Unless you know everything there is to know about everything that's always going to be the case.

Which is why I posted that I continuously keep educating myself. You cant know everything, but not knowing anything and pretending beautiful results will "come to you" by "natural talent" is just silly.

Hopefully for anyone other than a pixel peeper/lens lover/camera coveter, it's the content.

This is right after saying:

I like the E-P1 because it feels un-technical, like it disappears in my hands.  I didn't feel that at all with the GF1 or the GH1 when I had them, they felt like soul-less electronics.

You see the contradiction? You just basically said that you're a "camera coveter" right after criticizing it.
And if I am a gear coveter Im not gonna be ashamed of it. If I find gear that overcomes the limits of mine, Ill get it. M5-user has been limited by his G1s ability in low light for quite some time now. It has nothing to do with his talent, in fact he has to limit his talent to stuff under ISO 800.
I also dont mind being called a pixel peeper. Maybe in facebook and Flickr it doesn't matter but I sell prints and give out albums; two things that are unforgiving at a pixel level.

they felt like soul-less electronics.

Now you really lost me, the gear has the soul? Your images look different depending on gear? aren't you repeatedly saying that gear is unimportant?

Consider all the technically poor yet iconic photos from the past as examples.

Consider the fact that none of these have been done by amateurs without instruction, but rather by pros who fully know whats going on.

Your happy place image is a great example of this - you love it because it's your happy place, some other people love it for other reasons, but to me it's a photo on the web with no relate-able content, beauty or interest.

I love it because it came out exactly like I planned and wanted it to look like, I like it because the clouds show the exact amount of movement I wanted, the photo shows the mix of serenity and passage of time I wanted and the the photo has the exact depth of field I wanted. Nothing on the photo was by chance. I consider it an achievement because many people have been amazed by it and ive sold quite the many copies of it. The photo itself is maybe a fraction of the place I call my happy place, still, I have an emotional attachment to everything I do.

But the specific criteria for "good" are naturally going to vary from person to person based on their lives.

nope. If this were true the work from the masters wouldn't appeal to 97% of the people. If this were true museums would go out of business because only some people with specific experiences would like the art and the rest of the people would hate it. Art might not be for everyone, but artists have an ability to appeal to a broad populations emotions with just one painting, regardless what their experience has been. Thats not "by chance" either. What they did and their techniques are studied because they worked and continue to work today.

I disagree that somebody with no rhythm will ever be able to match the competence of a great musician. That, to me, seems a silly and argumentative thing to say.

you have to be kidding, there are people on this very forum who have gone from not knowing what aperture means to producing (with instruction from other members no less...) masterfully beautiful things. Based on what you're saying, you're either born with the talent for photography or you should drop the camera right now. And that, is silly and argumentative.

But maybe it's not too hard to make a guideline/rule fit after the event to find reasons for a picture being technically pleasing.

It might be the case for some people and even me in some instances, but mostly I am fully aware of what Im doing and why.

I've seen rules/guidelines/whatever make a relatively creative person produce clinical, rule-following work which, to me, isn't interesting at all. Perhaps that's one of the reasons I abhor studio portraits, they mostly just look technical and cold - akin to live corpse capturing, for want of a better expression - and that's about as far away from emotion as you can get.

all of this happens to appeal and emote the majority of people, and they happen to pay good money for it too.

The photo

Details

its ominous , and the clouds do suggest time passing,
i thisnk v-ger is on to something