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The mystery of Brahms
I'm interested in how people form valuations of the opinions of others. One domain to study is art. We have a long historic record of how the elite arbiters of taste have decided what artists and what artworks were great.
This is more relevant to 21st century American thought than many of you probably think. The defaults we assume, the stories that are told on television and in our movies, the things taught in our colleges, were partly determined by assertions made by continental philosophers and psychologists of the 18th through 20th centuries, most of which they just made up. [1]
The process by which philosophers eventually get their views accepted into the Western canon looks the same to me as the process by which musicians or painters are accepted into or cast out of the Western canon. Neither has much to do with the quality of the product.
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The 50 Shades of Grey Book Club
I think it would be a useful rationality exercise to take something that millions of people love, that you have contempt for, and sincerely try to appreciate it. The purpose would be to get practice imagining a different point of view, and to see whether you're able to do so.
50 Shades of Grey might not be the best choice for this exercise. I haven't read it. Maybe a better choice would be The da Vinci Code, NASCAR, or professional wrestling. But a book has a definite length that you have to get through to be allowed to say that you honestly tried.
The idea is to start a thread for people to discuss 50 Shades, or something else perceived as trashy, and try--not to find what you might like in it, but to get inside someone else's head and imagine why they might like it. (Of course it could backfire, and leave you less open-minded than before, if you always conclude that your contempt was simply right in the first place.)
I think the biggest problem is that if people succeed at finding something to appreciate in it, they would feel terribly embarrassed to say so. So this can be done with alternate accounts.
Anyone interested? What do you hold in contempt that you might be willing to take a closer look at?
Art vs. science
It struck me this morning that a key feature that distinguishes art from science is that art is studied in the context of the artist, while science is not. When you learn calculus, mechanics, or optics, you don't read Newton. Science has content that can be abstracted out of one context - including the context of its creation - and studied and used in other contexts. This is a defining characteristic. Whereas art can't be easily removed from its context - one could argue art is context. When we study art, we study the original work by a single artist, to get that artist's vision.
(This isn't a defining characteristic of art - it wasn't true until the twelfth century, when writers and artists began signing their works. In ancient Greece, through the Middle Ages in Europe, the content, subject, or purpose of art was considered primary, in the same way that the content of science is today. "Homer's" Iliad was a collaborative project, in which many authors (presumably) agreed that the story was the important thing, not one author's vision of it, and (also presumably) added to it in much the way that science is cumulative today. Medieval art generally glorified the church or the state.)
However, because this is the way western society views art today, we can use this as a test. Is it art or science? Well, is its teaching organized around the creators, or around the content?
Philosophy and linguistics are somewhere between art and science by this test. So is symbolic AI, while data mining is pure science.
Issues with the Litany of Gendlin
I think I have problems with this:
Litany of Gendlin
What is true is already so.
Owning up to it doesn't make it worse.
Not being open about it doesn't make it go away.And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with.
Anything untrue isn't there to be lived.
People can stand what is true,
for they are already enduring it.
Do you actually think that's true?
I honestly don't think I do. I think there are horrible truths that can wreck your life if you're not prepared to deal with them. I think it may *usually* be best if you self-modify to be able to handle them, so that you don't run into trouble later. But to say there's NO difference ignores the fact that your emotional reaction to things is ALSO part of reality.
I like the idea behind it but I don't think I can really endorse it. I'm struggling because I'd like to incorporate it into my project, but it feels too wrong. And while I'm okay with chopping up lengthy sequence posts to so they can be read out loud, rewriting this to match my beliefs... well, it's not exactly a crime against humanity but it's technically not the Litany of Gendlin anymore which ruins some ritual-oomph. (And the part that I'd most want to change is the last two lines, which are the most powerful part)
Ideally it would communicate: "Lying to yourself will eventually screw you up worse than getting hurt by a truth," instead of "learning new truths has no negative consequences."
This distinction is particularly important when the truth at hand is "the world is a fundamentally unfair place that will kill you without a second thought if you mess up, and possibly even if you don't."
EDIT TO CLARIFY: The person who goes about their life ignoring the universe's Absolute Neutrality is very fundamentally NOT already enduring this truth. They're enduring part of it (arguably most of it), but not all. Thinking about that truth is depressing for many people. That is not a meaningless cost. Telling people they should get over that depression and make good changes to fix the world is important. But saying that they are already enduring everything there was to endure, seems to me a patently false statement, and makes your argument weaker, not stronger.
Potential change I can think of that doesn't wreck it too much and keeps it similar enough that I don't feel too bad: "Not owning up to it will only make things worse." Artistically I think it might be better to change the wording to something like "Refusing to admit it will only make things worse," but then the change becomes big enough that I feel kinda wrong again.
Maybe refer to it as Litany of Gendlin', to distinguish it while staying classy.
SECOND EDIT: It's become pretty clear, looking a collection of comments, that Typical Mind Fallacy is at work here. Some people value truth and emotional response differently. My problem is that a) *I* value emotional response as the end, and my preference for truth, while extremely useful, is only there to facilitate emotional response in myself and others. b) I know there will be other people at the event in question who share my position.
