Day 6797 | Day 6828 | Day 6835

A few days ago I was having a conversation about politics in the IRC channel. This was because chatterlight was being about as cooperative as a PMSing mule on dial-up. I normally try to avoid talking about my own personal political positions, preferring to reveal them indirectly through questions directed towards others. This time, however, I decided to break that habit and give some of my own radical ideas a test run.

So I made a statement that others found shocking then as I'm sure they will now: Some people are better than others.

Now this anti-egalitarian message clearly had some strong opposition, but the greatest pleasure of taking a position always comes from defending that position from counter-arguments. Debates are somewhat like internet trolling: the more ludicrous the claim you are defending, the more exciting it is to defend. And so I understandably found myself attempting to validate my claim.

I came up with arguments in my head, ready to fling them at my noble adversary like so many journalistic shoes. Who is better, a serial killer or a life-long charity worker? When you win at a game, why do you enjoy winning and the other person losing? Why do people experience schadenfreude? You can say that one apple is better than another, why not one person is better than another?

That last one got me thinking.

Think about this statement for a while; really think about it: "Some apples are better than others". Seems to make sense right? There are some apples which definitely are more enjoyable than others to eat. But that's not what I actually said. I didn't say that some apples are more enjoyable to eat, I said that some apples are better. What does that mean? It means that one apple is superior to another, has more universal value, is more worthy of existence. This doesn't make sense.

At this point, I decided to try and make another outrageous claim: The word 'better' has no meaning. The linguists among you are now going "Of course it has meaning, it's the comparative form of 'good'!" but that is the stumbling block. To be able to compare two things, you need a criterion by which to compare them. We all accept that you cannot use the right to exist as a criterion—no person can make an accurate assessment of that.

In fact, the word 'better' is a member a small clan of adjectives which compare not attributes like speed or height or color, but rather compare the value of their existence. There is something manifestly wrong with this: the idea that a human, with our limited knowledge, can make categorical claims as to the universal value of something so readily is a supreme act of hubris.

In general, there are two ways in which we can compare things, subjectively and objectively. When we use the word 'better' to compare objective attributes, that is, in respect to numerically measureable qualities of the thing we're assessing, chances are that a more specific term could be used instead. When watching a presidential debate, the phrase "His argument was better" becomes "His argument convinced more people". When running track "She is a better runner than me" becomes "She runs faster than I do". And when singing, "Anything you can do I can do better" becomes "Anything you can do I can do quicker/with better quality/bigger".

If, on the other hand, you use the word 'better' to compare subjective attributes, then you cannot separate it from the subjectivity and, again, another phrase is usually more exact. "European supermodels are better than Asian supermodels". In this context it would be more exact to say that European supermodels are more attractive. Besides that fact, the statement is not true: there is no way in which you can measure the attractiveness or someone quantitively. You would be limited to opinion polls or, again, arbitray weights of different qualities of both Asian and European models.

I may have rambled a bit so I'll conclude with this: the word 'better' is a holistic rating of something's universal value. It implies that you've taken two things, applied an arbitrary grading criteria to them and then rated every one of its attributes along that arbitrary scale. These scales must be arbitrary because, as seen above, if you measured the two objects by an objective scale, a different word would be more exact and if you measure on a subjective scale, it is impossible to separate 'better' from the scale's subjectivity. In this way, 'better' has no meaning that isn't more accurately expressed through the use of other words.