A question for all my erudite friends:

[nolawitch58]

Is it absolutely necessary to share the same state of a person in order to comment upon his or her abilities? Does one really have to know how to program to recognize an excellent batch of code or a piece of kludgy crap in its execution? Does one have to be an architect to recognize a beautiful building or an abysmal blight on the landscape? Does one have to be a chef before one can comment on the tastiness or lack thereof of a meal? Does one have to be an actor to appreciate a good performance or revile a bad performance? Does one have to be a politician in order to comment on matters affecting the body politic? Does one really have to be a member of an oppressed minority in order to sympathize with the miseries suffered by that minority?

I don't get where some people get off saying, "You're not an x, so your opinion on the products of x don't count."

Comments

[ex-theginge.livejournal.com]

That theory would certainly put all the music magazines out of business.
(Which might not be so bad, now that I think about it)

That logic would also mean that unless you could...

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

...play an instrument or sing, you shouldn't have an opinion at all on music. That might not be a problem for you; you might be able to play or sing. For those of us who can't carry a tune or make an instrument do more than squawk, do our opinion that Eric Clapton is one of the finest guitar players of all time becomes invalid? If you're not a mechanic, you don't have the right to bitch about a car that's a lemon?

No

[ms-issicran.livejournal.com]

It's just that the same-staters would like it to be.

Re: No

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

So, you're saying that some people would say I have no right to posit the opinion that Blackbyrd2 is a good man because I am not a man? And because I have a black thumb, I should not comment what a lovely garden you have. And you're also saying they're full of shit, right?

Re: No, Er, I mean yes...now

[ms-issicran.livejournal.com]

I'm saying yes, there are some same-staters who would say you have no right. I've watched people who feel exactly that way and express it passionately feeling their ground is firm since they're in that state. It's not pretty and they always leave me with the notion that they are closed minded to feeling that others have a right to express too, and, that same state doesn't always mean true insight. What if that same stater is incompetent regarding that state? Would a person with keener insight and higher intelligence think they're full of shit? I think so, or possibly think maybe they're just fucking goofy.

To me, it's kind of like asking if there is a difference between the law and justice. Legal experts write law, anyone with common sense can identify justice.

[blackbyrd2.livejournal.com]

And so goes the very same argument about webcomics critics.

If you aren't a webcomic artist, you can't critique.
If you are a webcomics artist, you can only critique those whose work is not as good as yours.
If you are a webcomics artist, you can only critique those who have better work than yours, but you'd better not say anything bad about them, because then it's just sour grapes.

Many people, some would say most, simply can not take any criticism at all, regardless of whether it's valid or not. That is, in my opinion, entirely their problem.

Now, Don't tell me what kind of day to have! :P

[blackbyrd2.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I meant to include the comment that I have seen all those positions taken.
I've also seen theposition that nobody, anywhere, should critique webcomics.

All the arguments are bull. The value of an opinion is in the way it is supported. Anyone can say that UF is crap, for instance. That doesn't mean it's true, and as a critique, it is almost entirely valueless.
Why is it crap? How is it crap? What makes it crap? Post examples which support your opinion. Use logic to support it.

Also, any opinion which is entirely negative is usually suspect, because the world is not black and white. Not all Repugnicans are complete and total idiots, for instance.

and this splutter is caused by?

[ozdragonlady.livejournal.com]

For what its worth, I agree with you :P

Re: and this splutter is caused by?

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

I was giving props to someone elsewhere for a good job (I intended the comment as complimentary at any rate) and the person said that because I wasn't indulging in that particular vocation, I had no right to say diddly or squat about it. Yeesh!

The short answer is no, as you knew.

[naruki-oni.livejournal.com]

The long answer is a tiny bit more complex, but not much.

Your opinion on a matter may or may not be valid - not all opinions are valid, despite some really retarded opinions to the contrary.

The degree of validity depends on many factors, as you would expect. These can include (but are neither limited to nor are required in all cases) the subject on which you have an opinion, the public knowledge available, and your personal experience.

Those things speak to your credibility in asserting an opinion.

For example, a man talking about the pain of childbirth would appear to have much less credibility than a woman, simply because of who they are.

However, if the man is a 20-year Ob-Gyn and the woman is a 20-year old virgin, the credibility could be reversed.

If we are talking about judging a karate tournament, you could probably generalize that only someone who practices martial arts is qualified to judge it.

