paper-machine comments on Being Wrong about Your Own Subjective Experience - Less Wrong

37 Post author: lukeprog 24 April 2011 08:24PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 25 April 2011 09:01:20PM 0 points [-]

(Maybe Bell could play a much harder piece, while the mediocre player would flounder utterly, and maybe to someone with violin training his tone and expression would be noticeably better, but not to the average Joe hurrying through the Washington Metro.)

If I remember correctly, Bell did play some truly challenging pieces. No one noticed, except that one guy.

Comment author: Swimmer963 25 April 2011 09:08:02PM 2 points [-]

Again, to someone with no training, what is the difference between a moderately and an extremely challenging piece? I'm not sure if I can tell, beyond a certain level; all I can say about pieces is "I could sight-read that", "I could sing that with a lot of work and practice", or "there's no way I can sing that at this level of training". I'm sure that the repertoire of pieces in the third category is huge, and they're not all the same difficulty level, but I'm not sure I could tell the difference if I heard them sung.

Also, a piece that's extremely challenging isn't necessarily catchy. People tend to react emotionally to songs they know, not obscure-but-difficult violin solo pieces.

Comment author: SilasBarta 25 April 2011 09:31:02PM 0 points [-]

Again, to someone with no training, what is the difference between a moderately and an extremely challenging piece? I'm not sure if I can tell,

Sure you can: Did a rich person pay $1,000/minute for a famous violinist to perform it for them? Then it's hard.

The problem is that this classifier didn't come from nature, but is just a local cultural construction.

Comment author: Vaniver 26 April 2011 03:51:22AM 4 points [-]

If I remember correctly, Bell did play some truly challenging pieces. No one noticed, except that one guy.

A few of the people who worked there noticed; of particular interest is the shoe-shine lady, who has the police on speed dial to remove street musicians, but decided to let Bell play because he was pretty good.

Comment author: SilasBarta 26 April 2011 06:49:15PM 0 points [-]

I thought he was allowed to stay there because the experimenters made an arrangment with the operators of that area beforehand? (Not sure if people were updating on the fact that a musician was strangely not being removed.)

Comment author: Vaniver 26 April 2011 07:27:00PM 3 points [-]

If that is true, it was not mentioned in the article. The relevant section:

On her speed dial, she has phone numbers for both the mall cops and the Metro cops. The musicians seldom last long.

What about Joshua Bell?

He was too loud, too, Souza says. Then she looks down at her rag, sniffs. She hates to say anything positive about these damned musicians, but: "He was pretty good, that guy. It was the first time I didn't call the police."

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