In my opinion, this is connected with Sturgeon’s Law. I’d guess that to expert pianists and piano tuners, 90% of pianos sound out of tune. I know among hardcore software engineers, a common lament is that almost all software sucks. Windows is almost unbearable to me, but I’m sure most desktop users are happy with it. Most desktop users are not programmers.
90% of all things may be crap to the discerning eye, but the world remains ok with that because each person has only a handful of places where they care to discern.
With software, I can see how this discernment would be useful to society, even if it’s a burden for you individually: Your ability to find flaws in software presumably allows you to design better software, which everyone will be able to take advantage of, even if they don’t presently realize how much better their current software could be.
However, I struggle with the original post’s framing—
”If their art dies out, maybe nobody will know how bad all the pianos are. And then we’ll all have slightly worse pianos than we would otherwise have. And I mean if that’s the way things are going to go, then let’s just steer the Earth into the Sun, because what’s the point of any of this.”
It seems to me like this level of discernment is only a con, not a pro, because it’s only result is top level pianists and tuners detecting slightly worse notes, and therefore making themselves slightly less happy?
In my opinion, this is connected with Sturgeon’s Law. I’d guess that to expert pianists and piano tuners, 90% of pianos sound out of tune. I know among hardcore software engineers, a common lament is that almost all software sucks. Windows is almost unbearable to me, but I’m sure most desktop users are happy with it. Most desktop users are not programmers.
90% of all things may be crap to the discerning eye, but the world remains ok with that because each person has only a handful of places where they care to discern.
With software, I can see how this discernment would be useful to society, even if it’s a burden for you individually: Your ability to find flaws in software presumably allows you to design better software, which everyone will be able to take advantage of, even if they don’t presently realize how much better their current software could be.
However, I struggle with the original post’s framing—
”If their art dies out, maybe nobody will know how bad all the pianos are. And then we’ll all have slightly worse pianos than we would otherwise have. And I mean if that’s the way things are going to go, then let’s just steer the Earth into the Sun, because what’s the point of any of this.”
It seems to me like this level of discernment is only a con, not a pro, because it’s only result is top level pianists and tuners detecting slightly worse notes, and therefore making themselves slightly less happy?