DoubleReed

Karma: 60

DoubleReed 23 Oct 2011 22:14 UTC
10 points
on: Welcome to Less Wrong! (2010-2011)
Hello everyone!

I am a unwitting victim of HP: MoR, and of course it led me here. I’m still reading up on the sequences, which have plenty of intriguing content. My background is in Mathematics (specifically cryptography, not much probability theory) and Music (specifically bassoon and composition). Right now I work for the US government. I grew up as a secular Jew, so I didn’t really have that much of a crisis of faith or anything. I must say I found Eliezer’s description of Modern Judaism (“you are expected to doubt but not successfully doubt”) as surprisingly accurate and amusing.

Though, after reading through things, I don’t really think I can call myself a rationalist quite yet. I need more practice, honestly. Maybe I just need to successfully update :D

Perhaps I just need to look around more, but hopefully I can contribute to the more artistic ideas of the site. Reading through what is on the site, it makes me wonder how to apply rationalist methodology to the arts.

DoubleReed 23 Oct 2011 23:16 UTC
0 points
in reply to: PhilGoetz’s comment on: Things you are supposed to like
This may not work. Temperment is difficult to adjust. As equal temperment is so ubiquitous nowadays, people will often hear non-equal temperments as simply out-of-tune and dislike them on that. Our ears are very much used to equal temperments.

But composition is not that only thing that music is. There is also performance and musical interpretation, and those will drastically affect your opinions on a particular composition. Computer-generated versions will probably not help your opinion of a piece...

DoubleReed 23 Oct 2011 23:32 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Bill_McGrath’s comment on: Things you are supposed to like
This is talking about music as if it isn’t inherently based on time. If anything, a large number of consonances would make music sound much worse, because “dissonance” in many ways is simply sounds that require resolution of tension. If there is no tension, there is no resolution of tension. Dissonance is commonly believed to be the thing that actually makes music interesting.

Of course there is music that uses lots of consonance, but typically they will use some other device (rhythm, rising tones) to increase tension so they have something to resolve.

DoubleReed 24 Oct 2011 0:08 UTC
0 points
in reply to: komponisto’s comment on: Welcome to Less Wrong! (2010-2011)
Cool thanks! I’ll check it out.

DoubleReed 25 Oct 2011 20:01 UTC
0 points
on: Rhetoric for the Good
Personally, I’m very much against the idea of writing down “whatever horrible shit comes out of you.” Maybe it’s me personally. I think it’s faster to actually outline, revise, develop, revise, etc. in a much more cyclical manner. Planning can break the looming threat of writer’s block. Quite often, I won’t have enough ideas to start to get anywhere in a worthwhile manner.

Instead, I want to flesh out the major ideas and develop them as much as I can along the entirety of your work. Write out parts here and there to determine what the direction of the development is.

Ideas are comparatively cheap. It’s the development and details of ideas that can be difficult. So you need to give yourself room to make those developments.

DoubleReed 28 Oct 2011 13:50 UTC
−4 points
in reply to: Vladimir_M’s comment on: Things you are supposed to like
This depends on where you are and your government. In the US, there really is practically no government support for the arts. The NEA does give some money, but almost all of it is to state and local arts organizations, and that seems to work out pretty well. However, the vast majority of arts in the US is privately funded.

In other countries I don’t think this is true though. In a lot of European countries the government does the majority of arts funding.

DoubleReed 28 Oct 2011 14:09 UTC
4 points
in reply to: Eugine_Nier’s comment on: Things you are supposed to like
Isn’t the idea that modern art is “uniform” in any way just ridiculous?

In the early 20th century we had a huge mix of different ideas. The idea that it’s all just a big swath of ‘generic modern art’ is just silly. I’m better at music in terms of knowledge, but I find it odd to immediately denounce Stravinsky’s works simply because it’s ‘modern.’

I mean I don’t denounce John Cage because it’s ‘modern.’ I denounce it because it doesn’t sound and makes no aural sense and things like that.

