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Meanwhile I am thinking 'Wow! My brain can automatically reconstruct a 3D image from limited 2D input and even compensate for shadows and lighting. That is orders of magnitude more complex than the reverse, generating such images from a model such as those we add 3D cards to computers for'.
I don't particularly consider this an 'illusion', especially when it is not simultaneously acknowledged that it is an 'illusion' that A and B are squares on a 3D 'square X a bit' thing that also has a cylinder on top of it.
Wow, good point! I never thought about it like that. It raises the question: Why are people amazed when you say, "Tiles A and B are actually the same color -- check for yourself!" but they roll their eyes when you say, "There are no squares in this image -- check for yourself!"? In both cases, you can respond with, "Well, yeah -- if you don't interpret it like the scene it's trying to represent!"
I'm not a very good artist, so learning about how to create these illusions sounds like a good reason to take an art class, and help me appreciate what artists are doing. (Why didn't the first major breakthrough in cognitive science come from painters and sketchers?)
Of course, it probably wouldn't do much to help me understand why they can count random smears on a canvas as "art"...
That last line is coming from a decidedly unrational state of mind!
How so? I wasn't spouting the usual greedy/fake reductionist cliches; I was talking about the paintings that look like a 3-year-old made a mess, yet get classified as art, and noting that an art class probably wouldn't convince me this is appropriate.
What specific criticism of that claim do you have?
Short version:
High art is about a lot of things, not least of which is impact on the viewer.
In the case of Pollock, for instance, a lot of the interesting thing that was going on there, was that he depicted a process - not by painting a representation of himself doing it, but by actually doing it. You can look at a Pollock and see how he constructed it without being distracted by exactly what he was trying to construct. And being able to see that aspect of art and be aware of it, will in turn give you a greater appreciation of medieval cathedrals and Greek sculpture.
Possibly related: no one knows what science doesn't know
To add to this with a similar example, consider that some people prefer listening to foreign language vocalists because it allows one to appreciate the sound of the vocal instrument without focusing on the words.
To me, most music sounds like a foreign language (though one that sounds exactly like English), unless I'm familiar with the lyrics beforehand, in which case I can "hear" them just fine.
Like this?
Probably.
Yes, most people don't care much about the actual lyrics. Which explains the phenomenon thomblake was trying to use for tenuous support of another hypothesis, yet remains modded to 3 for some reason (7 if you include his parent comment).
Right, because the words (i.e. the lyrical semantics, as differentiated from the qualities of the sounds the words make) are a small, perhaps negligible component of what people like about many of these songs.
If you were trying to draw some other inference from this fact, you're going to have to be more specific about why that inference follows.
Definitely related: Truly Part of You
If I erased your knowledge (and everyone else's) of what the kewl kids had classified as "good art", would it grow back? Would you eventually re-recognize the same works as being good, with the same relative merit, for the same reasons?
If your answer is no, that's a big red flag that you're dealing in bullshit.
(The correct reaction to the parable of The Emporer's New Clothes is not, "Well of course a kid isn't going to see the clothes! What's your point?")
I imagine that the answer to this is yes for a great deal of art. I don't know much about it myself, but when I think about art that I like I can find reasons aside from cultural significance or peer pressure.
This assumes the question is ignoring the lens created by my limited expose to art. I highly doubt that any of the artists I like would have been experienced by me if others hadn't considered them worthwhile.
Music is an easier analogy for me to make. I can more accurately describe what I like in music because I know a few more terms. But also, when I listen to a song, I find that my opinions are more distinct. I assume this is because my tastes are becoming refined; I am open to other interpretations.
That's not related.
If you took away everyone's knowledge of English, and someone laid King Lear at your feet, what would you do with that? The fact that art is rooted in culture and context, some of which is the result of stochastic processes, does not mean you're dealing in bullshit.
I would be very surprised to discover that a King Lear in an unfamiliar language had been produced by an ape. I am not surprised by hoaxes like this. I think that is indicative of a meaningful difference.
From the link:
Emphasis added to indicate flaw in experimental protocol.
Edit: This point is much weaker than it appears at first glance. See responses.
I would still be surprised if the monkey King Lear was chosen as the very best of the monkey's literary oeuvre.
Yeah, I noticed that too. I felt that it was still a valid test of critics' ability to interpret art considering that most artists will do the same thing with their collection before entering an exhibition.
That's a far cry away from "eventually re-recogniz[ing] the same works as being good, with the same relative merit, for the same reasons."
Erasing everyone's knowledge of English is a far cry from erasing their knowledge of "what the kewl kids had classified as 'good art'".
But it does mean that the writing of King Lear is less of an epistemic achievement than, say, the laws of physics, which are not dependent on a particular species' form of communication.
If King Lear is (claimed to be) a good work, given a certain language (humanity? evolutionary history? political history?), does the recognition of its supposed greatness survive deletion of the knowledge about what the kewl kids think is great?
If people continued to speak English, but King Lear fell out of fashion and later was found, but disconnected from anyone's recommendation, would people still decide it was better than most other works? Would they decide it for the same reason?
Do children spontaneously flock to King Lear at a certain age, even when it's not recommended to them by a True Literary Authority?
Of course not. It doesn't even come with 3D special effects!
I seriously doubt that the correct answer is "no".
Obviously, there would be a little bit of wobble - I might not care who Pollock is, but I expect there would be something else I'd find that would illuminate the same aspects of the aesthetic experience. But I think being the first to do it that way counts for something.
