(Edit to say that this is in response to the culture and aesthetics article)
I take there to be a number of different things we want out of an piece of cultural production.
Expression of universal aspects of human nature, emotions.
Sensory stimuli (why old horror movies aren’t scary, older movies have longer shots, and Michael Bay has a career).
Shared cultural experience- (we like to consume works that are already cultural embedded, we want to share in something nearly everyone experiences- this is why it is worth reading Homer, seeing Star Wars and listening to the Beatles).
Capturing the spirit of the times (we like it when works express what is unique in us, works that capture our sense of place and time, how we’re different from our parents, etc. this is why punk music wouldn’t have worked in the 18th century, why we have shows like the Wire, and why Rambo’s motivations are really confusing for people born after 1980 who never took a modern history course.).
Your argument seems to turn on saying that whatever piece of culture you’re consuming now you could be equally satisfied with something older. This seems to be the case with regard to the first criterion but once one admits the second and the fourth new production is essential.
Sensory stimuli (why old horror movies aren’t scary, older movies have longer shots, and Michael Bay has a career).
But what extra sensory stimulation does Dan Brown’s novels have over Don Quixote? If anything, the medieval printings (to say nothing of the illuminated manuscripts) could be much more elaborate and visually complex, and for every adjective Dan Brown employes, Cervantes uses 10 and throws in an allegorical speech. (I kid, but you know what I mean.)
Further, if we imagined that we had only a few books in existence of high quality (ie. not a lifetime’s worth), and nothing else but this hot new medium of video games, then the technical development must come to an end at some point and then regular production will push us ever closer to the point where the argument resurrects itself. Notice that Nintendo has for 2 consoles generations now chosen to not compete on sound or graphics. I don’t doubt that there are further innovations in store, but at some point video games will become like novels are now, and movies are fast becoming: a medium whose full limitations are known and anything desired produced.
Capturing the spirit of the times (we like it when works express what is unique in us, works that capture our sense of place and time, how we’re different from our parents, etc. this is why punk music wouldn’t have worked in the 18th century, why we have shows like the Wire, and why Rambo’s motivations are really confusing for people born after 1980 who never took a modern history course.).
With enough superior works of #1, we don’t need that. But I think you’re a little pessimistic. Why couldn’tve punk have worked in the 19th century?
Religious folks read the Bible and Islam in every time period for every conceivable purpose and regularly produce new interpretations for their time. Consider the hippie Jesus compared to the medieval Catholic Jesus; or look at higher biblical criticism. One might think that after 1800 and more years of intensive analysis & exegesis, nothing new could really be said about the text, much less a powerful new interpretation of just about everything that will send shockwaves through Christian & Jewish communities around the world and fundamentally altered many sects—in a way that was more appropriate for a post-Enlightenment/Industrial Age world.
And of course, Shakespeare keeps being tweaked and and reinterpreted to speak to society’s current interests.
But what extra sensory stimulation does Dan Brown’s novels have over Don Quixote?
I admit to never having read Don Quixote. I’ve read Dan Brown and mostly hate him. But it seems pretty obvious to me that Brown’s pace is a lot faster and thats basically what we mean by sensory stimulation for books. Its the equivalent of shorter shots in film. New problems are always popping up, the setting is always changing, etc. And the mind’s eye can only adjust to so much additional description. I don’t think a longer, more detailed description of a single scene creates more stimulating than more basic descriptions of three different scenes.
then the technical development must come to an end at some point and then regular production will push us ever closer to the point where the argument resurrects itself
While this is true of some technologies I’m not sure this is necessarily true of all mediums. Either way, the technological advancements are permanent. Old black and white and color films don’t suddenly become equally simulative once the technology plateaus. This means that the argument doesn’t resurrect itself until well after the technology plateaus as you have to give the industry time to match older accomplishments in the other criteria. In other words, you don’t oversaturate society with films until you’ve matched what is good about Citizen Kane, Casablanca and Seven Samurai but added high tech sensory stimulation.
