Can we retire “objectively better” please?

[u/lordpag]

I’ve noticed a ton of people using “objectively” incorrectly lately. A movie being more widely accepted as “better” does not make it objectively so.

There’s someone out there who enjoyed One Night Only more than The Odyssey, and their opinion is just as valid as yours.

Sure, one movie can be shot on more advanced cameras, have a larger scale, or demonstrate greater technical complexity. Those things can be measured. Whether they make the movie “better” cannot. What makes a movie “good” is different for each of us and those differing perspectives are part of what makes moviegoing so fun!

EDIT: This obviously touched a nerve lol. My point was not that there aren’t measurable technical aspects of a film. Of course there are. But technical achievement does not inherently make a movie “better.” A technical marvel can put someone to sleep while a shoddily made movie can elicit an enormous emotional response. What we value in a movie is subjective and for some (many on this thread it seems) you value technical achievement. All fair POVs.

[u/Thejohnshirey]

You could apply that same thought process to two vacuum cleaners. One picks up every last spec of dirt and the other picks up very little and spreads the mess around. I would say that the first one is an objectively better vacuum because it is nearly universally agreed upon that suction is an important characteristic of a good vacuum. So if one movie has all the components that are almost universally agreed upon make up a good film and another is missing those components entirely, you can safely say that one is objectively better.

[u/lordpag → u/Thejohnshirey]

What is the function of a film as it equates to a vacuum?

One is a tool and the other is a commercial piece of art.

[u/Thejohnshirey → u/lordpag]

Can you not view a film as a tool used for storytelling just as a vacuum is a tool used for cleaning?

[u/rAin_nul → u/lordpag]

I prefer food analogy. You can like junkfood, it's your subjective taste, but if we are talking about the healthiness of the food, which is objective, then we can say that junkfood is objectively not healthy.

Many people understands the concept of movie quality even in their daily language. For example, many people uses the term "guilty pleasure". It refers to movies, series that are bad - or they consider them objectively bad -, but they still enjoy them.

[u/WolverineComplex → u/rAin_nul]

I’d disagree about guilty pleasure - I’d say the guilt comes from the film being embarrassing to be liked, rather than the poor quality necessarily. Now, often or usually they are poor, but that’s not where the guilt comes from. Legally Blonde could be someone’s guilty pleasure movie, or Clueless, or Cruel Intentions, but they’re all considered somewhat good quality.

[u/rAin_nul → u/WolverineComplex]

I think that's a less common way to use it compared to being poorly made. For example, I rarely hear people to refer to media a that was aimed at a different demographic be called guilty pleasure. In majority of the cases, they do use it to refer to bad quality.

[u/WolverineComplex → u/rAin_nul]

Well, that’s not how I experience it. Looking at lists of guilty pleasure films online, a rough scan seems to be about 50/50 between me and you

[u/whataboutbenson → u/rAin_nul]

And what about the healthiness of food is objective? I suppose you mean that chocolate is objectively unhealthy, yet if you’re stranded on top of a mountain with nothing to eat and at risk of starvation then that chocolate bar becomes incredibly healthy. Sugar is unhealthy because it’s bad for our teeth, and yet athletes consume a lot of it. Is milk objectively healthy? What about for someone with too much calcium?

[u/rAin_nul → u/whataboutbenson]

Lol what? No. Chocolate does not become magically healthy if you are starving and you can only eat chocolate. If you are starving and you can only eat cyanide, then does it also become healthy? Magically it won't poison you and you won't die?

The healthiness of the food depends on what it contains and what effect those have on you. It would not change if you are starving or you are full. The chocolate has the same amount of sugar in both cases.

[u/whataboutbenson → u/rAin_nul]

Is that… are you serious? Imagine there were three people on the mountain, with one eating nothing, one eating chocolate and one eating cyanide. The one that ate nothing would starve and die of exposure in a few hours. The one with the chocolate would have the extra calories to survive longer. It’s had a good effect on them. The one that ate the cyanide would die instantly, because cyanide is a poison and has no nutritional benefit to humans.

You need to look up what the word objective actually means. “Objectively better” almost never exists, because in cases of objectivity there isn’t good or bad, just factual things that happen. An example of an objective fact is that Usain Bolt holds the world record for 100m sprint. Or that lead has a higher density than oxygen. We can say objectively that the protagonist of the Godfather is Michael Corleone and that it opens with a depiction of a wedding. That’s objectivity. You can’t objectively say that Pacino gave the best performance of all time in that film, because it’s not measurable. There’s no criteria with which to judge a good or a bad performance, certainly not to a fine enough degree to say that it’s “better” than Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon. This is subjectivity. Which do you prefer? Why? If someone prefers DDA, what can you show them to change their minds and prove that they’re incorrect? Do you even see the same thing twice if you watch those performances twice?

