Swimmer963 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: SilasBarta 25 April 2011 08:16:39PM *  1 point [-]

(1) It's relevant to the question of whether modern academic composers (MACs) are learning skills that are entangled with ivory-tower-independent reality, that make distinctions carving reality at its joints, and that simply aren't about impressing an insular clique.

(2) Those examples certainly did not imply (nor were intended to imply) that all of e.g. Mozart's value comes from e.g. EKM. The point is just that someone today can appreciate something like EKM enough to voluntarily listen to it on their own time (when doing so wouldn't enhance their status) or to put it on ringtones, etc.; and that -- this is important -- they do all these things without first having to be indoctrinated by a special priestly order (as someone can appreciate commercial air travel without having to be indoctrinated into aerospace engineering).

(3) I think you're sticking with a misrepresentation of my position that I corrected last time. I don't dispute that Bell is (by the appropriate, unfakeable, non-parochial) metrics better than most other violinists. What I claim is that achieving the skill difference between him and the bottom of the e.g. 95th percentile is way past the point of diminishing returns -- that, while better, it is not so many times better to justify anything close to his proportionally higher income (on musical talent alone).

Therefore, this additional earning power is due to hype: and it is proven, by Bell's very own admission in how no one cares about him when they have something even slightly important to do, or when the Queen hasn't already ponied up $1,000/minute.

What it looks like when someone is hit with the harsh reality of life without your, um, "musical skill" having been "social proof"'ed:

"It was a strange feeling, that people were actually, ah . . ."

The word doesn't come easily.

"... ignoring me." [...]

"At a music hall, I'll get upset if someone coughs or if someone's cellphone goes off. But here, my expectations quickly diminished. I started to appreciate any acknowledgment, even a slight glance up. I was oddly grateful when someone threw in a dollar instead of change." This is from a man whose talents can command $1,000 a minute. [...]

Before he began, Bell hadn't known what to expect. What he does know is that, for some reason, he was nervous.

"It wasn't exactly stage fright, but there were butterflies," he says. "I was stressing a little."

Bell has played, literally, before crowned heads of Europe. Why the anxiety at the Washington Metro?

"When you play for ticket-holders," Bell explains, "you are already validated. I have no sense that I need to be accepted. I'm already accepted. Here, there was this thought: What if they don't like me? What if they resent my presence ..."

There are six moments in the video that Bell finds particularly painful to relive: "The awkward times," he calls them. It's what happens right after each piece ends: nothing. The music stops. The same people who hadn't noticed him playing don't notice that he has finished. No applause, no acknowledgment. So Bell just saws out a small, nervous chord -- the embarrassed musician's equivalent of, "Er, okay, moving right along . . ." -- and begins the next piece.

He lived, in other words, how I live every day -- without people being magnetically attracted to me because of hype. He learned what it's like to be without all that pre-validation.

Comment author: komponisto 25 April 2011 09:36:04PM 0 points [-]

First, a remark addressed to the two people who downvoted the grandparent: your behavior makes no sense at all. My best guess is that you disapprove of discussion of music on LW. But not only is that an unreasonable position to take, it wouldn't explain why you didn't downvote neighboring comments.

(I have in fact noticed that comments of mine that discuss music score consistently lower than my other comments. I can understand if some of the "mathy" types of people that populate this site have a perception that topics relating to art and music are "fluffy" and unprestigious, but what I've never been able to understand is why this perception doesn't seem to get updated once they run into people who are similarly "mathy" but also interested in art and music.)

Now to Silas's comment:

(1) On "insular cliques": not all cliques are equal. There exist "insular" (which I suppose means low-population) cliques such that impressing them has value.

(2) Those examples certainly did not imply (nor were intended to imply) that all of e.g. Mozart's value comes from e.g. EKM. The point is just that someone today can appreciate something like EKM enough to voluntarily listen to it on their own time .... or to put it on ringtones, etc.

Well, then where does the rest of Mozart's value come from?

You're hiding the work of your argument behind the phrases "someone today" and (especially) "something like". Who counts as an eligible appreciator? What music counts as "something like EKM"? After all, on my view, the work of MACs is like EKM (and inherits prestige thence). A distinction that places Mozart and Lady Gaga on one side and Schoenberg and Salieri on the other doesn't carve musical reality at its joints. (To do that, you'd have to put Mozart and Schoenberg and Salieri on one side, and Gaga on the other.)

(3) I don't dispute that Bell is (by the appropriate, unfakeable, non-parochial) metrics better than most other violinists. What I claim is that achieving the skill difference between him and the bottom of the e.g. 95th percentile is way past the point of diminishing returns -- that, while better, it is not so many times better to justify anything close to his proportionally higher income (on musical talent alone).

In the present context, this is a distinction without a difference. The point is that I could simply say to you "the market has spoken" with regard to Bell, just as you are wont to do with EKM. What criterion of "justification" are you appealing to here?

Comment author: Swimmer963 25 April 2011 09:45:18PM 1 point [-]

I can understand if some of the "mathy" types of people that populate this site have a perception that topics relating to art and music are "fluffy" and unprestigious, but what I've never been able to understand is why this perception doesn't seem to get updated once they run into people who are similarly "mathy" but also interested in art and music.

This may be a perception that some people have, but I've always perceived music as a) very mathematical, and b) not at all unprestigious. In the high school I went to, people who were smart academically and also talented in music were much higher-status than people who were only involved in academic subjects. (I'm not saying this is a universal perception, or even a good perception to have, but it's what I've observed.)

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