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drethelin comments on More "Stupid" Questions - Less Wrong
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OK, but then what is it about music that makes it difficult for people to say why they like it?
What things do you find pleasant? Could you tell me why food tastes good or paintings look pretty?
You can talk about certain repeated and near completed patterns but I think it's largely subconcious
I can explain why I like some things but not others. Why is music in the not others category for most people?
I don't believe you can. All you can do is point to surface features like 'I like how red the explosions in Star Wars are and the feeling you get when they win at the last moment', all of which is merely description of the parts you like and not what actually you like, and which do not serve to convey the qualia. If someone who just saw flickering lights on the screen asked you why you liked movies and that's what you said, they would not be satisfied any more than you would be satisfied by a music fan going 'the 4/8th time and the timpanni descending into a glissando in the third measure thrill my heart, and that is why I like music'.
If you really want to know what red looks like, you could try getting your hands on a psychedelic; they seems to be heavily linked to musical enjoyment.
Psychedelics are not interchangeable for this purpose, and if it weren't for the war on drugs they could probably be used for some interesting science on auditory processing. Information from TIHKAL on two otherwise not unusual psychedelics with specific auditory effects:
N,N-diisopropyltryptamine specifically messes with pitch perception in such a way as to destroy the perception of harmony. From one of the experience reports: "No effects were noted with respect to clarity of speech, and both comprehension and interpretation were normal. Music was rendered completely disharmonious although single tones sounded normal."
Meanwhile, 5-methoxy N,N-diisopropyltryptamine distorts "musical character and interpretation." From one of the experience reports: "The program was a program of Irish music... What I heard were three distant, fraudulent selections with generically meaningless words, mumbled so as to sound authentic. Everything was faked."
Maybe if I could get my hands on one of these I could understand what it's like to be James Miller (in the musical respect only). Perhaps he's totally lacking the hard-to-explain satisfying feeling that comes when you hear notes played together whose frequencies are at a small-integer ratio.
Sure. If I had to be more specific than just 'psychedelics', I'd probably say either LSD (due to Deadheads) or mescaline (due to Huxley).
And those two excerpts are fascinating. What does it mean for something to sound 'distant, fraudulent'? I can't even imagine. Maybe it's like a musical version of Capgras delusion.
Marijuana also has a reputation for making music more enjoyable.
Generally, sentences that start out "I (don't) like X because" and don't finish with a description of neuronal states are, with highish probability, confabulation. :)
What makes you think it isn't in that category for you?
For someone with my "brain type" music is obvious bad. It drains attention while giving nothing back.
OK, sure.
IMO, this is confabulation. Maybe it's your true rejection, but I think it's much more probable (80%ish?) that your brain randomly came up with this story while trying to figure out why you dislike music. The part of your brain that generates reasons doesn't necessarily have access to the part of your brain that generates likes/dislikes.
The story my brain came up with along time ago when I was a teenager was that I was too intelligent to enjoy music or other people were just pretending to enjoy it. (I could have used LW back then.)
I think your new story is less harmful but probably equally true. :)
So, uh, how about when you are just listening to music?
('I hate novels, they totally drain my attention and all I get back is the experience of reading novels.')
I've tried just listening and I don't enjoy it.
Then 'drains attention' was not a relevant fact.
It was relevant but not necessary as to why I don't like music.
Are you sure you're not really "Marvin" the depressed Robot?
I'm not depressed. Some things in life give me tremendous pleasure. I enjoy TV, movies, book, and video games.
I was wondering whether you have hearing issues* but that doesn't sound like it. Do you enjoy visual art?
*I like music, but not nearly as much as most people. A recent online test suggests that I don't hear low pitches as well as most people. Of course, the problem there might be with my computer speakers rather than my ears, but it might be a clue.
My hearing has always tested as fine. I like some visual art, although I'm well below average in this. I do get pleasure in seeing beautiful things. I've never experienced music as beautiful and to my mind music being beautiful seems like a category error.
Do you enjoy movies? Does the background score seem distracting?
Yes and I do dislike background scores.
My guess is that you just don't make an emotional connection to music. It's possible that moving to music would eventually make a connection, but this is a very tentative guess.
Can you tell people's emotional state from their voices?
I dislike the music as it comes out from my father's car stereo because he sets the equalizer to amplify the high pitches too much for my tastes. I used to wonder why he would do that, then I remembered that the ability to hear high pitches declines with age.
What is it that you expect to get back that you do not? Whatever it is probably reduces down to the relative positions of certain neurotransmitters, the isovariable interpersonal variance of which few others are likely to be able to explain.