In general, you'd be right. But, again, there could be exceptions to the rule. A gymnastics coach could probably come up to speed very quickly.

People who say "you aren't X so you can't judge X" are making a bad assumption that they all know is wrong: they assume there can be no exceptions to a rule.

Of course, for certain values of X it doesn't matter if there are exceptions or not - they could just be stupid. Like saying if you don't have stupid opinions, you can't judge stupid opinions.

I've had this argument with a friend many years ago...

[jpaganel.livejournal.com]

Didn't go anywhere.

She maintained I had no right to say this one guy's music sucked since I can't play guitar worth a damn.

Well, while my fine motor skills may be lacking, I got ears and I've been cursed with taste.

[drgndancer.livejournal.com]

It's not a yes or no question. It depends on a lot of things. What exactly are you critiquing? As a programmer, I am no more qualifed than you to comment on the execution of a program, but that is not the program itself, it's only how it operates when compiled. If a program is clunky piece of shit, but it's pretty and does does everything it's supposed to, you might say it's a good program... meanwhile a skilled programmer looking under the hood might point out that it could run 15 time faster if this recursive function were replaced by a simple loop, or worse, that there is signifigant security vulnerabilty just waiting to be discovered. Similarly, I might look at a building and say it is beautiful, only to have an architect tell me that it's an unstable piece of trash that's gonna fall down in the first hurricane that hits it. You might feel sympathy for an oppressed minority, but you will never feel that oppression. A non-expert is always entitled to an opinion, especially in matter of art rather than science, but an experts opinion is rightly taken more seriously. When dealing with artistic expression it is very hard to qualify "expertise", so in general I think most opinion have a high degree of validity. In effect, everyone is their own expert on what they themselves consider beautiful or worth consuming.

Just for fun...

[naruki-oni.livejournal.com]

In the case of the building, neither one is wrong. The architect may be right about the stability, but that in no way affects the beauty of the building. It's win-win!

You will never feel that oppression as long as you aren't the recipient of it. But it's certainly possible for you to move to a place where you become an oppressed minority. And you may have been there, done that before you express sympathy for the person who wrongfully proclaims "you aren't one, so you couldn't understand".

Nobody is entitled to an opinion.

That about does it. :-)

Like everything else ...

[slamlander.livejournal.com]

it's relative. If the person is commenting on something with reasonable objective referents then one does not have to be an expert to interpret the data (due to obfuscation, hard sciences lend themselves to this less than the softer sciences, believe it or not).

In any other endeavor, it mostly opinion anyway. If one wants to critique the methodology then the meta-analysis boils down to first-principles and one doesn't have to be an expert, in the field, either. However, one does need to share the same logical framework (yes, there are more than one). As a general rule, the softer the science the greater percentage of personal opinion is injected, since a greater degree of intuition is required (due to the lack of hard data). The harder the science is then the more objective the evidence is, even to lay people (those not intimately experienced in the science). This is because the results will be repeatable, in a form that is irrefutable, to experts and non-experts alike. Otherwise, it is pure opinion.

In the arts, this is where your argument is most often used and least well applied. One does not need to be a musician to appreciate good music, since the definition of "good" varies from person to person. The fundamental issue is that the art itself isn't well defined. However, performance art or commercial art, is defined quite well by audience reaction, be it a painting or a guitar solo. In a way, this objectivizes the art, based on this audience reaction. Critics often do create the fallacy that their opinions apply to their audience. This is in itself a form of performance art, as is politics (in a way).

Where the argument is 100% true is when dealing with emotionally charged experiences. How can you reasonably have an opinion, about a shade of red, when you are color-blind? How can a socio-path have a valid opinion about the psychology of love/hate relationships, or feel the sadness in a blues howl? I can describe the thrill/fear/hate/love/anxiety/stress, of a combat zone, all week long and you will never really understand it because you were never there and have never felt those emotions (a good thing, IMHO).

