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CronoDAS comments on Open Thread: February 2010, part 2 - Less Wrong
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I think I'm entangling my beliefs with reality very well, by virtue of extracting all available information from phenomena rather than retreat to evidence that agrees with me. (Let's not forget, I didn't start out thinking that it was all BS.)
For example, did you stop to notice the implications of this:
How does that compare to the priming effects for other drinks? Does it matter?
But what would be the appropriate comparison? They were passing of as expensive, something that's actually cheap. Where else would that work so easily, for so long? Normally, if you tried that, it would be noticed quickly, if not immediately, by virtually everyone.
What if you tried to pass off 16 oz of milk as 128? Or spoiled milk as milk expiring in a week?
Then, factor in how much difference is claimed to exist in wine vs. milks.
Who's optimally using evidence here?
Art forgeries. (Which shows that the value of the painting is determined by the status of the artist and not the quality of the art.)
If I can paint a painting that convinces experts that it was painted by [insert expert painter here], does that mean I'm as good an artist as said painter? (Assuming that my painting isn't a literal copy of someone else's.)
Which, like wine, is another example of a path-dependent collective delusion that's not Truly Part of our values. (That is, our valuation of the work wouldn't survive deletion of the history that led to such a valuation.)
Very nearly yes, it does, modulo a few factors. If you produced it after the artist, then you are benefiting from the artist's already having identified a region of conceptspace that you did not find yourself. (If the art is revered because of the artist's social status, that it wasn't even much of an accomplishment to begin with.) To put it another way, you produced the work after "supervised learning", while the artist didn't need that particular training.
If you can pass off a previous work of yours as being one of the artist's, that definitely makes you better.
Who is "we", here?
The problem I have is not that you're wrong, for the people you're talking about; it's that you (probably) overestimate the size and/or importance of that population. You're not telling the whole truth, in effect. There are plenty of people who like paintings for the way they look, and would happily buy the work of a lesser-known artist at a cheap price if they liked it. Yes, some people use art to status-signal, but some people also actually like art. (There may even be a nonempty intersection!)
Sorry if I sound dodgy here, but I don't think I've said anything that contradicts this. My criticism is of these two things:
1) the idea that the elite-designated "high art" is non-arbitrary. (I claim it's a status-reinforced information cascade that wouldn't regain the designation of high-art if you deleted knowledge of which ones had been so classified.)
2) the excessive premiums paid for artworks based on both 1) and the fact that they are the originals (a "piece of history").
Never have I criticized or denied the existence of people who buy artworks because they simply like it and it appeals to them. I just criticize the way that we're expected to agree with the laurels attached to elite-designated high art. As I said before, I would have no problem if art were just a matter of "hey, I like this, now get on with your lives" (as it works in e.g. video games).
Often the worth of an artist stems from inventing new possibilities. Copycats are lesser.