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Message: <blockquote data-quote="barsoomcore" data-source="post: 1343413" data-attributes="member: 812">One of the corollaries of that is that if we want to have a community where such debates can be held, then it's the responsibility of all us to try and create an environment where people feel like they can express their opinions and be attacked not for the opinions themselves, but only for the evidence or logic that supports them.I mean, it's PERFECTLY acceptable to say, "I like Spam and I don't know why and I don't care and I'm not going to listen to any arguments that it's gross." That's a fine argument, and frankly, I prefer statements like that rather than logical runarounds like appeals to popularity or ad hominem. If you don't want to debate your tastes, I'm never going to insist that you have to.I think it's FUN to do so. I learn a lot by doing so. (intellectual stimulation = fun, remember?)Well, let us say, the opinion itself possesses no right or wrong,or truth or falsehood. I don't think investigating one's opinions on art is useful because we end up with better opinions (we might, but that's not the real usefulness of it) -- it's useful to do so because we end with a better understanding of OURSELVES.When you defend your opinions to others, you find out what your opinions really are. You find out what actually matters to you, as opposed to what you've been telling yourself matters to you.How about this: it can often be clear that you have very little to gain by entering into a debate with certain people. It would be of almost no value to me whatsoever to discuss with you the intricacies of Katori Shinto Ryu kenjutsu. You're unlikely to have opinions on such a subject that will provide me with new insights (unless this is another one of those creepy cases you and I are always having where we turn out to have the same idiosyncratic obsessions).That's not to say I should disregard anything you say -- whatever statements you do make I should consider just like anyone else's -- it just means that the PROBABILITY of you giving me new insights into such a subject is low, and therefore my incentive to invest much energy in such a discussion is low.Actually, I would argue that snobbery derives from INSECURITY, not the opposite. True confidence doesn't need to denigrate others or prove its own superiority.I have never pretended that there aren't snobs in this world. God knows. What I'm saying is that the idea that people either "read for enjoyment" or "read for intellectual stimulation" is a false distinction.</blockquote>

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