3y ago
It's hard to penetrate to the heart of the matter, because I'm not sure what you are saying. > Other person: "I like these very common qualities about housing that many other people also like. This is proved by the fact that houses with all these qualities have much higher demand and price". That's backwards. The other commenter was saying their home was less expensive and larger than what was in NYC, and therefore superior. > we can just generalize things based on obvious and common preferences We can't truly say something is better or worse without some scale on which to measure it. Is a Macbook or cloud Linux instance better? It depends on what we want to do with it - graphic design? Macbook. Host some files publicly? The Linux instance. In other cases it depends on the user - a veteran Linux sysop may use their favorite OS for more things, an Apple guru will prefer theirs. For some things almost everyone shares the same scale and generalizations are accurate. We could generalize that people prefer running water, heat (as needed), roofs that don't leak, larger spaces (to some limit), lower costs, etc. But for other things people have different scales and then generalization is false. In this case, preferences for location vary widely; some want NYC because on their scales, it scores really high; some want quiet suburbs, based on their scales; some want rural or small town, warm climate or four seasons, etc. The other commenter seemed to assert that their scales/preferences were universal, and I disagree. IMHO the best part of human interaction is learning about people and points of view I don't already know - I learn infinitely more than hearing myself talk or by framing their points of view in my perspective; that limits what they say to what I already know, like a someone insisting mathematics be described only in English words they already know - they need to learn new words and use some actual math, or they are limiting themselves. The other commenter seemed maybe to think it was a fight (I don't want to speak for them), so we didn't get far. > you are playing a word game that ignores anything that actually matters It seems like you're saying that the other person's ideas are games, and yours are the only ones that actually matter. If you notice I'm not addressing your ideas, you might be right, but not because I'm playing games - I actually have different ideas. My ideas aren't measured by how much they agree with yours - I use a different scale in that case. Those are the very best chances to learn in life, IME - an opportunity to open territory I didn't even know existed 5 minutes before. If I am curious and interested (and I genuinely am), I find that almost everyone has very interesting, valuable things to say. You too. I think I'm signing off, as this thread isn't yielding much of that sort.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  you go on and on about scales and act as if the context wasn't clear. my post was about affordability and price/sqft. What you're doing is called post-hoc rationalization. You took issue with the idea of me telling people to move if they can't afford a house and tried to back into all sorts of reasons why that's not possible and tripped over the philosophy of nihilism in your haste.
- stale2002 3y ago
  > The other commenter was saying their home was less expensive and larger than what was in NYC, and therefore superior Ok and it is less expensive because it doesn't have other qualities that are in demand by other people in the market. And someone coming along and saying "well everything is relative! " Is a worthless comment. It is worthless because it is perfectly fine to talk about common qualities that are in demand by the market. > without some scale on which to measure it The scale that everyone is obviously talking about is market demand. It is ok to talk about market demand and commonly demand qualities. > the best part of human interaction is learning about people and points of view I don't already know Ok and this has nothing to do with the completely objective measurement of looking at market demand. It is an irrelevant point that does nothing but distract from what everyone else is talking about.

wolverine876 3y ago

It's hard to penetrate to the heart of the matter, because I'm not sure what you are saying. > Other person: "I like these very common qualities about housing that many other people also like. This is proved by the fact that houses with all these qualities have much higher demand and price". That's backwards. The other commenter was saying their home was less expensive and larger than what was in NYC, and therefore superior. > we can just generalize things based on obvious and common preferences We can't truly say something is better or worse without some scale on which to measure it. Is a Macbook or cloud Linux instance better? It depends on what we want to do with it - graphic design? Macbook. Host some files publicly? The Linux instance. In other cases it depends on the user - a veteran Linux sysop may use their favorite OS for more things, an Apple guru will prefer theirs. For some things almost everyone shares the same scale and generalizations are accurate. We could generalize that people prefer running water, heat (as needed), roofs that don't leak, larger spaces (to some limit), lower costs, etc. But for other things people have different scales and then generalization is false. In this case, preferences for location vary widely; some want NYC because on their scales, it scores really high; some want quiet suburbs, based on their scales; some want rural or small town, warm climate or four seasons, etc. The other commenter seemed to assert that their scales/preferences were universal, and I disagree. IMHO the best part of human interaction is learning about people and points of view I don't already know - I learn infinitely more than hearing myself talk or by framing their points of view in my perspective; that limits what they say to what I already know, like a someone insisting mathematics be described only in English words they already know - they need to learn new words and use some actual math, or they are limiting themselves. The other commenter seemed maybe to think it was a fight (I don't want to speak for them), so we didn't get far. > you are playing a word game that ignores anything that actually matters It seems like you're saying that the other person's ideas are games, and yours are the only ones that actually matter. If you notice I'm not addressing your ideas, you might be right, but not because I'm playing games - I actually have different ideas. My ideas aren't measured by how much they agree with yours - I use a different scale in that case. Those are the very best chances to learn in life, IME - an opportunity to open territory I didn't even know existed 5 minutes before. If I am curious and interested (and I genuinely am), I find that almost everyone has very interesting, valuable things to say. You too. I think I'm signing off, as this thread isn't yielding much of that sort.

PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
you go on and on about scales and act as if the context wasn't clear. my post was about affordability and price/sqft. What you're doing is called post-hoc rationalization. You took issue with the idea of me telling people to move if they can't afford a house and tried to back into all sorts of reasons why that's not possible and tripped over the philosophy of nihilism in your haste.
stale2002 3y ago
> The other commenter was saying their home was less expensive and larger than what was in NYC, and therefore superior Ok and it is less expensive because it doesn't have other qualities that are in demand by other people in the market. And someone coming along and saying "well everything is relative! " Is a worthless comment. It is worthless because it is perfectly fine to talk about common qualities that are in demand by the market. > without some scale on which to measure it The scale that everyone is obviously talking about is market demand. It is ok to talk about market demand and commonly demand qualities. > the best part of human interaction is learning about people and points of view I don't already know Ok and this has nothing to do with the completely objective measurement of looking at market demand. It is an irrelevant point that does nothing but distract from what everyone else is talking about.