Sarokrae comments on Things you are supposed to like - Less Wrong

68 Post author: PhilGoetz 22 October 2011 02:04AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (367)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Jack 21 October 2011 03:04:33AM 6 points [-]

I've found that a lot of music takes 5+ listens before I really start to enjoy it. This is particularly the case of complex, subtle music. This could be just me adjusting to social demands but I find it can happen even with music I want to dislike. Katie Perry grows on you.

As people learn more about an art form, they can more-easily predict it, and need more and more novelty to keep them interested; like porn viewers who seek out movies with continually-stranger sex acts. (This is a cognitively-plausible variant of "there is no such thing as objective beauty".) If there were departments of pornography at ivy-league universities, they would scoff at the simplicity of films lacking bondage, machines, or animals.

Most of what I listen to is popular music and I find that a lot of the music I used to love just goes down too easily now. It's a very similar experience to eating sugary candy you loved as a child but is too saccharine now. When I listen to new music that is at similar levels of accessibility and ease of listening this manifests itself in a lower limit to the number of times I can hear the song without getting sick of it.

Comment author: Sarokrae 24 October 2011 07:07:09AM 3 points [-]

Rebecca Black's "Friday" became reasonably tuneful after 5 listens. (Perhaps that suggests I shouldn't have listened to it 5 times to begin with?)