You can draw a lot of motivation from peer pressure; the trick is to expose yourself to specific kinds of peer pressure that propel you towards some desirable goal.
In regards to art, once I made a considerable effort to like extreme metal, because a respected art-geek friend recommended me to do so. He’s a professional poker player with little to no social engagement in art circles, and thus his tastes have remarkably social-pressure-free origins. I figured that’d make his social pressure on me more valuable. Currently, on reflection, I believe that some extreme metal is extremely good, and I also enjoy such music immensely, and the fact that I could manage to reach this state only via peer pressure doesn’t matter that much.
“Try to minimize information cascades regarding art recommendations” seems to be a good heuristic in general. Another would be: “value the recommendations of people who have complex boundaries of liked-disliked art”. Someone who likes some classical music, but not most, and also likes some extreme metal, but not most, maybe considers the actual music more carefully than someone who likes most music from one genre but completely dismisses certain other genres.
You can draw a lot of motivation from peer pressure; the trick is to expose yourself to specific kinds of peer pressure that propel you towards some desirable goal.
In regards to art, once I made a considerable effort to like extreme metal, because a respected art-geek friend recommended me to do so. He’s a professional poker player with little to no social engagement in art circles, and thus his tastes have remarkably social-pressure-free origins. I figured that’d make his social pressure on me more valuable. Currently, on reflection, I believe that some extreme metal is extremely good, and I also enjoy such music immensely, and the fact that I could manage to reach this state only via peer pressure doesn’t matter that much.
“Try to minimize information cascades regarding art recommendations” seems to be a good heuristic in general. Another would be: “value the recommendations of people who have complex boundaries of liked-disliked art”. Someone who likes some classical music, but not most, and also likes some extreme metal, but not most, maybe considers the actual music more carefully than someone who likes most music from one genre but completely dismisses certain other genres.