and these people vote?

I'm still waiting for you to explain how individual experiences can be objective.

But we don't all think the same way. That's the whole point. We don't all think climbing Mount Everest would be a wonderful experience. I, personally, would rather be talking to that granny on the bus.In your proposition there is no way to compare Hillary's "quality of experience" with the two-year-old's "quality of experience". The two-year-old would most likely be miserable every inch of the way up Mount Everest.You are equivocating, either intentionally or unintentionally, the experience of the students with the experience of Hillary and/or Smith. What we are talking about here is the experience, not the second-hand description of the experience. (And I have already pointed out that the description of a mundane experience might well be more interesting than the description of an earth-shattering experience.)

But that's nonsense. There's more than one flavour of ice cream because we don't all think the same. It's second-hand to the children. You can not compare how the children will react to second-hand experiences. Each child will have his own favorite flavour of ice cream. Each child will have different interests in guest speakers. Some might be interested in hearing about mountain-climbing and some might be interested in hearing about bus trips.You are equivocating the having of an experience, which the OP is talking about, with the hearing about somebody else's experience.In both cases, you are wrong. Different people will have different reactions to the same event, whether it's a first-hand event or a second-hand event.

Are you admitting that people have different reactions to the same event and still claiming that they will have the same reaction to different events?George and Jim have different reactions to A. George and Jim have different reactions to B. George prefers A, Jim prefers B. You seem to be claiming that George and Jim will objectively agree on either A or B. The problem here is that you're pre-loading your example. You have already decided that climbing Mount Everest is "more rewarding" than not climbing Mount Everest and you've deliberately picked an example where you know which choice most people would make. But you don't know which choice people would make in the Mount Everest or not Mount Everest scenario.A more honest example would be between chocolate ice cream and strawberry ice cream, or between visiting Paris or New York. Your argument is about subjective experiences. You're the one who's adding the qualifiers. The whole example is yours and you've deliberately made it seem like an obvious choice.But unless you assume that climbing Mount Everest is "more rewarding", you can not conclude that it is.Which is "more rewarding"? Climbing Mount Everest or climbing Mount Whitney? Or climbing Pike's Peak? Or climbing the Empire State Building? Put them in objective order of rewardingness.

The word "certain" didn't appear until Message 73 and doesn't appear anywhere else in your messages except this one. *cough* moving goalposts *cough* You added "certain".Yes, you can add "certain" to pre-filter your results and get the answer you want. And I have asked you how you compare experiences objectively. Which is "more rewarding"? Climbing Mount Everest or climbing Mount Whitney? Or climbing Pike's Peak? Or climbing the Empire State Building?What criteria do you use? Height? Slope?Or are those examples too "uncertain" for you to answer the question honestly? By what criteria do you assess your own example?

You've been pretty shy about explaining why you think individual experiences can be assessed objectively. What criteria do you use? If I missed your answer in the flurry of "comedy", feel free to repeat yourself.Just answer the questions: How do you measure the quality of an experience? Is climbing Mount Everest "more rewarding" than climbing Mount Whitney or Pike's Peak or the Empire State Building? If so, on what basis? Height? Slope?If you are going to claim that you can objectively determine how "rewarding" somebody else's experience is, by all means tell us how you do it, in plain English, without all the bullshit.

Of course that isn't what we're talking about at all. You have not established that climbing Mount Everest is a "universally agreed upon experience". There are dissenters. There is variety of experience.You have deliberately contrived examples where there would be very little dissent and very little variety of experience - but that isn't what we're talking about. Your own claim is that "a 'traveler' will almost always have a deeper experience climbing Everest than a 'tourist' who will bus to the BOTTOM of Everest...."Using that example, explain to us how the experience can be objective. Give us the objective criteria that you used to derive that conclusion.

Thus it needs some standard for filtering out partisanship. What is yours? Why do you continue to equivocate? YOUR OWN EXAMPLE compared climbing Mount Everest with a bus trip to the foot of Mount Everest. You need to show how THAT example can be evaluated objectively.