DoubleReed 28 Oct 2011 14:41 UTC
0 points
on: Things you are supposed to like
This brings up another issue that is more extreme. Here we find the piece boring, which is certainly a bad thing for artistic ideas. But what if the piece is the other way: actually unappealing?

Anyone who hears Penderecki’s Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfEye2YBGTM) for the first time gets an idea of what I mean.

Like anyone, my first reaction to the piece is negative. And I think with any work you can find legitimate criticisms of it in terms of form or construction or whatever. But I just don’t see it as simple as that. The fact is that this piece is insanely influential on all work that proceeds it. Just listen to the soundtrack to any recent horror films. Hell, even the soundtrack to Lost gives many impressions that Michael Giacchino must have been familiar with the piece (and it’s obviously a famous piece). Quite frankly, I love the soundtrack to Lost.

But this may be a difference of execution, rather than of musical ideas. Perhaps I think the execution of Giacchino’s music is more appealing and so I like it more. People are suggesting that it’s a matter of social stigma, but having been exposed to some of the crappier portions of classical music I would have to disagree. I would honestly say if you took a blind test of Salieri’s music (or really anyone of the same time period) and Mozart’s music, with somebody who knows little of classical music at all, you have an overwhelming amount say Mozart is better, because there is a matter of craft and execution to take into account.

DoubleReed 28 Oct 2011 20:49 UTC
−2 points
in reply to: lessdazed’s comment on: Things you are supposed to like
Yea, I believe it’s per capita, but I wouldn’t be surprised in general as well.

It’s more about public vs private funding. Not discouraging or encouraging art. Though I have heard from my friends in art development that it is more difficult to find private donors in countries with more government funding due to it. Quick google search yielded this, but there’s probably more to the debate.

DoubleReed 29 Oct 2011 19:41 UTC
4 points
0
in reply to: pedanterrific’s comment on: Things you are supposed to like
I believe he was using ‘modern art’ in a nontechnical sense, but my point doesn’t really change. Just replace John Cage with a Total Serialist composer.

I mean modern art (that is, early 20th century art) was the time period where we had an explosion of different ideas in all the different artforms. Dismissing them as ‘uniform’ in any way is crazy. Many of Stravinsky’s works are perfectly accessible to non-music people. It’s not like Realist Artwork or Tonality just vanished or something. There is Modern Realism and Modern Tonality.

Edit: Besides, isn’t this aggression towards modern art a “curiosity stopper”?

DoubleReed 29 Oct 2011 19:47 UTC
0 points
in reply to: lessdazed’s comment on: Things you are supposed to like
I don’t really know how the art could evolve besides just accurate shooting.

However, most composers and visual artists before Beethoven considered composition a craft, not an artform. So I don’t necessarily think it needs hard delineation. “What is art” discussions tend to go in circles though.

DoubleReed 29 Oct 2011 20:05 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Desrtopa’s comment on: Rhetoric for the Good
That’s funny. I had the opposite experience. In High School I just learned how to pad things out, and in college everything was actually sensible-length assignments.

DoubleReed 29 Oct 2011 22:45 UTC
0 points
in reply to: gjm’s comment on: Things you are supposed to like
Honestly, I know a lot of people who have listened to piece, musicians and everything, and almost none have positive reactions to it at first. Not many people would listen to this in their spare time. (I suspect if I said “this piece is awesome you’d totally love it” you may have reacted differently. Is there a cognitive term for that?)

Actually the structure of the piece, which isn’t totally apparent at first, is one of the most intriguing part of the piece for many composers and theorists. The piece is famous for many reasons.

DoubleReed 30 Oct 2011 22:48 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Vladimir_M’s comment on: Things you are supposed to like
I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about. The amount of money given by ‘bureaucracies’ in the US is vastly inferior to the money given out by rich patrons. Almost all of our arts is funded by individual people. Some larger organizations have some corporate sponsors, but I don’t know if that counts as bureaucracies.

