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Ender's Game Review

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Re: Ender's Game Review

#71

Post by Alex3917 »

unalone wrote: post #68
astine wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, while I might agree that what qualifies as 'interesting' probably is subjective, I think that insight is concrete enough so that you could objectively state whether some was or not with relation to the author or the audiance.

relation to the author or the audiance But that makes it subjective, doesn't it?

No, because insightful isn't relative to a person's innate aesthetic preferences, but rather it's relative to the cognitive models they use to understand the world.

In the same way that one mathematical object can objectively be larger than another mathematical object, one mental object can be objectively insightful in relation to another mental object.

Re: Ender's Game Review

#72

Post by astine »

unalone wrote: post #68
astine wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, while I might agree that what qualifies as 'interesting' probably is subjective, I think that insight is concrete enough so that you could objectively state whether some was or not with relation to the author or the audiance.

relation to the author or the audiance But that makes it subjective, doesn't it?

Yes, but it can be objectively subjective; or rather, it is subjective, but in a different sense.

To illustrate, the phrases "The audience finds this interesting," and "The audience finds this insightful," are both subjective in the sense that their truth-value is dependent on the subject (different speakers likely would have different perspectives,) but they are objective in that, given a particular subject, they are either true or false. So: ojective in the particular, and subjective in the universal. The difference is that the later can depend on factors that are external to the subject, are objective and can be shared.

A phrase (or whatever) can be insightful with respect to a particular context if it adds something that was not previoulsy present in that context. So an analysis of Hitler (for example) revealing him to be a raving ego-maniac would have been insightful in the early thirties when most people had rather more benign opinions of the Nazi party. Released today, the same analysis would be rather less insightful. Given that when people use the word 'insightful,' they usually are speaking from a particular context (usually shared with the listener), the word can be said to be used objectively.

Re: Ender's Game Review

#73

Post by unalone »

Alex3917 wrote: post #71
unalone wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

relation to the author or the audiance But that makes it subjective, doesn't it?

No, because insightful isn't relative to a person's innate aesthetic preferences, but rather it's relative to the cognitive models they use to understand the world. In the same way that one mathematical object can objectively be larger than another mathematical object, one mental object can be objectively insightful in relation to another mental object.

The difference is that there's a physical reality to size. Insight is subjective by default. Even if you make a standard for monitoring it, your standard is going to be subjective.

Re: Ender's Game Review

#74

Post by unalone »

Alex3917 wrote: post #67
unalone wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Absolutely not. There is no objective study of humor, or of interesting. You can't manufacture it. Different people find different things funny for different reasons. I've taken classes in stand-up comedy, improv comedy, and in general dramatics, and this is the big thing that we learn. While humor can be analyzed, and while there's a craft inherent in modeling a joke, that doesn't make humor objective. And it's…

"There is no objective study of humor, or of interesting." From Paul McGhee's paper Cognitive Development and Children's Comprehension of Humor: This study investigated the relationship between children's level of cognitive functioning (according to Piaget's theoretical framework) and their comprehension and appreciation of humor based on violation of cognitive expectancies. A distinction was drawn between novelty an…

The problem, as I stated before, is that the idea of "humor" is in itself subjective. There's an objective basis for "cognitive expectancies," but that isn't the only aspect of humor as we define it with language.

For instance, there's slapstick humor, which derives from being over-the-top. There's absurdist humor, which relies on the unexpected. There's clever humor, which is funny because it requires effort to understand it, and so there's a congratulatory aspect to it. There's dark humor, which - at points - doesn't trigger any laughter at all, but which still must be included under the umbrella.

I'm certain that you can measure certain parts of humor. But at the same time, while there's a physical part of us that derives humor, that does not make humor itself objective. The fact that every single person has different objective reactions makes humor inherently subjective, even if there's a physical element to be studied and torn apart.

It's like - I said this in another thread - the testers who try to analyze creativity. There are certain ways that you can identify a creative person. The problem is, none of those ways are perfect and all of them are thwarted by different studies. While you can test creativity and create an objective model, you'd only be fooling yourself.

Re: Ender's Game Review

#75

Post by unalone »

astine wrote: post #72
unalone wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

relation to the author or the audiance But that makes it subjective, doesn't it?

Yes, but it can be objectively subjective; or rather, it is subjective, but in a different sense. To illustrate, the phrases "The audience finds this interesting," and "The audience finds this insightful," are both subjective in the sense that their truth-value is dependent on the subject (different speakers likely would have different perspectives,) but they are objective in that, given a particular subject, they ar…

Okay. So, objectively when regarding a large mass of people.