With enough superior works of #1, we don’t need that. But I think you’re a little pessimistic. Why couldn’tve punk have worked in the 19th century?
/#1 and #4 aren’t interchangeable. You can’t quell the desire to consume works that speak to our uniqueness and “The Moment” by supplying people with universal works. Try forcing a teenager to listen to their parent’s music (there is a surprising revival of classic rock with this generation but historically music taste revealed large generational differences).
The scholarly work on the rise of punk music almost always talks about punk as a response to a particular socio-polico-economic condition. Obviously cultural studies isn’t a hard science and lacks ideal standards of evidence, but I’ve found this particular claim convincing. See Subculture: The Meaning of Style by Dick Hebdige. More obviously, the reaction to new music by older generations seems to suggest that what constitutes good music can be temporally relative. I think any invocation of “youth culture” pretty much suggests this.
I’m not sure what the force of your paragraph on reinterpreting the Bible is supposed to be?
But it seems pretty obvious to me that Brown’s pace is a lot faster and thats basically what we mean by sensory stimulation for books. Its the equivalent of shorter shots in film.
Then shouldn’t short story anthologies rule the roost? Those beat out any regular novel for scene changes (each story has several scenes, stories usually aren’t long), yet they are almost as commercially suicidal as poems (even quicker than short stories, for that matter). And we don’t see much travel fiction like Marco Polo or Ariosto these days.
While this is true of some technologies I’m not sure this is necessarily true of all mediums. Either way, the technological advancements are permanent. Old black and white and color films don’t suddenly become equally simulative once the technology plateaus. This means that the argument doesn’t resurrect itself until well after the technology plateaus as you have to give the industry time to match older accomplishments in the other criteria.
Sure, but this point is only important to prevent people from having an escape hatch: ‘Aha! We have plenty of books, sure, but how about movies? video games, etc.’ This point says that the clock is ticking even for them. In order for a new medium or genre to defeat this argument, it would have to be capable of improving itself for forever, and at a competitive price-point. I don’t think this can be done short of the Holodeck or simulated worlds or something, and even then there may be issues. (Consider Pascal’s mugging and bounded utility functions—if we create enough art to reach the bound, then we neither need nor want more.)
#1 and #4 aren’t interchangeable. You can’t quell the desire to consume works that speak to our uniqueness and “The Moment” by supplying people with universal works...I’m not sure what the force of your paragraph on reinterpreting the Bible is supposed to be?
The point is that I think your modalities 1-4 are like saying that there are different incommensurable kinds of utilons, and no number of 1-utilons can make up for a deficit in 3-utilons. The Bible example is specifically intended to show that people can derive all of those utilons from even the narrowest or most worthless resource, and that they can do so apparently ad infinitum (no sign of weariness of the Bible yet...), which all suggests to me that there’s really just one utilon.
Then shouldn’t short story anthologies rule the roost? Those beat out any regular novel for scene changes (each story has several scenes, stories usually aren’t long), yet they are almost as commercially suicidal as poems (even quicker than short stories, for that matter). And we don’t see much travel fiction like Marco Polo or Ariosto these days.
The criteria isn’t scenes per page, its new mental picture per minute of reading time.
Sure, but this point is only important to prevent people from having an escape hatch: ‘Aha! We have plenty of books, sure, but how about movies? video games, etc.’ This point says that the clock is ticking even for them.
Conceded. But its a minor concession. Yes, when we have perfect-as-possible world-simulators new technology will at some time after that no longer be a driving force of cultural production. When we have perfect computer graphics/camera and film techniques technology will no longer drive the production of films once top-level films match earlier productions in the other criteria.
The point is that I think your modalities 1-4 are like saying that there are different incommensurable kinds of utilons, and no number of 1-utilons can make up for a deficit in 3-utilons. The Bible example is specifically intended to show that people can derive all of those utilons from even the narrowest or most worthless resource, and that they can do so apparently ad infinitum (no sign of weariness of the Bible yet...), which all suggests to me that there’s really just one utilon.