Look at any theater, gallery, or orchestra in the US. More than 90% of their money comes from individual donors.

We have a lot of rich people in the US.

DoubleReed 31 Oct 2011 17:26 UTC
0 points
on: Rationality Quotes November 2011

I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.

-John Cage

Retracted: More I think about it, the less this quote makes sense.

DoubleReed 31 Oct 2011 18:48 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Oscar_Cunningham’s comment on: Rationality Quotes October 2011
But you can construct rigid, exact definitions for all of those things.

Though I suppose those definitions would have to be approximations. So Mathematics gets to have exactness to it, but of course Mathematics is typically not considered a science.

DoubleReed 1 Nov 2011 12:32 UTC
0 points
in reply to: komponisto’s comment on: Rationality Quotes November 2011
I know, but aren’t there valid rational reasons to be frightened of new ideas as well? It’s like neophilia.

DoubleReed 1 Nov 2011 12:52 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Vladimir_M’s comment on: Things you are supposed to like

The former is about people indulging their honest aesthetic preferences in a way that’s likely to be low-status; the latter is as close to a pure money-for-status transaction as anything gets—even if the actual “work of art” contains no discernible marks of talent or aesthetic qualities at all.

I didn’t say anything about modern art or art that contains “no discernible marks of talent or aesthetic qualities at all” or whatever. I said bureaucracies do NOT fund the majority of art in the US. And it doesn’t.

Your claim is that basically it’s either art that’s low-status or art that people like. And that’s just blatantly false. Not all art today is modern you know. There are still ballets, operas, shakespeare theaters, orchestras, realism galleries, and independent film theaters. These are high-status but high-quality. You have a warped view on the art world today.

Within this system, there are still some classic forms of art that have been traditionally high-status for many generations, such as classical music. However, these are rarely (if ever) tremendously profitable, and also require a lot of skill to practice. On the other hand, the modern art scene is almost purely about bureaucratic careerism.

Yea, I think you overestimate the power of bureaucracy here. Maybe if you showed that modern art makes way more money than non-modern art you’d have a case.

Those high-status individuals are the ones supporting the art system because they want to. It isn’t because they’re part of some invisible bureaucracy. It’s because they have money and they see something they like and give their money to it. That is the way it works. Have you ever worked in art development? Everything is individuals.

Overall, the point is that artistic status itself has been monopolized by a self-perpetuating bureaucracy that has led to its almost complete disconnect with skill and aesthetic value (as measured by satisfying people’s honest aesthetic preferences).

And I call bullshit. There is nothing “bureaucratic” about what you’re talking about. Rich people like the art they support. It is not just about status. Or else it wouldn’t matter what kind of organization they donate to, but that’s not true (donors typically have very specific preferences). Many rich people care about status but don’t support the arts at all (they can always donate to churches and charities after all). Many donors are heavily involved in the organizations that they donate to.

If you work outside of this system, even if you get rich, and even if your work is vastly above anything made by the top-ranking official artists by all objective measures, you will always be assigned to the low status of a kitsch peddler.

Uhm. No? I mean there are artists that have became wildly famous and everything, but high-quality artistry is still around and still high-status. So I don’t understand where you get this idea from.

DoubleReed 1 Nov 2011 13:13 UTC
1 point
in reply to: dbaupp’s comment on: Rationality Quotes November 2011
Should you be frightened of an idea purely because it is old?

DoubleReed 1 Nov 2011 13:19 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Desrtopa’s comment on: Things you are supposed to like
I’m not saying that they aren’t status-signaling, but I would argue that it isn’t just status-signaling and tax-deductions.

After all, because there are so many avenues of pursuit, there must be some way for people to decide which to take. I mean if there’s a contemporary art gallery I’m bored of, and an impressionist art gallery I like, I wouldn’t donate to the contemporary art gallery because of status. I would donate to whichever I like the most. Both of them give me status.