How about the experience of having to kill the company, that you've spent 7 years building, just because the bottom dropped out of the market? A divorce, watching the birth of your first child, raising that child, the triumph of winning your first major contract, facing the prospect of being homeless, having a parent die, watching your child die ... these are all examples of things that cannot be commented on unless you have been there yourself and had to deal with the fallout/experience. Anyone's opinion on these things is, and should be, measured against whether or not they have had those experiences and have lived that part of life. Do you honestly believe that you can have a valid opinion on the uses of deadly force, in a crisis situation, when you have never been in either a crisis situation or had to choose to use deadly force yourself? Can you reasonably have an opinion, or make judgements against homeless people if you've never had to face the prospect yourself? In the end, your opinion, on such matters, should be weighed against your relative experiences regarding those matters. Ted Kennedy's opinions, on the value of homeless people, shouldn't get as much shrift as his opinions of murder suspects or philanderers. With one, he has no relevant experience, with the latter two, he has ample personal experience. Finally, one can no more make valid value-judgements about wealthy people, if one has never been wealthy, then they can about poor people, if one has never been poor. The worlds are far too different. One can peer in from the outside but, one should never forget that it *is* the outside.

At the end of the day, you have your opinion and I have mine. They may not agree. Whether or not a third-party would agree with either of us depends on the relative experiences of the two opinionated parties plus the relative experience of the audience.

Re: Like everything else ...

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

See, that's where I think the world has gone to shit. People don't seem to care about a topic unless it affects them directly. That's myopic in my opinion. If the only things you were entitled to have an opinion on were thing that you were personally involved in, the world would be a worse shit-sucking sinkhole than it is now.

Taken to extremes, those of us in cities shouldn't be expected to give a shit about farms or wilderness areas because we don't live there. Fuck the farmers because I'm not a farmer. Conversely, those in rural areas shouldn't be expected to care about urban issues either.

To my mind, that thinking pattern puts us all at risk. If we restrict our world view to our small corner of it, we're not very good citizens. Everything is interdependent. For the city dwellers, the farmers grow their food. For the farmers, the city dwellers buy their food. Without either side of the supply/demand, the chain would break.

It's a crock of shit that one has to have experienced certain horrors or miseries to recognize them as horrors or miseries and sympathize with the plights of the sufferers. I've never had a bomb fall on my house, but I am intelligent enough to see that when the bombs fell on Iraqis' homes, it was a devastating and traumatic experience. Yes, we should be able to evaluate the negative impact of homelessness regardless of our chances of being homeless ourselves. We should be able to recognize that wildfires, tornadoes, mudslides, hurricanes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and other calamaties are horrible for those amid the devastation. If not, there's something seriously wrong with us.

What else is our intellect for except to deal with concepts that we have no personal experience with and evaluate those situations? By that logic, none of the technical and administrative people who built NASA should have an opinion on space travel because they are not astronauts.

I think it depends.

[real-skeptic.livejournal.com]

Note: I don't know what brought this on, so I'm just answering your question out of context.

In some things of course you don't have to belong to the same group. For example, in arts, if you're the intended audience, you are supposed to have some feelings about the art work, and therefore you can critique it. Of course, your critique can't be acceptable to everybody, but that's another issue.

But there are some things you have to be in the right position to assess. Take your example about the architect. You can judge whether his work is beautiful or not in your eyes. But is the planning and construction sound? I think you need to learn at least some engineering to know that.

The same goes for software engineering. If you can't read the code (it's available, but you're not a pragrammer), only see what it does, you can judge the functionality and suitability of the application. But you don't know whether it's good code or bad code. I mean, suppose the application is very usable, but as far as software engineering goes, it's not extensible, not scalable, and bug fixing is hell. How would you know that if you weren't a programmer?

So we have covered arts and technology. What's left? Well, there are some situations, in which you may not be able to judge correctly, because you don't have the same perspective as those involved. For example, antisemitism (or any other form of bigotry). It's perceived differently if you are a member of a target minority, than it feels when you are not. Of course, this could work the other way around, too: if you are too involved in a situation, you don't judge correctly. This is why so many international conflicts can't be easily resolved - each side is too stuck in their own point of view.

Re: I think it depends.

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

How about judging the producer by the product? If your building more than adequately addresses the needs of the inhabitants, doesn't crumble due to crappy engineering and integrates nicely into its surroundings, then your architectural abilities are validated by that product.

I think the situation is summed up quite well in your last paragraph. Sometimes people who are too involved in the situation to have sufficient perspective to judge their results for themselves. They get bogged down by their own proximity to the process and are swayed further by emotional investment in those processes that they are unable to see the results as being negative in any way, shape or form.

Yep - depends ;-)!

