How come even though most people can’t act themselves, they can still so easily determine good acting from bad acting?
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We are natural programmers that can understand and subconsciously learn the natural algorithm or social expressions of other biotic & abiotic matters with repetition. And an educated guess would be that intergenerational DNA conditioning could also be the key; given how memory can be imprinted and passed through DNA. It’s also crucial for survivalism to know what’s right & wrong, or edible versus poison in another sense.
Think of art in place of acting for this question. Chances are, you can tell the difference between a skilled artist and someone who struggles with stick figures.
Doesn’t mean that you’re automatically going to be able to draw yourself, but that you’re going to recognize skill versus not.
Couple that with a strong sense of “skilled” vs “unskilled” that is taught to us by society (we celebrate everything competitively, just watch the Oscars, heh), and soon you fulfill the phrase “Everyone’s a critic”.
Humans interact with other humans on a daily basis (at least most do), and we are adapted over millions of years to be very good at understanding human features, body language, facial expressions, vocal tones, etc. We were bred for this ability and practice it every day so it is normal we are pretty good.
On the other hand being capable of recognizing problems with such things doesn’t mean we can convincingly fake it ourselves. We can look at an airplane crash and know it isn’t right without being capable of flying an aircraft. They are just different sets of skills, and knowing something is wrong is much easier than making it right.
You can enjoy and appreciate a skill without knowing how to do it yourself. Especially with entertainment. A good actor can suck you into a movie and make you forget they’re not actually the person they’re portraying. They can make you feel strong emotions. A bad actor may as well have a sign on their forehead that says “actor”.
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