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Message: <blockquote data-quote="barsoomcore" data-source="post: 1345419" data-attributes="member: 812">Borges' language, the richness of his prose alone is enough to set him above King. His stories move faster and carry greater wallops than King's He's more consistently good -- with King you never know, sometimes it's Salem's Lot, sometimes it's The Tommyknockers. And Borges is philosophically more interesting, more sophisticated. He's trying to talk about more complicated things than King is. If you're interested in reading more about Borges' writing, the <a href="http://www.ipl.org.ar/cgi-bin/ref/litcrit/litcrit.out.pl?au=bor-260" target="_blank">Internet Public Library</a> has some good articles and web pages about him. I'm not myself a very good critic.Well, if that's what you meant, then sure -- tone can carry all kinds of implications. I have no objection to that -- only to the suggestion that statements of taste necessarily carry implications of personal worth. If you weren't saying that, then my apologies.This is exactly what I'm saying. THEY WILL FEEL you are implying. That doesn't mean you ARE implying it -- just that some people get defensive when their opinions are challenged -- or even when they are confronted with someone who doesn't share their opinions, regardless of any attempted challenge.If I say The Fifth Sorceress sucks, I'm not challenging the opinion of some guy who thinks it's awesome. I'm only stating my opinion. If I say, "I think you're wrong and here's why..." THEN I'm challenging his opinion.And challenging someone's opinion carries no built-in implications of personal worth, either. To attack someone's opinions is not to attack them. That people are sometimes unable to make that distinction doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.Correct! The fact that it's a logical analysis is what makes it, er, logical analysis. The fact that it's an analysis proceeding on logical grounds, that is. It's a pretty straightforward reductio ad absurdum. There's a pretty straightforward page on the concept <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/r/reductio.htm" target="_blank">here</a>.Okay, I'm not trying to insist you stick to what you said. Or, in fact, I was -- I was applying basic logic to your initially stated position. I can accept that we sometimes (even often) post statements that maybe weren't letter-perfect in all their possible implications. So if we can find agreement on this issue I'm all for that.By and large you seem to want to draw a distinction between people who read for fun and snobs, saying that these are "generally" (there's that word again, making trouble) how people are divided. We must take from this that you believe most people who read for fun are NOT snobs, and vice versa, otherwise the statement "generally two types of people" doesn't make sense. But then you say you don't believe it's impossible to be both. Okay, so some few snobs read for fun and some few people who read for fun are snobs.Do you see how removing the generalities from your statements immediately makes this whole issue much clearer? The fact that you want to use categories that aren't absolute doesn't mean you have to use generalities -- you can be specific about the idea that there exist groups of people that don't include all people.But there's still a flaw (actually, it's the same flaw, just now with new terminology) in your position.Given that "snob" is an insulting term, meaning, more or less, "People who think they're better than others because of their tastes, or think other people are inferior because of THEIR tastes," and that when we insult someone we are saying that they are inferior, saying that "Some people read for fun and other people are snobs" is in fact a snobbish statement. You are saying you think people who read for fun are better than other people, if for no other reason than that they are less likely to be snobs.Okay, that's not so much a flaw as a potentially inadverdant conclusion to what you've stated as your own position. I suspect you don't think of yourself as a snob, and yet if your statements are true, then you must be one.I am NOT calling you a snob. I am drawing attention to the fact that the statements you are making are snobbish ones -- I don't know you at all, and I have no desire to insult you whatsoever. But this is a great example of how generalizations get us into trouble.I think what you're trying to get at is that you've met a lot of snobs who look down on people who read only for fun, and they piss you off. Which is an observation I have no complaint against, only to offer up my own anecdotal evidence that people who decry literary analysis are every bit as likely to be snobbish as those who analyze every text they come across. But neither type of snob pisses me off, because I understand that snobs are insecure about their intelligence and need to demonstrate superiority in order to feel good about themselves.So there we are, with two data points and no generalizations to be drawn. Now we can talk about it.My apologies. It was sincerely not my intention to misrepresent you -- I honestly misunderstood your point. I know you felt it was blatantly obvious but I assure it was not to me and no offense or misrepresentation was meant.I take these sorts of debates very seriously (talk about blatantly obvious) and it's very important to me that when I address someone's statements that I do so accurately -- I would take no joy in continuing a debate under some sort of inconsistent analysis. Again, I apologise. It was my error.Yes, indeed I can, but it's a pretty long and involved sort of proof. Or at least it would take me a long time to write because you know, big words are kinda hard for me. This very thread, at least, provides very strong evidence (not the same as a proof, but still). We have had an extremely long, involved debate only because you have tried to make a simple generalization and I have been asking you to clarify it. If you hadn't made the generalization but had instead made an observation about specific people you know, we'd be much further along in this conversation.We might possibly be having LESS fun, I'll admit.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />If you really want an analysis of generalizations, let's take it offline. Email me and we can continue the discussion. Believe me, I'd be thrilled to find somebody who found these sorts of discussions as interesting as I do.And I suspect there's a whole raft of ENWorlders who would be relieved to have me shut up for once.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />Exactly! It IS useless! Though not BECAUSE moderates exist but because everyone is a moderate on some issues, and some people are extreme on some issues. What do you need to know about someone's politics? You need to know how they will vote on a given issue. You need to know how EACH person will vote. This is why generalizations are useless -- they won't give you accurate information when you need to make a decision. And inevitably they will lead you to the wrong decision at some point. Whenever you need to make a decision, you will ALWAYS be better served by facts rather than generalizations.It may be FUN to talk about people's politics in terms of Liberal and Conservative. It may be EASY. But it's USELESS. Well, okay, fun is a use. I'll give you that one. Generalizations are useful for entertainment purposes only.Now, for financial reasons most democracies run their governments by organizing into parties that can share resources and agree to get along together in order to acquire more power. That's a local reality of the political sphere that has nothing to do with artistic appreciation.The fact that, for example, my home province of British Columbia has a Liberal goverment doesn't make the generalization that "most BC'ers are Liberals" any more true or useful than it ever was -- when we meet someone from BC, we still need to find out what their individual political convictions are. Assuming we care.Lots. Make distinctions between ideas and people. Ideas can be good or bad -- but that has nothing to do with the worth of the people holding those ideas. Distinguish between objective and subjective statements -- that will save you a lot of grief. Distinguish between correct and appealing. Distinguish between different kinds of logical errors.There's lots of logical distinctions that make thinking easier. There are entire BOOKS on this very subject -- just go Amazon, type in "logic" and see what search results you get. The use of generalizations is not, however, one that makes thinking easier. I'm happy to discuss this with you in more detail but I think we're beginning to tread on a massive circular debate that I would rather spare the other readers of this thread.I'm not trying to be a jerk here, and I truly hope that this is coming off as what it is for me -- an entertaining excursion into logical analysis and "types" of people.There are snobs in every "taste bracket" -- learning how to recognize them and not be bothered by their need to feel superior really helps get to the point of critical debates.And I just want to point out how this all got started. You drew a distinction between people who read for fun and people who read for intellectual stimulation and I said that was a false distinction. It seems like, at least, we agree on that (even if that's not what you said or what you meant, I THINK you agree that it's true).</blockquote>

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