I, for one, have never heard seriously disparaging things about 19th-century or Academic art in general, and the essay sounds a bit… rabid. It seems like the writer was operating under the common heuristic “I don’t understand it, so it must be stupid.”
And I never trust anyone that says, “No, no, this stuff is good, it really is! Just pay for 10 years worth of education in this specific area, and then you’ll see the light!”
But then what do you do when something really does take that long to explain? People say category theory is beautiful; is the nonmathematician supposed to call them liars?
Category theory doesn’t take 10 years to explain. You should be able to explain to a willing, intelligent friend in two full days, and get them to a point where they see the beauty.
I’ve done similar things, like explaining the elegant beauty of aircraft component structural analysis—got a decent appreciation across in 10 minutes. (“You know how a chain is as strong as its weakest link? A component is as strong as its weakest failure mode...”)
The point is, you can explain it. That’s a lot more than you can do for (much of) art, it seems.
How are you so sure that’s the problem? What distinguishes the state of art right now, from one where there is no justification for why one work is more artistic than other, and it’s just the blind leading the blind, everyone eventually claiming they can see the Emporer’s clothes?
And FWIW, there really aren’t many things that are hard to explain (given enough time) -- just people who don’t understand their own fields.
How are you so sure that’s the problem? What distinguishes the state of art right now, from one where there is no justification for why one work is more artistic than other, and it’s just the blind leading the blind, everyone eventually claiming they can see the Emporer’s clothes?
The world is big and complex, and contains lots of different things. There is plenty of pseudo-art out there, no question—just like there is plenty of pseudo-science. But for reasons that aren’t immediately obvious (though some hypotheses do suggest themselves after a bit of thought), people regard pseudo-art as diminishing the credibility of Art as a pursuit, while not doing the same with pseudoscience vis-a-vis Science.
I should admit that I’m really only expertly-familiar with one particular art form (music), so the following is largely extrapolation as it applies to others—but I can’t imagine that the situation isn’t similar.
There is a direct analog of inferential distance in art. In fact, “analog” may not be the right word; it may just literally be a form of inferential distance. Experience and training make a huge difference with respect to how a work is perceived. This is an effect quite independent of social clique-formation; it’s simply the result of one’s brain working along a certain path for a long time, after which it becomes difficult for others who haven’t traveled the same path to follow one’s thoughts. Unfortunately, this fact is not sufficiently appreciated; people simply expect inferential distances to be short.
Given this, it’s clearly possible that one could slowly retrace the path for the benefit of others, in many small steps, eventually bringing them along to where one is. But most people with advanced artistic knowledge do not have this skill, and most people without advanced artistic knowledge don’t expect them to, because they don’t expect art to need to be explained. So it shouldn’t be surprising that there aren’t a lot of really good art explanations around.
I would be careful with invocation of inferential distance. It’s not a get-out-of-explanation-free card you get to use whenever you have a hard time justifying a belief (not that you were trying to use it this way, but some standards have to be met—see below).
There are many reasons why you could have a hard time explaining a concept to someone. It could be that the concept is mush to begin with, and only kept afloat by a common agreement by insiders not to call anyone out. It could be that you don’t actually understand it, in the rationalist sense of having a moving-parts model, where black boxes play a minimal role, and which is connected deeply to the rest of your understanding of the world.
And finally, it could be that there are many intermediate concepts that you mistakenly, but reasonably, assumed others were familiar with, and which take a lot of time to explain. That is the problem of inferential distance. But you have to first rule out the first two possibilities. Then—and only then—do you get to cite inferential distance.
You say that most people who claim to understand art just can’t bring others through. But why can’t you point me to one who has? Isn’t it kind of strange that there are sources that can take you through the inferential distance for all of those topics that aren’t BS, but you don’t even know of the existence of one that could close the gap for art? And that you don’t believe you can close the gap?
And if it were truly clique-independent, why would we see things like monkey art hoax, where the art expert—and it was some identified in advance as an expert—violated pretty basic conservation of evidence principles. On being informed it was a monkey rather than someone the entire community has given awards to, her reaction was: “Well, I guess it looked kind of rushed.”
Why don’t these experts have the understanding necessary to say, “you liar”?
You say you are an expert in one area of art. I accept that you have a broad knowledge of music. I accept that you have passed the standards typically required to count as an expert in music. What I question is whether you pass the criteria here to count as an expert, which are about whether you have made it truly part of yourself:
If you deleted your knowledge of art in this area, would it grow back? By some method other than someone giving you the blankly solid facts about which pieces are an aren’t art? Would you rate them the same way, for the same reasons? If you harbor any doubts you need to go back to the first two hypotheses I mentioned before you can start appealing to inferential distance.
On the other hand...
Meh.
Never trust a site with that many banners.
