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thomblake comments on Normal Cryonics - Less Wrong
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A truly Godwinesque objection. "You aren't x and I'm x so you can't judge me" seems a little bit too all-purpose.
That said, I generally agree with the sentiment. As Postrel might say, in general an individual making a decision has access to local, distributed information that is not accessible to anyone else, and so (all else being equal) is more likely to be a better judge than anyone else.
That's far too grand a generalization for me to agree with. Big pieces of the justice system (and more) in most places are built on the basis that it's not true, by the way.
That said, Lucas' comment—despite being opinionated—started with a couple of questions, not judgments. (Not explicit ones, at least.)
And here I thought I had put in enough qualifiers to make it nearly a tautology.
I'd need to know what you're thinking of to dispute this, but I can think of one thing that might qualify: In justice, we don't want people to judge their own cases, since they'll act in their own interest. This doesn't apply to the general case, however, since acting in one's own interest is usually acceptable.
It seems a quite specific statement to me. Reading liberally some qualifiers (“all else being equal” in particular can mean lots of things) this might become tautological, but I reflexively interpreted them as what I think you meant (since I didn't think you just made a useless statement).
About the justice system, you got it right. Justice systems try to correct lots of bias sources. Not only the one you mentioned, but the “own interest” problem is especially pertinent to the origin of this thread (the example of “men deciding abortion issues”).