[saminz.livejournal.com]

On your position, and on the level of critique or discussion. If you are the consumer of a product, of course your opinion counts, very much so, of course. But on a very different level as if you were a colleague of the producer! So while he will like you to admire his product as a consumer, he will be disappointed if you cannot see its flaws as a colleague...
As the ex-partner of an architect, I have heard much abuse for my admiration of buildings based on me *falling in love* with them. I was lectured on how I would look at details instead of the concept, how I ignored the fact that there were different styles involved, the builder had mixed epochs and/or materials in a corny way and whatnot. And it usually ended with me expressing my view that probably architects should be prevented on judging buildings generally - out of their own circles, at least. Because the rest of us had to live with their "product", and so maybe it would be more sensible to let us decide if we liked or hated it, and please leave us alone with the esoteric details ;-). Same applies for programming, I'm afraid. We want it to bloody work, basta. And never mind the clever design and elegant code - if it doesn't, please stay in your own circles with the thing, and seek admiration with your peers who will love to cajole it into function over and over again. (Sorry, Linux-fans...)
Oppressed minorities - difficult. I am not sure. I can see where they come from when they tell me *you have no fucking idea how it is". Because, usually, I do not. That of course doesn't stop me from trying to help getting them their rights. But I will respect that they don't want me in their group or even on their protest march. (Some groups here have special sections for "sympathizers" - you can't join the AIDS-victim group if you are not tested positive, but you can join the "friends/parents of HIV-positive folks".)
Politics - again, depends. If you critique a certain political project to a politician directly, it will not do to forget the system he is operating in... Your views will only be valuable if you see where his restrictions lie. Is the project in accordance to the constitution, for example. Which body does he have to bring it to, local/state/federal parliament, and how are the majorities there. Or will it better be formulated as an initiative, or something else? (Just examples, and based on swiss practice!).
And so on... Just a few thoughts. No idea if they'll answer your question ;-)!

[celticess.livejournal.com]

No you don't have to be. But it can give you deeper understanding or insite if you are. For example with certain health things we can only venture a guess what it's like by observance. We may of experienced some of it's things ourselves but not have it. So we don't know the full extent of what it's like. With architechture you can appreciate it's beauty and design and even what it took to build it. But not being the architecht you don't know what it felt to finally get your structure up, to know every flaw and every perfection, etc. So it is a relative thing I suppose.

Yes, having a specific health issue gives you a stake in it.

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

If our intellectual curiosity leads us to become familiar with a specific health issue, perhaps because a friend or loved one is afflicted with it, can it also be said that since we're not personally diabetic or cancerous or whatever, we don't have the same insight as someone who suffers from that health issue? Like Naruki said, a male OB-GYN with twenty years of experience has more credibility discussing childbirth than a twenty-year-old female virgin.

Isn't it possible for someone with that intellectual curiosity who has read extensively on a subject over several decades to have a more informed opinion of that subject than someone who until recently afflicted had zero knowledge about it?

you are damn rigth

[ozanbaba.livejournal.com]

but without real knowloge comments stay as just comments

[krikkert.livejournal.com]

It depends. For example, I think you need to be a programmer to recognise a good batch of code. Or at least understanding how the language in question works(which makes you a programmer IMHO) - but by my definition, a good batch of code is one that is easy to understand so meh.

You don't have to be an architect/landscaper to appreciate good design. Mostly because everyone has a sense of aesthetics(more or less hampered, at least - I know mine is severely disabled) so you're automatically qualified.

well-informed opinion might carry more weight, eh?

[flat-lander.livejournal.com]

but certainly all opinions are intrinsically valid... especially opinions that are informed by your taste. You know,unless you're just plain old wrong of course, like trying to tell Micro$oft Certified flatlander that Windoze doesn't suck hind teat.

Im my experience

[bloodyviking.livejournal.com]

That "argument" tends to be most used by those to lazy and/or stupid to counter your argument with anything meaningful.

Probably 99% of the time, the ability to form a reasoned opinion is not contingent on being a member of x.

If you don't mind the opinion of a perfect stranger...

[anthrprettyface.livejournal.com]

I think that we are all entitled to our opinions. We all know the saying, and if someone doesn't like it, SCREW 'EM! They don't have to agree, and they don't have to like it. It's yours, not theirs, so if they don't like, too bad.
If they think that you are not an appropriate person to form such an opinion, then they should calmly inform you of what they think, and why. It's called conversation, and we don't have to agree to have one. Besides, sometimes it's the person on the outside of the situation that has the right attitude, and the 'insider' just needs their mental butts kicked into gear. So keep giving out your opinions!