and these people vote?

quote:

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12. It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England. It took the Americans only three hours to get home. This seems unfair.

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That's what the American Revolution was really about.

As we keep telling those Christians who have to have "meaning" spoonfed to them: everybody sets their own standards for meaning. Just meeting the other people on the bus might be more meaningful for many people than seeing yet another mountain up close.(And I hear they're going to start a bus service to the top of Mount Everest pretty soon.)

I didn't say that every experience is equally rewarding. I said that different experiences can also be rewarding. Again, meeting interesting people on a "boring" bus tour might be comparable to meeting a boring person on top of Mount Everest. Hint: it isn't always the scenery that's worthwhile. I don't recall but I probably could argue that position, yes.

You should try reading what I write. I said first that tourists and travellers can have experiences that are equally rewarding to them. When you made the ridiculous claim that I was refering to people who are comatose, I clarified by saying that not all experiences are necessarily equally rewarding. Einstein would probably tell you that mathematical equations don't do a good job of comparing human experiences. Nonsense. You might as well say that somebody watching the History Channel will almost always have a more rewarding experience than somebody watching a football game. Have you ever heard of subjectivity?

Have you ever heard of the concept of humour? Did caffeine say that? I think it's pretty obvious that you can't measure the quality of people's experiences accurately enough to compare them. Unless the "traveller" and the "tourist" and the "television-watcher" and the "child" and the "comatose person" are all the same person, your comparison is meaningless. You're the one who's comparing them. I'm the one who says you can't compare them.

So you have no response at all to the point that you can't measure "rewarding"?

Nope. No contradiction.You quoted the word "YOU" but you ignored it. I said that you (dronester) can't measure the quality of (other) people's experiences. In Message 25 I suggested that a person can compare his own experiences.I can compare my own experience with chocolate ice cream to my own experience with ballroom dancing and decide which I like better. YOU can not make that comparison for me.

That isn't "measuring the quality of their experiences"; it's choosing the one that's appropriate to this week's curriculum. If we were studying "experiences" in general, the recently-comatose Mr. Smith might be the better choice.

And the same is true of a bus trip to Mount Rushmore with thirty senior citizens.

So you presume to know everything about Mr. Smith's experiences getting into a coma and getting out of a coma. If you knew as much about Mr. Hillary as you claim to know about Mr. Smith, you wouldn't need either one of them.

So you really don't have anything to say?Being the first - or the fortieth - to the top of Mount Everest doesn't automatically make you an interesting person. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes, somebody who has been through a coma may actually be more interesting than somebody who has stood on top of a rock.What led up to the coma? Was Mr. Smith a hero or a fool or a victim of circumstance? What are the after effects of the coma. What blocks of his life does Mr. Smith recall and which does he not?Or, you could have Mr. Hillary standing in front of the class saying, "Um... well... I guess so.... No, not really.... Sometimes...."Who has a "more rewarding" experience with the Mona Lisa? The "traveller" who hitchhikes to Paris to see it in person or the janitor who scrubs the floor in front of it every day?

It may or may not "be" funny. Humour is subjective, just like the "value" of people's experiences. In this context it would be "good" humour if it supported your argument - but it doesn't. I'm not your guest; I'm Percy's guest - and I will continue to point out that your argument is nonsensical. You can not compare George's subjective experiences with Jim's subjective experiences. You can only compare George with George and Jim with Jim.If you have a valid argument, why don't you make it instead of dragging out your bad-taste "joking" about an unfortunate affliction?

Experiences are inherently subjective. You experience ice cream in a different way than I do. There may be some overlap in our experiences, which could possibly be called an objective component, but the overall experience is subjective.Two people parachute out of an airplane. One is exhilarated and can't wait to go again. The other is terrified and vows, "Never again." The events are objective. The experience of the events is subjective. I would use the same criterion that I used in the case of the recovered coma patient: the ability to communicate one's experiences to the class. No matter how boring Hillary was, he might still be able to communicate better than a two-year-old, though not as well as Mr. Smith.Of course, the ability to communicate one's experiences has nothing to do with the "quality" of the experiences.

What part of "subjective" do you not understand?Obviously the two-year-old toddler's experiences will be more rewarding to the toddler than somebody else's experiences.You personally can not assign absolute values to other people's experiences.

You're going to have to explain how people's individual experiences can be objective. Those values are not objective. You should doubt more. Skepticism is a good thing. To the child, yes, it is more rewarding.