I think that “some guy” gets to speak for himself rather than having someone else do it for him or have presumed by others that someone else can speak for him.
Then we agree that there are reasonable criticisms to be made of what Dinklage said and the effect that it would have?
He may not have any special insight speaking to all dwarfs, but i think he really does have special insight speaking to dwarf actors.
He did - and he sounded like an uninformed idiot.
Of course, at no point did Dinklage say “My name is the Dinklage, I speak for the dwarfs”, so that whole argument is a strawman, anyway.
I said I’m aware of them, I didn’t say I agree with them. None of the criticisms of Dinklage’s statements I’ve seen have been reasonable.
I’ve never said or implied that Dinklage said that. I am saying that there is an issue with others presuming that he does and so making decisions based on that that negatively impact other dwarf actors.
I don’t. I think the other dwarf actors know their own mind and their own wants and needs better than Dinklage does.
You don’t think the most successful dwarf actor working today has any useful insights into being a dwarf actor?
What I said was…
I assume you agree with that.
I agree with this:
Which you said you don’t agree with. So, I’ll ask again: do you really think the most successful dwarf actor working today doesn’t have any special insight into being a dwarf actor?
[emphasis added in both]
The preposition is critical.
Someone who’s broken ground in a field and who has worked in the field for decades and who’s the single best-known worker in their field has special insight, and if I’m in that field, I’m going to pay attention to them when they speak to me. But that doesn’t mean they speak for me.
That specific question has no interest for me. What he knows personally about his experience as a dwarf actor was not the point I was making when puzzlegal responded to me.
I repeat.
and
He doesn’t know the minds of other dwarf actors and being the most successful dwarf actor doesn’t give him the ability to do so. In fact being such an outlier may well make his points less relevant when talking about the general population of dwarf actors.
If you want to challenge me on those specific points then do so.
Then clearly puzzlegal has missed the relevance of the preposition that I used.
And I missed the fact that the “for” in my post became a “to” in puzzlegal’s
Had I noticed it I would have said that I wasn’t interested in that question, it wasn’t relevant to the point I was making.
Does this hold true for other professions? Should Jane Goodall’s opinion on primate behavior be given the same weight as a primatologist’s who’s just entering the field? Should Sam Altman’s opinion on the promises of AI be given the same weight as any employee’s involved in the creation of LLMs? I have a buddy who works in local theater and has occasionally gotten small speaking parts on historical dramas; if he disagrees on the the state of the television industry with Timothy Olyphant, would you give their opinions the same weight?
I mean, maybe you do; but that’d be such an unusual way to treat opinions that it’s far outside the scope of this thread.
When talking about what Dinklage said we aren’t talking about a body of empirical facts wholly divorced from personal preference, needs and wants.
He doesn’t hold any equivalent expert knowledge regarding what others in that profession, junior or not, should want to do or choose to do.
…right. We’re talking about opinions.
and opinions on personal preferences, wants and needs are necessarily personal are they not?
Good gravy. We’re talking about opinions about the film industry and its relationship with dwarfs as actors and as characters.
On which individual personal opinion will vary, yes? Dinklage’s own take is his and his alone. Others may take a very different and equally valid view.
…and we’re done.
I don’t think Little people like being called dwarfs.
The language to use here is kind of tricky. Certainly some folks with skin in the game call themselves “dwarfs.” Others call themselves “little people.”
From the Little People of America site: