To reply to this and your other comment at once, yes, this is one reason why I think it is so bad. A related idea is that I think that this obsession with a hypothetical ratability (however computationally intractable) of music fails to recognize that music is enormously wrapped up in culture. I’ll try to explain why I think that’s a fatal error. You and I agree that there are preference clusters around some pieces of music, but we interpret the existence of those clusters differently. To you, they suggest a kind of groping toward some as-yet-unseen aesthetic truth—what we would like if we were like we are now, only better (coherent extrapolated aesthetic preferences?). To me, they are limited in their (even hypothetical) extent by both individual difference and by cultural difference—preference clusters only crop up reliably among people who are relatively similar to one another and share a lot of cultural common ground. In my view, even if we were much, much better, smarter versions of ourselves, aesthetic judgment would continue to vary as widely as the combined variance of human cultures and the traits of individuals.
Another way of saying this is that music is a phenomenon created by so many aspects of culture and individual psychology, in such eclectic ways, that I don’t think a mathematical model of our responses to music can be very much less complex than a complete mathematical model of the human mind, biology, and culture. When I see people pursuing approaches to music who see it as much simpler than that (like the aforementioned trainwreck), it’s a dead giveaway that they don’t know what they’re talking about.
In my view, even if we were much, much better, smarter versions of ourselves, aesthetic judgment would continue to vary as widely as the combined variance of human cultures and the traits of individuals.
Even if we were much, much smarter versions of ourselves, intellectual judgment would continue to vary widely.
Granted there would be religious people, I do not think there would be creationists. Granted for the sake of argument a few people sufficiently smart are now creationists, were everyone that smart, the community of creationists might shrink until having such opinions about biology would be as isolating as analogous literalist Biblical opinions about the “four corners of the Earth”. Absent a supporting community, only seriously deluded smart people, such as might also think themselves Napoleon, would be creationists.
To reply to this and your other comment at once, yes, this is one reason why I think it is so bad. A related idea is that I think that this obsession with a hypothetical ratability (however computationally intractable) of music fails to recognize that music is enormously wrapped up in culture. I’ll try to explain why I think that’s a fatal error. You and I agree that there are preference clusters around some pieces of music, but we interpret the existence of those clusters differently. To you, they suggest a kind of groping toward some as-yet-unseen aesthetic truth—what we would like if we were like we are now, only better (coherent extrapolated aesthetic preferences?). To me, they are limited in their (even hypothetical) extent by both individual difference and by cultural difference—preference clusters only crop up reliably among people who are relatively similar to one another and share a lot of cultural common ground. In my view, even if we were much, much better, smarter versions of ourselves, aesthetic judgment would continue to vary as widely as the combined variance of human cultures and the traits of individuals.
Another way of saying this is that music is a phenomenon created by so many aspects of culture and individual psychology, in such eclectic ways, that I don’t think a mathematical model of our responses to music can be very much less complex than a complete mathematical model of the human mind, biology, and culture. When I see people pursuing approaches to music who see it as much simpler than that (like the aforementioned trainwreck), it’s a dead giveaway that they don’t know what they’re talking about.
Even if we were much, much smarter versions of ourselves, intellectual judgment would continue to vary widely.
But there wouldn’t be creationists.
Yes there would. Much, much smarter != freed from cognitive biases.
Granted there would be religious people, I do not think there would be creationists. Granted for the sake of argument a few people sufficiently smart are now creationists, were everyone that smart, the community of creationists might shrink until having such opinions about biology would be as isolating as analogous literalist Biblical opinions about the “four corners of the Earth”. Absent a supporting community, only seriously deluded smart people, such as might also think themselves Napoleon, would be creationists.