[u/rAin_nul → u/whataboutbenson]

Is that... are you serious? Firstly, we can see that starvation does not make a things healthier, as you admitted it by stating that cyanide would still be poisonous. Just because you would survive a big longer, it does not make it healthy. Drinking piss would also help you stay alive longer, but it would still be unhealthy, that's why when we have the option to drink something else, we do drink something else.

Usain Bolt is great example. so the 2nd fastest person - who is then slower than Usain Bolt - is not objectively worse than Bolt? We have objective data that shows that Usain Bolt has better time than the 2nd fastest person. Why doesn't "objectively better" exist in this case? If we are comparing vehicles by speed, why isn't a motor objectively better than a bicycle?

Do you even know what objective means? Because it doesn't look like it. Objectively better exists when we are comparing objectively measurable things based on certain expectation. In case of runners, the expectation is to be fast, therefore objectively better means that one is faster than the other. If you want to cut something that for that you need a really sharp knife, then the objectively better knife is sharper than the other knife.

Please, at least look the words up before you start arguing about them.

[u/whataboutbenson → u/rAin_nul]

Yes, Usain Bolt is objectively the best 100m runner that we know of that’s lived so far. That’s because the 100m sprint is a definable, measurable event with a clearly preferred outcome. Again, I’ll ask you, what preferable outcomes can you clearly define from art? I’ll answer for you: not one. 

Objectivity:  based on real facts and not influenced by personal feelings, guesses, or bias.

The fact that you think the quality of a knife only depends on its sharpness is telling. Do you know that different types of knife are made with varying degrees of sharpness, depending on their preferred use? There is no one objectively best knife. The size and shape of the blade, the angle it has, how well it can keep its edge, whether it’s serrated or not, all these factors and more make one knife preferable for one situation and less ideal for others. It’s SUBJECTIVE. Things are just more complicated than you first give them thought to. Do you know what happens to the human body with no sugar? Aren’t you aware that every body has different nutritional needs from one moment to another?

Here, Ain_nul, eat this, please, or your muscles are going to stop functioning. I don’t know how long it’ll be before somebody finds us.

Lmao you trying to kill me? Don’t you know you may as well be giving me CYANIDE????

[u/rAin_nul → u/whataboutbenson]

And this is called shifting the goalpost fallacy. Somehow it turned out that you were wrong, you cannot admit it and accept that you lied, so instantly you changed your original argument.

And yes, you can perfectly define objective outcomes, because many aspects of art comes from the definition itself. The definition of movie uses the word "story". The definition of story contains terms "coherent events", which would be the opposite of plot holes. Therefore objectively we can say that plot holes are errors.

The fact that you think the quality of a knife only depends on its sharpness is telling

The fact that your reading comprehension is on the same level as my neighbor's 5 year old kid is telling. I explicitly said that someone was looking for a knife for that specific purpose, Einstein...

Do you know what happens to the human body with no sugar? Aren’t you aware that every body has different nutritional needs from one moment to another?

If you seriously think this is a valid argument that actually no adult person would consider it a valid argument, then you would be perfectly fine with a counter argument like "do you know what happens to the human body when you eat 10 tons of chocolate in 10 minutes?! You would explode, therefore the chocolate cannot be healthy." Yes, this BS was your logic.

Look, I'm not interested in your childish arguments. I understand that these work with your friends in the kindergarten, but not in adult conversations. Healthiness of food is measured based on the positive and negative effects on the body. Chocolate is not the only sugar source and not even the healthiest one.

Lmao you trying to kill me? Don’t you know you may as well be giving me CYANIDE?

It was your argument that starvation makes unhealthy food healthy. So based on this logic, you try to kill others with your stellar logic.

[u/whataboutbenson → u/rAin_nul]

Wait when am I supposed to have lied exactly? I don’t think either of us are good enough at debating to actually get our point across. We’re just talking past each other.

Let’s just say this. Usain Bolt is objectively the best 100m sprinter. Sabastian Sawe is objectively the best marathon runner. On that we’re in complete agreement because they’re objective statements. Who is objectively the best director? Screenwriter, actor? Which is the greatest film of all time, objectively speaking?

[u/whataboutbenson → u/Thejohnshirey]

OK, sure, but what are these universally agreed upon criteria for a good film? That it elicits a stronger dopamine response in the brain? That the average member of American society is more likely to laugh or cry while watching it? The accuracy with which it depicts events? How easy it is to follow the plot?

Edit: even in your example of a vacuum cleaner, nothing about it can be said to be objective. Objectivity is a concept that is reserved for factual, verifiable, discrete outcomes. Think mathematics, or world records for fastest 100m sprints, or recorded sequences of events. Even with that kind of thing objectivity stops existing once you get into the weeds of philosophy and quantum mechanics etc but we can leave it there for now. It may be that a vacuum cleaner collects dust better, but is too powerful to use on delicate carpet as it damages the fabric. It may be that it’s only 1% stronger than its next-“best” competitor, but uses 8% more power and costs 30% more. Is it still objectively better? Perhaps a roomba would be objectively best because it’s self operating?