skeptical_lurker comments on Open thread, Mar. 23 - Mar. 31, 2015 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: MrMind 23 March 2015 08:38AM

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Comment author: adamzerner 24 March 2015 03:12:34PM 0 points [-]

But as far as art goes... you could take a democratic vote over which artist is better.

I think the most direct way to do it would be to measure people's brain activity. I'd be skeptical of self reporting. I think people would be swayed a lot by what they think they should like. I'm pretty sure I've read some research on this but can't recall what it was :/

But I don't want my tastes in art to be determined by a democratic vote of what everyone else thinks.

It wouldn't be. In this case "best way" would be defined as something along the lines of maximizing total happiness.

Comment author: skeptical_lurker 24 March 2015 04:53:35PM 1 point [-]

It wouldn't be. In this case "best way" would be defined as something along the lines of maximizing total happiness.

Still, rather than having one universal best art, the best approach is to have different peices of art to apply to different people. There may be a universal best piece of art for one person, but I imagine they would still want variety.

I suppose you could try to define away all subjectivity by appealing to utilitarianism, and maybe a post-singularity optimiser that can simulate all brains to gauge their reactions could create a perfect peice of art by those standards. Its still useless for discussing matters in the present.