In any case, I'd like advice from the people who believe the Litany is inaccurate (or at least are able to model people who believe that) on how to handle the situation.
The Gift We Give Tomorrow, Spoken Word [Finished?]
The following is the first draft of my efforts. It's about half as long as the original. It cuts out the section about the Shadowy Figure, which I'm slightly upset about, in particular because it would make the "beyond the reach of God" line stronger. But I felt like if I tried to include it at all, I had to include several paragraphs that took a little too long.
I attempted at first to convert to a "true" poem, (not rhyming, but going for a particular meter). I later decided that too much of it needed to have a conversational quality so it's more of a short play than a poem. Lines are broken up in a particular way to suggest timing and make it easier to read out loud.
I wanted a) to share the results with people on the chance that someone else might want to perform a little six minute dialog (my test run clocked in at 6:42), and b) get feedback on how I chose to abridge things. Do you think there were important sections that can be tied in without making it too long? Do you think some sections that I reworded could be reworded better, or that I missed some?
Edit: I've addressed most of the concerns people had. I think I'm happy with it, at least for my purposes. If people are still concerned by the ending I'll revise it, but I think I've set it up better now.
The Gift We Give Tomorrow
How, oh how could the universe,
itself unloving, and mindless,
cough up creatures capable of love?
No mystery in that.
It's just a matter
of natural selection.
But natural selection is cruel. Bloody.
And bloody stupid!
Even when organisms aren't directly tearing at each other's throats…
…there's a deeper competition, going on between the genes.
A species could evolve to extinction,
if the winning genes were playing negative sum games
How could a process,
Cruel as Azathoth,
Create minds that were capable of love?
No mystery.
Mystery is a property of questions.
Not answers.
A mother's child shares her genes,
And so a mother loves her child.
But mothers can adopt their children.
And still, come to love them.
Still no mystery.
Evolutionary psychology isn't about deliberately maximizing fitness.
Through most of human history,
we didn't know genes existed.
Even subconsciously.
Well, fine. But still:
Humans form friendships,
even with non-relatives.
How can that be?
No mystery.
Ancient hunter-gatherers would often play the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma.There could be profit in betrayal.
But the best solution:
was reciprocal altruism.
Sometimes,
the most dangerous human is not the strongest,
the prettiest,
or even the smartest:
But the one who has the most allies.
But not all friends are fair-weather friends;
there are true friends -
those who would sacrifice their lives for another.
Shouldn't that kind of devotion
remove itself from the gene pool?
You said it yourself:
We have a concept of true friendship and fair-weather friendship.
We wouldn't be true friends with someone who we didn't think was a true friend to us.
And one with many true friends?
They are far more formidable
than one with mere fair-weather allies.
And Mohandas Gandhi,
who really did turn the other cheek?
Those who try to serve all humanity,
whether or not all humanity serves them in turn?\
That’s a more complex story.
Humans aren’t just social animals. We’re political animals.
Sometimes the formidable human is not the strongest,
but the one who skillfully argues that their preferred policies
match the preferences of others.
Um... what?
How does that explain Gandhi?
The point is that we can argue about 'What should be done?'
We can make those arguments and respond to them.
Without that, politics couldn't take place.
Okay... but Gandhi?
Believed certain complicated propositions about 'What should be done?'
Then did them.
That sounds suspiciously like it could explain any possible human behavior.
If we traced back the chain of causality,
through all the arguments...
We'd find a moral architecture.
The ability to argue abstract propositions.
A preference for simple ideas.
An appeal to hardwired intuitions about fairness.
A concept of duty. Aversion to pain.
Empathy.
Filtered by memetic selection,all of this resulted in a concept:
"You should not hurt people,"
In full generality.
And that gets you Gandhi.
What else would you suggest?
Some godlike figure?
Reaching out from behind the scenes,
directing evolution?
Hell no. But -
Because then I’d would have to ask :
How did that god originally decide that love was even desirable.
How it got preferences that included things like friendship, loyalty, and fairness.
Call it 'surprising' all you like.
But through evolutionary psychology,
You can see how parental love, romance, honor,even true altruism and moral arguments,
all bear the specific design signature of natural selection.
If there were some benevolent god, reaching out to create a world of loving humans,
it too must have evolved,
defeating the point of postulating it at all.
I'm not postulating a god!
I'm just asking how human beings ended up so nice.
Nice?Have you looked at this planet lately? We bear all those other emotions that evolved as well.
Which should make it very clear that we evolved, should you begin to doubt it.
Humans aren't always nice.
But, still, come on...
doesn't it seem a little...
amazing?
That nothing but millions of years of a cosmic death tournament…
could cough up mothers and fathers,
sisters and brothers,
husbands and wives,
steadfast friends,
honorable enemies,
true altruists and guardians of causes,
police officers and loyal defenders,
even artists, sacrificing themselves for their art?
