komponisto comments on Pro-nice and anti-nice - Less Wrong

0 [deleted] 08 October 2010 03:29PM

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Comment author: komponisto 09 October 2010 06:04:55AM *  3 points [-]

[Pro-nice people] like transparently "happy" music and transparently "beautiful" works of art and literature

Apologies if this seems like a nitpick in context, but I am in general very suspicious of theories that don't seem to acknowledge the complexity of aesthetic value/experience. I have cringed since elementary school at how people classify music into "happy" and "sad", and I'm pretty sure that "beautiful" is comparable to "good" in its complexity as a concept. (It's also a loaded word, because "beautiful" is arguably synonymous with "of high aesthetic worth", in which case it doesn't make sense to "dislike beauty".)

I have a pro-nice personality, a melancholic temperament, and a taste for the entire spectrum of emotional nuances present in art.