[stargroup100]

Ah, sorry about that last comment, I wanted to lighten the mood and poke fun a bit. If it was inappropriate I apologize.

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

You can't make these inferences from these sentences.

Here's what you wrote:

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

I've never heard anyone actually consider this question ("what would a general superiority even be / what would it mean to be superior to someone else anyway?") beyond a very shallow examination of it ("duh some people are obviously better" / "no one is better than anyone else"), so if you have any thoughts on it I'd like to hear them.

Looking back I guess I didn't clarify enough. Basically I was responding to the fact that you said how those two sentences could be interpreted as shallow examinations. I'm trying to argue that those two sentences offer two possible answers, neither of which is complete, and that this is a demonstration of why the question "What is general superiority?" is meaningless.

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

If you're unclear on why this is necessary to bring up, it's because if you read a sentence like "duh some people are obviously better" (which in the original context should read as "duh some people obviously have general superiority over others") and take this to mean "some people obviously approach things in their own way", you're gathering meaning from nowhere and your argument is effectively speculation because you haven't actually addressed the argument in the first place, you're responding to something imaginary.

I wasn't saying "duh some people are obviously better" implies "some people obviously approach things in their own way", but rather the second statement offers an explanation of why under a certain context the first statement is obviously true. I phrased it the way I did because people can have radically different ideas that are both valid regarding a particular issue, and I wanted to acknowledge that.

I'm pretty sure the misunderstanding comes from my poor explanation though. I could have probably just said that it is impossible for everyone to be equally skilled at a particular thing, which is far more direct.

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

Someone who says "duh some people obviously have general superiority" doesn't actually have to be right, first of all, they could think that people are generally superior to others based on some kind of intrinsic superiority in a eugenics sense or whatever...

What I think you're trying to say here is that since every claim to superiority can be narrowed to a specific domain, general superiority could not exist. I don't think I disagree, but it misunderstands the kind of arguments people make in favor of general superiority (even if they don't call it that.)

I think I misunderstood the main point of your question this whole time. If I'm correct this time, you're asking about what causes someone to have different perceptions of general superiority, not what general superiority actually constitutes.

So far I have only really addressed the fact that the notion of general superiority in the absolute sense is meaningless, what you already seem to agree with (or at least don't disagree). I have not mentioned much about how people perceive general superiority, which I think is probably a much more open-ended question. My bad.