Re-reading this for review was a weird roller-coaster. I had remembered (in 2018) my strong takeaway that aesthetics mattered to rationality, and that “Aesthetic Doublecrux” would be an important innovation.
But I forgot most of the second half of the article. And when I got to it, I had such a “woah” moment that I stopped writing this review, went to go rewrite my conclusion in “Propagating Facts into Aesthetics” and then forgot to finish the actual review. The part that really strikes me is her analysis of Scott:
Sometimes I can almost feel this happening. First I believe something is true, and say so. Then I realize it’s considered low-status and cringeworthy. Then I make a principled decision to avoid saying it – or say it only in a very careful way – in order to protect my reputation and ability to participate in society. Then when other people say it, I start looking down on them for being bad at public relations. Then I start looking down on them just for being low-status or cringeworthy.
Finally the idea of “low-status” and “bad and wrong” have merged so fully in my mind that the idea seems terrible and ridiculous to me, and I only remember it’s true if I force myself to explicitly consider the question. And even then, it’s in a condescending way, where I feel like the people who say it’s true deserve low status for not being smart enough to remember not to say it. This is endemic, and I try to quash it when I notice it, but I don’t know how many times it’s slipped my notice all the way to the point where I can no longer remember the truth of the original statement.”
Where she responds:
Now, I could say “just don’t do that, then”—but Scott of 2009 would have also said he believed in being independent and rational and not succumbing to social pressure. Good intentions aren’t enough. [...]
I think it’s much better to try to make the implicit explicit, to bring cultural dynamics into the light and understand how they work, rather than to hide from them.
[...]
If you take something about yourself that’s “cringeworthy” and, instead of cringing yourself, try to look at why it’s cringeworthy, what that’s made of, and dialogue honestly with the perspective that disagrees with you—then there is, in a sense, nothing to fear.
There’s an “elucidating” move that I’m trying to point out here, where instead of defending against an allegation, you say “let’s back up a second” and bring the entire situation into view. It’s what double crux is about—“hey, let’s find out what even is the disagreement between us.” Double crux is hard enough with arguments, and here I’m trying to advocate something like double-cruxing aesthetic preferences, which sounds absurdly ambitious. But: imagine if we could talk about why things seem beautiful and appealing, or ugly and unappealing. Where do these preferences come from, in a causal sense? Do we still endorse them when we know their origins? What happens when we bring tacit things into consciousness, when we talk carefully about what aesthetics evoke in us, and how that might be the same or different from person to person?
Unless you can think about how cultural messaging works, you’re going to be a mere consumer of culture, drifting in whatever direction the current takes you.
This seems like a key point. I haven’t quite refactored it into an “open problem” or “question”, but I perhaps feel a bit like Brienne, noting something like “Thinking in terms of ‘what are the big open questions’ is daunting, but this area feels really interesting as well as important and fruitful.”
Re-reading this for review was a weird roller-coaster. I had remembered (in 2018) my strong takeaway that aesthetics mattered to rationality, and that “Aesthetic Doublecrux” would be an important innovation.
But I forgot most of the second half of the article. And when I got to it, I had such a “woah” moment that I stopped writing this review, went to go rewrite my conclusion in “Propagating Facts into Aesthetics” and then forgot to finish the actual review. The part that really strikes me is her analysis of Scott:
Where she responds:
This seems like a key point. I haven’t quite refactored it into an “open problem” or “question”, but I perhaps feel a bit like Brienne, noting something like “Thinking in terms of ‘what are the big open questions’ is daunting, but this area feels really interesting as well as important and fruitful.”