Raemon, Thank you for sharing your thoughts here. I have a particular interest in the philosophy of aesthetics and always get excited when people are willing to wade into the tricky territory of the subject.
Two questions for you: 1: In your suggested “knobs to turn” you made a distinction between the beautiful and the distasteful, are these two ends of a spectrum or are these different things? 2: In your examples there seem to be an inherent tie between aesthetics and ethical claims. What I mean by this more clearly is there is a connection between what you are describing as aesthetically good and “the good” (not a bad thing, you are in great company with that stance). In the view presented are these things separate? Can they be? Can something be beautiful, but ethically bad?
I’m new to the Lesswrong space so excuse my ignorance if these points have been touched upon by you or others in previous posts.
In your suggested “knobs to turn” you made a distinction between the beautiful and the distasteful, are these two ends of a spectrum or are these different things?
I think they form an obvious spectrum, but I’ve personally found it’s a fairly different operation to consider “should I change such that I find something viscerally distasteful, which I hadn’t found distasteful before?” vs “should I find something beautiful that I didn’t find beautiful before?”.
In particular, gaining appreciation for a new sort of beauty mostly makes my life better (I now have a new way of appreciating the world, which I find intrinsically nice, in addition to the downstream epistemic value of properly appreciating a thing).
Gaining a source of ugliness… well, makes the world more ugly. Which feels viscerally unpleasant. I might want to do it because the ugliness is important to be able to see, and change. But the fact that it’s going to be unpleasant at least gives me initial hesitation to do so (I might ultimately prefer to become the sort of person who can do this more easily, but I think I’d find it somewhat harder, and I’m not confident it’s psychologically healthy to do it all the time even if the ugliness is in some sense “real”).
(These are claims about what I find hard or easy, or “qualitatively different”, rather than claims about what is a good or bad action to take)
In your examples there seem to be an inherent tie between aesthetics and ethical claims. What I mean by this more clearly is there is a connection between what you are describing as aesthetically good and “the good” (not a bad thing, you are in great company with that stance). In the view presented are these things separate? Can they be? Can something be beautiful, but ethically bad?
This is a good question which I was somewhat uncertain about. Some partial answers:
1. I’m pretty sure, even insofar as goodness and ethicalness are correlated, that the perception of goodness and ethicalness feel qualitatively different. (Like, the “help each other out” morality feels practically good, and also I feel romantic vibes about it’s Miyazaki-Movie-Ness)
2. Also, at the very least, things like Harsh Deserts are beautiful but morally neutral at best (and possibly bad. Like, it’s plausible I’d want to replace most harsh deserts with verdant land)
3. It’s possible you might find a source of beauty in some bad things (like, say, romanticizing classy Jewel Thieves or charismatic con artists). This might be a case where (in light of this post), one might say “well, the correct thing is to bring that sense of beauty in line with the reality of the people who are hurt by jewel thieves and con artists.” But I’m not actually sure that’s a useful thing to do. (I’m on the fence about this)
Raemon,
Thank you for sharing your thoughts here. I have a particular interest in the philosophy of aesthetics and always get excited when people are willing to wade into the tricky territory of the subject.
Two questions for you:
1: In your suggested “knobs to turn” you made a distinction between the beautiful and the distasteful, are these two ends of a spectrum or are these different things?
2: In your examples there seem to be an inherent tie between aesthetics and ethical claims. What I mean by this more clearly is there is a connection between what you are describing as aesthetically good and “the good” (not a bad thing, you are in great company with that stance). In the view presented are these things separate? Can they be? Can something be beautiful, but ethically bad?
I’m new to the Lesswrong space so excuse my ignorance if these points have been touched upon by you or others in previous posts.
Thanks for the questions!
I think they form an obvious spectrum, but I’ve personally found it’s a fairly different operation to consider “should I change such that I find something viscerally distasteful, which I hadn’t found distasteful before?” vs “should I find something beautiful that I didn’t find beautiful before?”.
In particular, gaining appreciation for a new sort of beauty mostly makes my life better (I now have a new way of appreciating the world, which I find intrinsically nice, in addition to the downstream epistemic value of properly appreciating a thing).
Gaining a source of ugliness… well, makes the world more ugly. Which feels viscerally unpleasant. I might want to do it because the ugliness is important to be able to see, and change. But the fact that it’s going to be unpleasant at least gives me initial hesitation to do so (I might ultimately prefer to become the sort of person who can do this more easily, but I think I’d find it somewhat harder, and I’m not confident it’s psychologically healthy to do it all the time even if the ugliness is in some sense “real”).
(These are claims about what I find hard or easy, or “qualitatively different”, rather than claims about what is a good or bad action to take)
This is a good question which I was somewhat uncertain about. Some partial answers:
1. I’m pretty sure, even insofar as goodness and ethicalness are correlated, that the perception of goodness and ethicalness feel qualitatively different. (Like, the “help each other out” morality feels practically good, and also I feel romantic vibes about it’s Miyazaki-Movie-Ness)
2. Also, at the very least, things like Harsh Deserts are beautiful but morally neutral at best (and possibly bad. Like, it’s plausible I’d want to replace most harsh deserts with verdant land)
3. It’s possible you might find a source of beauty in some bad things (like, say, romanticizing classy Jewel Thieves or charismatic con artists). This might be a case where (in light of this post), one might say “well, the correct thing is to bring that sense of beauty in line with the reality of the people who are hurt by jewel thieves and con artists.” But I’m not actually sure that’s a useful thing to do. (I’m on the fence about this)