komponisto comments on Helpless Individuals - Less Wrong

42 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 30 March 2009 11:10AM

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Comment author: David_Gerard 07 December 2010 08:57:02AM *  0 points [-]

What's annoying you, I suspect, is komponisto's apparent assertion that his chosen favourite music is not only good, but objectively the best music there is, and that the qualia one experiences from this music are the best available from music.

I'd like to know which specific statements of mine give this impression, because that isn't what I see myself asserting.

I was looking through your posts, but this one appears to say precisely that.

No, it does not make you smarter than everyone else. Some people have more capacity than others, but you haven't magically hit the sweet spot for all of human music. That is the bit I'm seeing and going "that's ridiculous".

Art works by pressing buttons in someone's head and generating a subjective experience. The artist first, then others because humans in a particular time, place and (sub)culture will have similar enough buttons to be able to talk about them. Inferential distance kicks in when you take the art out of its time, place and (sub)culture, and at that point it may in fact take a degree's worth of bridging to get there (and to a huge number of other places as well).

Art is great for effect in general, not just for your carefully defined personal category of "interestingness" (and I can't find the post right now, but I recall you saying you were using your own personal definition of "IQ" as well). That presses your personal buttons very effectively, but it's not a universal button and - and this is the key point - it's not the greatest of all buttons.

Can simple art be effective? Can there be simple art that is more effective than complicated art? Here I include "simplicity on the far side of complexity" as "simple", though arguably one may not.

But hey - tell me I'm wrong.

Comment author: komponisto 07 December 2010 04:28:31PM *  1 point [-]

I was looking through your posts, but this one appears to say precisely that.

That was written after the grandparent, first of all. Secondly, see my reply to you there: it doesn't say that at all, unless you invoke additional premises (such as "utilizing more intellectual resources" implying "objectively better") that I haven't stated.

No, it does not make you smarter than everyone else.

Do you deny that appreciation of contemporary art music (or even Schoenberg) is Bayesian evidence of high IQ?

but I recall you saying you were using your own personal definition of "IQ" as well

For purposes of this specific sub-discussion (regarding empirical predictions), you may assume that I am talking about "the thing measured by IQ tests".

That presses your personal buttons very effectively, but it's not a universal button and - and this is the key point - it's not the greatest of all buttons.

I haven't come close to claiming that my buttons are universal. As for "greatest", well, obviously I think the music I like is the greatest music. But this isn't an information-free statement: there are reasons I like the music I like, and those reasons are not unrelated to musical ability and experience. Obviously, there's a personal component, too -- I like some composers and works better than others of equal sophistication -- but that personal component plays a much smaller role in explaining my "disagreement" with nonspecialists than it does in explaining my disagreements with specialists (which will tend to be much narrower).

Can simple art be effective?

Yes, as long as interest comes from somewhere. Superficial "complication" is not the only way to create interest.