explaining enjoyment does not diminish it
If the reasons for your enjoyment are explained to you, it certainly can diminish the enjoyment. The status explanation might have different effects on different people. I've enjoyed certain forms of humor less after understanding the status explanations. You feel like you've processed that explanation, and still enjoy the music, and therefore the explanation has no effect on your enjoyment. This argument reduces to 'I enjoy it therefore I enjoy it', it has little implication on the role of explanations.
edit: Incidentally I have the album as well.. I think I was generally disappointed with it in comparison to the others, but still like it. The percussion waves in feral stick out for me. Kid A is my favorite.
it certainly can diminish the enjoyment
Right. I agree that this happens, but that's a fact about human psychology, as opposed to, say, decision theory or probability theory. There's no good reason that we should want it to happen this way.
And yeah, it wasn't a particularly deep post :)
I just downloaded the latest Radiohead album, and I love it.
Thinking back, I started listening to Radiohead years ago when I found out that some of the cool kids in school were into it. With all the hype about the new album, the status/fashion processors in my brain going to ensure that I enjoy listening to it. I would probably fail a double-blind test with a bunch of imitation bands' fake "new Radiohead albums".
But I'm really enjoying listening to the album, and that doesn't seem like a bad or contradictory thing at all, even in light of the statements above. If, hypothetically, I was enjoying it for purely non-fashion reasons, then presumably that enjoyment could also be traced back though a causal chain to facts about brain development, evolutionary psychology, or whatever. But we would have no problem accepting that enjoyment as A Good Thing since explaining enjoyment does not diminish it. And so it seems in this case.