All practicing so many kinds of love?
For so many things other than genes?
Doing their part to make their world less ugly,
something besides a sea of blood and violence and mindless replication?
Are you honestly surprised by this?
If so, question your underlying model.
For it's led you to be surprised by the true state of affairs.
Since the very beginning,
not one unusual thing has ever happened.
...
But how are you NOT amazed?
Maybe there’s no surprise from a causal viewpoint.
But still, it seems to me, in the creation of humans by evolution,
something happened that is precious and marvelous and wonderful.
If we can’t call it a physical miracle, then call it a moral miracle.
Because it was only a miracle from the perspective of the morality that was produced?
Explaining away all the apparent coincidence,
from a causal and physical perspective?
Well... yeah. I suppose you could interpret it that way.
I just meant that something was immensely surprising and wonderful on a moral level,
even if it's not really surprising,
on a physical level.
I think that's what I said.
It just seems to me that in your view, somehow you explain that wonder away.
No.
I explain it.
Of course there's a story behind love.
Behind all ordered events, one finds ordered stories.And that which has no story is nothing but random noise.
Hardly any better.
If you can't take joy in things with true stories behind them,
your life will be empty.
Love has to begin somehow.
It has to enter the universe somewhere.
It’s like asking how life itself begins.Though you were born of your father and mother,
and though they arose from their living parents in turn,
if you go far and far and far away back,
you’ll finally come to a replicator that arose by pure accident.
The border between life and unlife.
So too with love.
A complex pattern must be explained by a cause
that’s not already that complex pattern. For love to enter the universe,
it has to arise from something that is not love.If that weren’t possible, then love could not be.
Just as life itself required that first replicator,
to come about by accident,
parentless,
but still caused:
far, far back in the causal chain that led to you:
3.8 billion years ago,
in some little tidal pool.
Perhaps your children's children will ask,how it is that they are capable of love.
And their parents will say:
Because we, who also love, created you to love.
And your children's children may ask: But how is it that you love?
And their parents will reply:
Because our own parents,
who loved as well,
created us to love in turn.
And then your children's children will ask:
But where did it all begin?
Where does the recursion end?
And their parents will say:
Once upon a time, long ago and far away,
there were intelligent beings who were not themselves intelligently designed.
Once upon a time, there were lovers,
created by something that did not love.
Once upon a time,
when all of civilization was a single galaxy,
A single star.
A single planet.
A place called Earth.
Long ago,
Far away,
Ever So Long Ago.
Gameplay Art
This post is about the development of our game based on Eliezer Yudkowsky's "The Twelve Virtues of Rationality".
Are games art?
It's an interesting question, but it seems that most people who answer that question in the affirmative are--intentionally or not--subscribing to the "hybrid art" view. That is, that games are art because they combine story-telling, music, and visual style; interaction with the system of the game is in service to the storyline, music, and visual style.
I don't like that. Here is why:
"Art" in general is creative expression through a medium. The hybrid-art view treats gameplay as the icing on the narrative-musical-visual cake. When it should be that gameplay is the cake, and everything else is the icing.
Gameplay, or interaction with the system of the game, is a medium for artistic expression, just like paint is for paintings. I don't think anyone can deny that interaction with a gun during a hostile situation reeks havoc on our emotions, or that interaction with a loved one can run the emotional gamut. Interaction is powerful.
Games can take advantage of the power of interaction to be expressive. The art of the storyline, music, and visuals ought to be secondary to the art of the gameplay.
Twelve Virtues
I believe that gameplay is a very powerful way to learn, and so the single most important design principle for our current project is expression through gameplay. We want to convey the meaning of each virtue through gameplay. The player should be able examine the method by which they interact with the game to learn the meaning behind the virtue.
For example:
In our Curiosity level which is where the game starts, the player must follow a mysterious cat that appears. Very early in the level, the player is faced with a "point of no return". If they jump down to the ground, they can't ever go back to the starting area. They must choose to follow the cat, or stay in their "comfort zone" so to speak. They must embrace their curiosity, or ignore it. If they choose to follow the cat, they will eventually discover a much larger area full of mysteries to be solved.
Heaven+Earth+Joe Davis Documentary
"The things that are the most sensible turn out to be most absurd and the things that are the most absurd turn out to make most sense." - Joe Davis
I haven't seen this, but I'd like to:
http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2011/09/heaven-earth-joe-davis.php
Joe Davis is an artist working with scientific themes.
A prize to become artist in residence at CERN
Prix Ars Electronica Collide@CERN is the new international competition for digital artists to win a residency at CERN the world's largest particle physics laboratory in Geneva. It is the first prize to be announced as part of the new Collide@CERN artists residency programme initiated by the laboratory.
The residency is in two parts - with an initial two months at CERN, where the winning artist will have a specially dedicated science mentor from the world famous science lab to inspire him/her and his/her work. The second part will be a month with the Futurelab team and mentor at Ars Electronica Linz with whom the winner will develop and make new work inspired by the CERN residency.
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