Greetings! I’m a relatively new reader, having spent a month or two working my way through the Sequences and following lots of links, and finally came across something interesting to me that no one else had yet commented on.
Eleizer wrote “Those who dream do not know they dream; but when you wake you know you are awake.” No one picked out or disagreed with this statement.
This really surprised me. When I dream, if I bother to think about it I almost always know that I dream—enough so that on the few occasions when I realize I was dreaming without knowing so, it’s a surprising and memorable experience. (Though there may be selection bias here; I could have huge numbers of dreams where I don’t know I’m dreaming, but I just don’t remember them.)
I thought this was something that came with experience, maturity, and—dare I say it? -- rationality. Now that I’m thinking about it in this context, I’m quite curious to hear whether this is true for most of the readership. I’m non-neurotypical in several ways; is this one of them?
The definition of art begins to matter a lot when governments have bizarre laws that require spending public funds on it—e.g. Seattle’s SMC 20.32.030 “Funds for works of art” which states that “All requests for appropriations for construction projects from eligible funds shall include an amount equal to one (1) percent of the estimated cost of such project for works of art...”
Of course, the law doesn’t even attempt to define what is and isn’t “art”. They leave that up to the Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs… and I’m sure those folks spend PLENTY of time (also at public expense) debating exactly that question.