Adele_L comments on More "Stupid" Questions - Less Wrong

14 Post author: NancyLebovitz 31 July 2013 09:18AM

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Comment author: Adele_L 31 July 2013 10:17:37PM *  5 points [-]

For me, it's not something I have to look for at all. It just, happens...

Being introspective (which is notoriously unreliable), it feels like my enjoyment of it is basically a combination of enjoying repetition/structure plus valuing novelty (so the repetitions change enough to avoid being boring), in the auditory modality. I enjoy the same sort of thing in other modalities as well:

  • Sight: looking at highly patterned art, for example, this visualization of the Mandelbrot set.

  • Kinesthetic: things like dancing, tapping patterns on my leg, sex.

  • Taste: I like alternating bites of my food to make the flavors form a pattern. For example, when I eat rice, I will often split it into two portions, and put soy sauce on one, and lemon juice on the other, and alternate the bites so I get a pattern of flavors. And sometimes I switch it up to a few bites of each alternating, etc...

  • Abstract thought: enjoyment from thinking about math seems to be a similar thing as well. In particular, abstract algebra. Going through the proof of the Sylow theorems, for example, gives me enjoyment analogous to listening to a grand symphony.

I can't think of anything like this for smell, but I have a very weak sense of it.

Anyway, I hope this at least helps you understand what most people get out of music, even if you don't enjoy it yourself.