>I never demanded "copius evidence" I asked a clarifying question. If you are going to make specific claims, people might ask for evidence of those claims. It's not confirmation bias to ask for supporting details, quite the opposite.
It is when you don't ask for the same evidence of the opposite, original assertion, and when the test you demand/clarify-the-existence-of is a strangely narrow test that no one would have reason to do in the first place because the core problem is that no one is subjecting the more modern art to that kind of rigor to begin with! (Which would obviate the whole debate.[1])
So yes, when you come in and single out my response as needing a very specific test before you'll consider it plausible, aren't being epistemically fair.
>Of course, you don't need to know Michelangelo to "enjoy" the Sistine Chapel, nobody argued otherwise.
Are we looking at the same thread? From earlier in this same thread:
>>Anything recognizable as a Michelangelo will automatically win just because he's Michelangelo.
The assertion is that the knowledge of Michelangelo and his association with that work is artificially raising the viewer's appreciation of it. My contrary claim was that it's appreciated as good work, more so than the garbage you see in modern art museums, because it's good, not because the average viewer cares about Michelangelo specifically, which dagw was saying that the later art does (apparently) require (knowledge of the artist and other "context").
>Your claim was that, "A Michelangelo work will win even if the viewer doesn't know it's Michelangelo or even who that is." This implies a measure of comparison to something or someone else, which is far different than enjoying a single piece of art.
It implies exactly what it meant in the original comment and thread:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29227817
That is, a comparison against the later super-edgey modern art.
[1] Except maybe the time that troll passed off a monkey's art as prestigious, which made the duped critics double down and say, "well ... maybe that monkey has artistic talent!"