Quote:
Originally Posted by rubecube
Because experience matters when evaluating and prioritizing subjective opinions. If you're trying to decide on going to Vegas for a vacation, are you honestly weighing the subjective opinion of "yes, you should because I went and found it fun because..." from someone who has been there equally with the subjective opinion of "no, you shouldn't because I don't like gambling" from someone who hasn't been there?
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They're going to say their experience matters too, and then you have this whole battle of the value of subjective opinions that cannot be quantified or ranked except on the basis of other subjective opinions, people are going to form battle lines and everything's going to be personal. What do you think Simmers' next response to Pepsi's post would have been? I bet it wasn't going to be in the spirit of a rational discussion about policy.
I don't really think this discussion is analogous to vacation planning, but if you wanted to play that analogy out, there are plenty of cases where I'd take the advice of someone who hasn't been to the specific destination but can supply good and thoughtful information about it over someone who has been there, but is biased or has some agenda, for example.
Either way, as my initial post said, I don't think the input of people who have first-hand experience should be discarded, because it's valuable. But I also think going straight to appeals to authority on the basis of that experience is foolish. It's even more foolish when you have a more objective, better foundation on which to base a policy decision. And it's simply wrong to try to discard or discount the views of people without those experiences on the basis that they don't have them, or (as Ozy_Flame suggested) let special interests rule the day from a legal or public policy standpoint on the very issue they're likely (and in many cases, understandably) biased about.