Thanks for the link - I read that article a while ago, but I hadn't realized Drew had been referenced here.
Sorry, all I got out of that was a name-drop and (what seemed like) a dodge.
Could you answer again, and this time maybe explain it a little differently? Specifically:
-Are you claiming that Pollock discovered a way of satisfying the aesthetic senses that allowed generalization of the method in other forms?
-Let's say I knew a wacko who believed that "By historical accident, Pollock became a focal point for people of high-status to identify each other, despite there being nothing special about his work." What evidence would you point me to that has a low Bayes factor against that hypothesis?
I'm claiming that Pollock's work demonstrated easily-neglected and valuable parts of the aesthetic experience.
As for evidence against that hypothesis, I think that depends largely upon how seriously you take some of the relevant premises in your wacko's model. According to some, there is virtually nothing to all of culture other than status games (though in this case the clause "despite there being nothing special about his work" would make little sense). According to others, there really is quite a bit to aesthetics, and perhaps it's worth listening to the folks who've spent their lives studying it.
There are a lot of different kinds of things in the world, and many of them are valuable in unexpected ways.
So you really can't think of anything that is less likely to be observed if "it's all bullshit" than if it's not? There isn't any kind of aesthetic feeling you could feed to the wacko that he couldn't help but burst out in appreciation for?
Not when I'm asking for evidence with a low Bayes factor, rather than a guaranteed low posterior.
Maybe an example would be in order. Let's say Bob is the wacko, but about quantum physics. Bob believe that the claims of quantum physics are just a big status game, and so are the results of the particle accelerators and everything. I could point to evidence like the atom bomb. If they were just arguing over meaningless crap the whole time, and assigning truth purely based on who has the most status, how did they ever get the understanding necessary to build an atom bomb, Bob?
Right, like Halo. Except that millions of people like Halo even in the absence of a well-funded indoctrination campaign, and the fact that expressing appreciation for Halo won't endear them to the kewl kids of art.
It's not very impressive if people start to enjoy something after they've
You have to adjust for stuff like that.
Well said!
I just realized we seem to be arguing over wine again. I fold.
Yes, we are.
If you spend ten years associating wine with a good time, and are expected to have a refined palette for wine to be part of the kewl kids club, then guess what -- you can make yourself like wine! The fact that you like wine in such a scenario does not, to me, count as a genuine liking, in the sense in which I judge beverages. Any substance, even bat urine, will find connosieurs under those conditions!
What I want to do is, find out what's good about something, that isn't simply an artifact of practices that can make anything look good.
That's why I'm not impressed by "enjoy this because people are telling you to enjoy it", which the support for much high art and alcohol amounts to.
Instead of refusing to engage the issue, maybe you should start to think about the recursivity of your criteria for quality?
On the other hand...
Meh.
Never trust a site with that many banners.
I, for one, have never heard seriously disparaging things about 19th-century or Academic art in general, and the essay sounds a bit... rabid. It seems like the writer was operating under the common heuristic "I don't understand it, so it must be stupid."
And I never trust anyone that says, "No, no, this stuff is good, it really is! Just pay for 10 years worth of education in this specific area, and then you'll see the light!"
(Note the similarity to Scientology practices...)
But then what do you do when something really does take that long to explain? People say category theory is beautiful; is the nonmathematician supposed to call them liars?
Category theory doesn't take 10 years to explain. You should be able to explain to a willing, intelligent friend in two full days, and get them to a point where they see the beauty.
I've done similar things, like explaining the elegant beauty of aircraft component structural analysis -- got a decent appreciation across in 10 minutes. ("You know how a chain is as strong as its weakest link? A component is as strong as its weakest failure mode...")
The point is, you can explain it. That's a lot more than you can do for (much of) art, it seems.
At least where category theory is concerned, you don't have to pay.
Disliking Pollock is irrational. As is disliking Cage. Or Joyce. Or PEZ.
I love 4'33". It helps me get to sleep.
It was, yes - maybe we need to make emoticons more normal here, since this is a recurring problem. :P
(Downvote removed)
But then how will we signal our sophistication and mutually affirm our status as an intellectual subculture? ;)
Anime references. Duh.
:P~~~~~
;D
Neutral vote. I like the PEZ juxtaposition but 'arational' would fit better. A simply false assertion doesn't fit well with the irony.
As it was mocking bgrah's assertion, and bgrah used "unrational", and in my estimation his meaning was closer to "irrational" than "arational", I used the former. Perhaps using "unrational" would have been better, though.
Just consider it evidence of the level of culture you'll find hereabouts. Savages.
It's about expectations. People expect to be able to take (physical) objects that appear to be different colors, examine them under a variety of contexts, and always perceive them as different. People incorrectly extrapolate that expectation to images, and thus find the fact that removing the context reveals these images to be the same colorRGB surprising. They also expect to be presented with representations, so pointing out the fact that they're looking at a representation seems silly to them.
By way of reversing the ADBOC concept, I disagree denotationally but confirm your connotation. As you explain in the cousin several times removed post, many kinds of art are bullshit. Cultural preferences that would not be particularly likely to be rediscovered if all trace was removed. This differs from other forms of art which are more specifically directed at aesthetic preferences intrinsic to humans.
Of course, immersing yourself in a culture and experiencing the flow of status first hand is the perhaps the best way to get an intuitive anthropological understanding. I found, for example, that having done a research degree in a subfield of AI helps me understand how peer affiliation by persisting with researching silly ideas can be counted as 'science'.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/1om/bizarre_illusions/1iub