All you can do in science is discover something before anyone else discovers it
I’m not sure there isn’t an equivalent of this in the art world. Ok, no-one else would have created exactly the same piece of art as you, but is that what’s really imporant? All you can do in, say, literature, is write a book that people read instead of some other book. Given that no-one is ever going to read every book, see every play or listen to every song, the marginal value of your artwork to the world is not how much people enjoy it (or how valuable it is in whatever sense you think art is valuable), but how much people enjoy it (how valuable it is) compared to their second best work already available.
Yes, and I almost addressed that in the original post, but decided the explanation would distract. My impression is that there’s plenty of room for great works; and people still read and listen to crap. The kicker is that if what you care about is people who read your book, then you probably value your book for its instrumental value. Yet all authors care about whether people read their books. Does this mean no authors place intrinsic value on their works? I think the answer is more complicated than that, and although its answer is probably at some point necessary to get further towards an answer to the question I’m asking in this post, it is much further down the road than what I’m asking here
“If what you care about is people who read your book, then you probably value your book for its instrumental value”
How much would you value the following situations?
By odd coincidence, a brilliant work of literature forms spontaneously in the Andromeda galaxy. No one ever reads it.
An author writes a brilliant work of literature, then immediately burns it and shoots himself, so that it is lost to all time.
An author writes a brilliant work of literature, then buries it and never tells another living soul.
An author writes a brilliant work of literature. He lets one other person read it, then buries it and never tells another living soul.
A Chinese author writes a brilliant work of literature. Millions of Chinese people read and enjoy it, but is never translated into English and neither you nor anyone you know ever hear about it.
An English author writes a brilliant work of literature. You and many others read and enjoy it.
Through situations like these, I’ve decided that what I value in art has something to do with people enjoying it. I place minimal value on 1-4, but high value on 5 and 6. I don’t think I believe in the simple form of ‘only this one thing called happiness is important’ that is vulnerable to the wirehead trick, but I do think that everything valuable is linked to a form of what we would call happiness. I would say my terminal value is “enjoyment of great literature” rather than the simple existence of the literature. The same is probably true of science’s terminal value: Bayes Theorem written on a rock in Andromeda has no value, but the clarity and knowledge and enjoyment of science that people who know the theorem get does.
Sure; but then why does it matter whether you yourself make the literature? Shouldn’t you be even more fulfilled by becoming an investment banker, and giving money to support a dozen novelists?
Yet I don’t know any novelists who would enjoy that.
That’s cause there’s a difference between reason and emotions?
I would feel a greater sense of fulfillment giving a kid an ice cream cone and seeing his eyes light up, than I would donating $1,000 to a a children’s charity and knowing it would help dozens of children in need. I’m not saying that’s better, just that my pre-programmed emotional responses react more strongly to it.
Your question seems to assume becoming a novelist is fundamentally a charitable act, or that novelists are working to maximize total world utility (unlike...everyone else?). I think most of them are just people who really, really like writing. I remember one novelist who said that the only valid excuse for becoming a writer was that you can’t keep yourself from writing even if you try.
Even rejecting all that, the world does need a certain number of novelists, and not every novelist could succeed as an investment banker. If you assess yourself as having a certain high amount of literary skill and no even higher amounts of skill in other areas, then it may be that your best bet for contributing value to the world is in writing. Shakespeare’s probably was.
I’m not sure there isn’t an equivalent of this in the art world. Ok, no-one else would have created exactly the same piece of art as you, but is that what’s really imporant? All you can do in, say, literature, is write a book that people read instead of some other book. Given that no-one is ever going to read every book, see every play or listen to every song, the marginal value of your artwork to the world is not how much people enjoy it (or how valuable it is in whatever sense you think art is valuable), but how much people enjoy it (how valuable it is) compared to their second best work already available.
Yes, and I almost addressed that in the original post, but decided the explanation would distract. My impression is that there’s plenty of room for great works; and people still read and listen to crap. The kicker is that if what you care about is people who read your book, then you probably value your book for its instrumental value. Yet all authors care about whether people read their books. Does this mean no authors place intrinsic value on their works? I think the answer is more complicated than that, and although its answer is probably at some point necessary to get further towards an answer to the question I’m asking in this post, it is much further down the road than what I’m asking here
“If what you care about is people who read your book, then you probably value your book for its instrumental value”
How much would you value the following situations?
By odd coincidence, a brilliant work of literature forms spontaneously in the Andromeda galaxy. No one ever reads it.
An author writes a brilliant work of literature, then immediately burns it and shoots himself, so that it is lost to all time.
An author writes a brilliant work of literature, then buries it and never tells another living soul.
An author writes a brilliant work of literature. He lets one other person read it, then buries it and never tells another living soul.
A Chinese author writes a brilliant work of literature. Millions of Chinese people read and enjoy it, but is never translated into English and neither you nor anyone you know ever hear about it.
An English author writes a brilliant work of literature. You and many others read and enjoy it.
Through situations like these, I’ve decided that what I value in art has something to do with people enjoying it. I place minimal value on 1-4, but high value on 5 and 6. I don’t think I believe in the simple form of ‘only this one thing called happiness is important’ that is vulnerable to the wirehead trick, but I do think that everything valuable is linked to a form of what we would call happiness. I would say my terminal value is “enjoyment of great literature” rather than the simple existence of the literature. The same is probably true of science’s terminal value: Bayes Theorem written on a rock in Andromeda has no value, but the clarity and knowledge and enjoyment of science that people who know the theorem get does.
Sure; but then why does it matter whether you yourself make the literature? Shouldn’t you be even more fulfilled by becoming an investment banker, and giving money to support a dozen novelists?
Yet I don’t know any novelists who would enjoy that.
That’s cause there’s a difference between reason and emotions?
I would feel a greater sense of fulfillment giving a kid an ice cream cone and seeing his eyes light up, than I would donating $1,000 to a a children’s charity and knowing it would help dozens of children in need. I’m not saying that’s better, just that my pre-programmed emotional responses react more strongly to it.
Your question seems to assume becoming a novelist is fundamentally a charitable act, or that novelists are working to maximize total world utility (unlike...everyone else?). I think most of them are just people who really, really like writing. I remember one novelist who said that the only valid excuse for becoming a writer was that you can’t keep yourself from writing even if you try.
Even rejecting all that, the world does need a certain number of novelists, and not every novelist could succeed as an investment banker. If you assess yourself as having a certain high amount of literary skill and no even higher amounts of skill in other areas, then it may be that your best bet for contributing value to the world is in writing. Shakespeare’s probably was.
Maybe because their comparative advantage is in novels rather than in investments?
That sounds like a fully general argument; for example, replace “make the literature” with “cure people” and “novelists” with “doctors”.