The Simfile Quality Debate

[Arch0wl]

Any medium in which preference is involved tends to have undercurrents of the subjective/objective debate. Most people tend to avoid addressing it directly, but it pervades discussion. In food, in music, in movies -- people like something. They know that someone else likes something they really don't like. They have two options: if their liking is specific to themselves, then they have to tolerate the existence of the thing they really don't like. But if they assume universality and promote their preference to a truth status independent of themselves, they have grounds to dismiss anyone and everyone who likes that thing they really dislike.

I will elaborate on my view here later. But first, I need to establish the Rules of the Debate.

Yes, there are rules. In discussing this issue you will be making arguments. Arguments are bound by formal and informal logical rules. If you want to be Right, you need to religiously avoid the fallacies extremely common to this sort of discussion:

1. You cannot ad hominem; this means you cannot argue by attacking someone's character/intelligence/sense, nor can you attack their motive for making the argument. In other words, you cannot attempt to invalidate someone's argument by discrediting the person making it or the reasons they may be making it. The rightness or wrongness of an argument is completely independent of the person making it. If you discredit the person, you haven't actually proven them wrong. To give an obvious example, if a person who makes a mathematical proof also turns out to be a Viagra spammer, the truth of his math proof is unaffected by the horrendous annoyingness of his hobby. I've noticed that the more subjective the medium, the more arguments tend to be appeals to authority -- food critics being the worst. In any case, if you want to be right, you cannot argue this way.

2. You cannot argue through analogy. You can support your argument through analogy just as you can support your argument with examples, but the terms of your argument must stand by themselves without any equivocation.

3. Your argument cannot be simply rhetorical. Linking me to something you think is really bad and asking me a rhetorical question beginning with "do you really think..." does nothing to prove your point. What if I do really think that? Your course of action is then to ad hominem me, which violates the #1 rule of the game here.

By calling these "rules" I am being somewhat misleading. They are "rules" with respect to being right/wrong, in that you can't be right and violate #1 or #2. You can ad hominem or equivocate all you want, you'll just be wrong.

With that said, I'm going to let everyone else state their case first. The assumption of universality (read: quality) is, in fact, an assumption that needs to be proven before you can even begin to talk about "quality" anything in art.