I, for one, have never heard seriously disparaging things about 19th-century or Academic art in general, and the essay sounds a bit… rabid. It seems like the writer was operating under the common heuristic “I don’t understand it, so it must be stupid.”
And I never trust anyone that says, “No, no, this stuff is good, it really is! Just pay for 10 years worth of education in this specific area, and then you’ll see the light!”
(Note the similarity to Scientology practices...)
But then what do you do when something really does take that long to explain? People say category theory is beautiful; is the nonmathematician supposed to call them liars?
Category theory doesn’t take 10 years to explain. You should be able to explain to a willing, intelligent friend in two full days, and get them to a point where they see the beauty.
I’ve done similar things, like explaining the elegant beauty of aircraft component structural analysis—got a decent appreciation across in 10 minutes. (“You know how a chain is as strong as its weakest link? A component is as strong as its weakest failure mode...”)
The point is, you can explain it. That’s a lot more than you can do for (much of) art, it seems.
Art can be explained. There just aren’t that many people capable of explaining it; explaining things is a difficult skill.
If you know that art can be explained, then presumably you’ve encountered an explanation of it. Any chance you could point us in the direction of it?
See my other comment.
How are you so sure that’s the problem? What distinguishes the state of art right now, from one where there is no justification for why one work is more artistic than other, and it’s just the blind leading the blind, everyone eventually claiming they can see the Emporer’s clothes?
And FWIW, there really aren’t many things that are hard to explain (given enough time) -- just people who don’t understand their own fields.
The world is big and complex, and contains lots of different things. There is plenty of pseudo-art out there, no question—just like there is plenty of pseudo-science. But for reasons that aren’t immediately obvious (though some hypotheses do suggest themselves after a bit of thought), people regard pseudo-art as diminishing the credibility of Art as a pursuit, while not doing the same with pseudoscience vis-a-vis Science.
I should admit that I’m really only expertly-familiar with one particular art form (music), so the following is largely extrapolation as it applies to others—but I can’t imagine that the situation isn’t similar.
There is a direct analog of inferential distance in art. In fact, “analog” may not be the right word; it may just literally be a form of inferential distance. Experience and training make a huge difference with respect to how a work is perceived. This is an effect quite independent of social clique-formation; it’s simply the result of one’s brain working along a certain path for a long time, after which it becomes difficult for others who haven’t traveled the same path to follow one’s thoughts. Unfortunately, this fact is not sufficiently appreciated; people simply expect inferential distances to be short.
Given this, it’s clearly possible that one could slowly retrace the path for the benefit of others, in many small steps, eventually bringing them along to where one is. But most people with advanced artistic knowledge do not have this skill, and most people without advanced artistic knowledge don’t expect them to, because they don’t expect art to need to be explained. So it shouldn’t be surprising that there aren’t a lot of really good art explanations around.
I would be careful with invocation of inferential distance. It’s not a get-out-of-explanation-free card you get to use whenever you have a hard time justifying a belief (not that you were trying to use it this way, but some standards have to be met—see below).
There are many reasons why you could have a hard time explaining a concept to someone. It could be that the concept is mush to begin with, and only kept afloat by a common agreement by insiders not to call anyone out. It could be that you don’t actually understand it, in the rationalist sense of having a moving-parts model, where black boxes play a minimal role, and which is connected deeply to the rest of your understanding of the world.
And finally, it could be that there are many intermediate concepts that you mistakenly, but reasonably, assumed others were familiar with, and which take a lot of time to explain. That is the problem of inferential distance. But you have to first rule out the first two possibilities. Then—and only then—do you get to cite inferential distance.
You say that most people who claim to understand art just can’t bring others through. But why can’t you point me to one who has? Isn’t it kind of strange that there are sources that can take you through the inferential distance for all of those topics that aren’t BS, but you don’t even know of the existence of one that could close the gap for art? And that you don’t believe you can close the gap?
And if it were truly clique-independent, why would we see things like monkey art hoax, where the art expert—and it was some identified in advance as an expert—violated pretty basic conservation of evidence principles. On being informed it was a monkey rather than someone the entire community has given awards to, her reaction was: “Well, I guess it looked kind of rushed.”
Why don’t these experts have the understanding necessary to say, “you liar”?
You say you are an expert in one area of art. I accept that you have a broad knowledge of music. I accept that you have passed the standards typically required to count as an expert in music. What I question is whether you pass the criteria here to count as an expert, which are about whether you have made it truly part of yourself:
If you deleted your knowledge of art in this area, would it grow back? By some method other than someone giving you the blankly solid facts about which pieces are an aren’t art? Would you rate them the same way, for the same reasons? If you harbor any doubts you need to go back to the first two hypotheses I mentioned before you can start appealing to inferential distance.
At least where category theory is concerned, you don’t have to pay.