My only objection to that would be that again, an audience can vary wildly in different conditions. My professor gave an "enlightening" lesson on Delicious to my class, that the audience (college freshmen) on a whole found insight from. But the same lesson to, say Hacker News, would be far less insightful. You could get two different objective readings for the same material. Or am I missing something in what you said?

Re: Ender's Game Review

#76

Post by mattmaroon »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #37
mattmaroon wrote: post #35

I lost what respect I had for Orson Scott Card when he wrote this article http://www.meridianmagazine.com/ideas/081017light.html back in October. I won't bother running through all of the blatantly false statements in there, but the most obvious would be: "Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapp…

I hate to see celebrity writers aiding and abetting Fox News and their ridiculous tactic of playing the ref by decrying media bias Media bias is decried everywhere. Read any Howard Kurtz lately? Watch CNN's "Reliable Sources?" It's called media commentary. It's all about identifying and commenting on media bias, tactics, business models, etc. Work at the meta-level. Personally I don't have respect or lack of respect…

The idea that the media is biased in general is decried only by conservatives. I've yet to hear one person claim that there's a conservative bias.

Conservative TV and radio networks use it to play the ref. They get a segment of the population to watch them that way. Orson Scott Card should be smart enough to know better.

I wouldn't even mind if he pointed out factually accurate examples (though that's still mistaking anecdotes for data) but his article is riddled with blatant inaccuracies that can be disproven on YouTube in a few minutes.

Re: Ender's Game Review

#77

Post by Alex3917 »

unalone wrote: post #74
Alex3917 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There is no objective study of humor, or of interesting." From Paul McGhee's paper Cognitive Development and Children's Comprehension of Humor: This study investigated the relationship between children's level of cognitive functioning (according to Piaget's theoretical framework) and their comprehension and appreciation of humor based on violation of cognitive expectancies. A distinction was drawn between novelty an…

The problem, as I stated before, is that the idea of "humor" is in itself subjective. There's an objective basis for "cognitive expectancies," but that isn't the only aspect of humor as we define it with language. For instance, there's slapstick humor, which derives from being over-the-top. There's absurdist humor, which relies on the unexpected. There's clever humor, which is funny because it requires effort to unde…

But all of the different types of humor you listed rely on something being either novel or broken or both. The only difference between the different types of humor is the degrees of novelty or breakage, as well as the emotional valence, timing, and delivery.

Also, I understand that humor, as experienced, is subjective. But if you look at a piece of text it is also possible to objectively say whether there is something novel or broken relative to a given set of existing mental models.

Re: Ender's Game Review

#78

Post by astine »

unalone wrote: post #75
astine wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it can be objectively subjective; or rather, it is subjective, but in a different sense. To illustrate, the phrases "The audience finds this interesting," and "The audience finds this insightful," are both subjective in the sense that their truth-value is dependent on the subject (different speakers likely would have different perspectives,) but they are objective in that, given a particular subject, they ar…

Okay. So, objectively when regarding a large mass of people. My only objection to that would be that again, an audience can vary wildly in different conditions. My professor gave an "enlightening" lesson on Delicious to my class, that the audience (college freshmen) on a whole found insight from. But the same lesson to, say Hacker News, would be far less insightful. You could get two different objective readings for…

No, that's about it.

I just annoyed when people are too quick to insist that something is 'subjective' as a means of dismissing it's relavence or importance, so I tend to be picky about it.

Re: Ender's Game Review

#79

Post by ciscoriordan »

The only good thing about this review is that it reminds me that I don't remember the book very well, and should read it again.

Check out this guy's other reviews -- he whines about everything. Just another Internet troll.

Re: Ender's Game Review

#80

Post by unalone »

astine wrote: post #78
unalone wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay. So, objectively when regarding a large mass of people. My only objection to that would be that again, an audience can vary wildly in different conditions. My professor gave an "enlightening" lesson on Delicious to my class, that the audience (college freshmen) on a whole found insight from. But the same lesson to, say Hacker News, would be far less insightful. You could get two different objective readings for…

No, that's about it. I just annoyed when people are too quick to insist that something is 'subjective' as a means of dismissing it's relavence or importance, so I tend to be picky about it.

That's fair enough. I only did it in this case because the argument is so specifically about objectivity.
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