Just tell me...that my claim about Weird Al superiority is outright offensive
It is somewhat, because it suggests that some of us should have our status lowered for failing to meet an optimization target we weren’t even aiming for.
“Not as good as Weird Al!” sounds a bit like “you fail!”. Whereas you could instead have said: “with all due respect to the impressive achievements of art composers, my personal interests lead me to want to spend somewhat more of my time enjoying clever parodies of popular songs than exploring the complexities of ‘classical masterpieces’, however great the latter might be on their own terms.”
I think your model of someone who enjoys “classical masterpieces” as much as I do is wrong to the extent that it suggests they can’t enjoy Weird AI as much as you do. And you invoke this model when you claim to have an aesthetic disagreement with them.
That’s a little surprising. It was the basis for any agreement I had with you regarding how having a different aesthetic evaluation of art could be offensive.
I think your model of someone who enjoys classical masterpieces as much as I do is wrong to the extent that it suggests they can’t enjoy Weird AI as much as you do.
Not something I’ve said (or something that can be derived from what I’ve said.)
It can be derived with the additional assumption that the only reason a person would have for explicitly comparing things as different as “classical masterpieces” and Weird AI would be that aesthetic enjoyment is held by the person to be fixed-sum and uncompartmentalizable (i.e. they in effect had no choice but to make a comparison to Y when expressing enthusiasm for X). An assumption which in turn follows from the assumption that the person understands the signaling value of explicit aesthetic comparisons, and wouldn’t want to send such a signal unless logically forced.
I suppose in retrospect the great-grandparent could be interpreted as a denial of the latter assumption. Alas.
I suppose in retrospect the great-grandparent could be interpreted as a denial of the latter assumption
It took me a while to realise what you were saying there—I wasn’t expecting an indirect insult!
In that case I’m not sure I was clear: the comment could be interpreted as a denial specifically of the “and wouldn’t want to send such a signal” part. In other words, it conveyed that you didn’t mind being insulting. (Perhaps you consider “I suppose you were willing to be insulting after all” to be itself an insult, in which case the parent is consistent with my having communicated successfully.)
Let’s just say we are in complete disagreement about both the subject and about the validity of the arguments used and leave it at that, shall we?
At this point I really don’t know exactly what we are in disagreement about, if anything, and more to the point I’m not sure I actually want to know. So “leaving it at that” may indeed be optimal for now.
It is somewhat, because it suggests that some of us should have our status lowered for failing to meet an optimization target we weren’t even aiming for.
“Not as good as Weird Al!” sounds a bit like “you fail!”. Whereas you could instead have said: “with all due respect to the impressive achievements of art composers, my personal interests lead me to want to spend somewhat more of my time enjoying clever parodies of popular songs than exploring the complexities of ‘classical masterpieces’, however great the latter might be on their own terms.”
Disagreement is disrespect when it comes to aesthetics as well as ideas.
As it happens, I disagree.
I think your model of someone who enjoys “classical masterpieces” as much as I do is wrong to the extent that it suggests they can’t enjoy Weird AI as much as you do. And you invoke this model when you claim to have an aesthetic disagreement with them.
That’s a little surprising. It was the basis for any agreement I had with you regarding how having a different aesthetic evaluation of art could be offensive.
Not something I’ve said (or something that can be derived from what I’ve said.)
It can be derived with the additional assumption that the only reason a person would have for explicitly comparing things as different as “classical masterpieces” and Weird AI would be that aesthetic enjoyment is held by the person to be fixed-sum and uncompartmentalizable (i.e. they in effect had no choice but to make a comparison to Y when expressing enthusiasm for X). An assumption which in turn follows from the assumption that the person understands the signaling value of explicit aesthetic comparisons, and wouldn’t want to send such a signal unless logically forced.
I suppose in retrospect the great-grandparent could be interpreted as a denial of the latter assumption. Alas.
It took me a while to realise what you were saying there—I wasn’t expecting an indirect insult!
Let’s just say we are in complete disagreement about both the subject and about the validity of the arguments used and leave it at that, shall we?
In that case I’m not sure I was clear: the comment could be interpreted as a denial specifically of the “and wouldn’t want to send such a signal” part. In other words, it conveyed that you didn’t mind being insulting. (Perhaps you consider “I suppose you were willing to be insulting after all” to be itself an insult, in which case the parent is consistent with my having communicated successfully.)
At this point I really don’t know exactly what we are in disagreement about, if anything, and more to the point I’m not sure I actually want to know. So “leaving it at that” may indeed be optimal for now.