There are diminishing returns with all the modalities. So you won’t maximize total utility by just maximizing one of the modalities. So lets say modality #2 ceases to be relevant because of technological plateau. In that case people will best maximize their utility by consuming top-of-the-line productions that satisfy large amounts desires for #3, #4 and #1. Modality #3 is mostly contingent on the consumption decisions of everyone else so put that aside. Then the ideal cultural production will speak to the times and touch on universal themes. These might be rare but will only be possible if cultural production continues indefinitely. Aside from these works one would want to consume an equal of “speaking to the times” works and “universal” works (holding constant for preferring one over the other generally). Unless we value universal themes a heck of a lot more than timeliness this means there is additional need for new cultural production even when that production doesn’t speak to universal themes.
I’m still not sure if I get the Bible thing. It is true that there are a lot of people who derive a lot of utility from reading the the Bible repeatedly. But the people who do this aren’t reading the Bible as literature (are there non-theists who just love the Pentateuch? Is the Koran any atheist’s “favorite book” on Facebook?). They’re getting utility because they think they’re reading the work a superbeing wrote to speak to their narrow parochial concerns. These are the only people who come up with modern interpretation and they do so precisely because the Bible taken at face value says so little about modern concerns. They’re trying to make up for the shortcomings of the Bible with regard to #4.
You would rather have us clumsily interpreting Pride and Prejudice so that is seems more relevant to promiscuous, polyamorous culture than just write new books?
The criteria isn’t scenes per page, its new mental picture per minute of reading time.
Don’t see how that affects my examples. Here’s another: how could a book of haiku have a less favorable ratio of ‘new mental picture per minute of reading time’ than a Dan Brown novel?
Then the ideal cultural production will speak to the times and touch on universal themes. These might be rare but will only be possible if cultural production continues indefinitely. Aside from these works one would want to consume an equal of “speaking to the times” works and “universal” works (holding constant for preferring one over the other generally). Unless we value universal themes a heck of a lot more than timeliness this means there is additional need for new cultural production even when that production doesn’t speak to universal themes.
This is your best point so far. Now, diminishing returns doesn’t mean no returns, nor does it necessarily implie converging on any constant (if I remember my limits correctly); but given a finite lifespan, hitting any diminishing returns means a suboptimal set of choices. So we could have thousands of Shakespeares waiting for readers, but if they are all eternal-veritied out, it’s still a suboptimal situation.
This definitely blunts my argument. I think I can save it by permitting a small level of current-events production (if you produce too much, then it can’t be consumed while current, after all), and there would still a lot of cost-savings—I saw my little sister with a copy of the very popular Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which is certainly a current-events literary production if ever there was one, yet I’m sure it cost very little to write (Grahame-Smith claims he wrote only 15% of the final text, and the constraints surely made it much easier to write that), and no doubt much less than subsidizing universities to educate in creative writing hundreds of students.
But the people who do this aren’t reading the Bible as literature (are there non-theists who just love the Pentateuch? Is the Koran any atheist’s “favorite book” on Facebook?).
I’m an atheist, but I’ll freely admit I derive tons of pleasure from the Book of Job, to just name one book. And as for the Koran: I was reasonably impressed on my read-through of the translation by its literary qualities, and I have been given to understand that the original Arabic was so highly regarded even by non-believers that Arabic literature can be divided into pre- and post- periods, and has since dominated Arabic prosody. Here’s a random quick description:
“Besides making a masterful use of language on the level of words and phrases, it contains figures of speech, satire, and irony; employs a variety of narrative and dramatic techniques; and presents characters that, is spite of the sparse personal detail provided about them, come across as vivid figures. For those who can read the Qur’ān in Arabic, the all-pervading rhythm which, in conjunction with the sustained use of what may be called rhymed prose, creates in many sūrahs a spellbinding effect that is impossible to reproduce. There is the characteristic terseness of the Qur’ānic language which makes for some complex constructions, but which is difficult to convey in English without being awkward. The existing translations of the Qur’ān impose a further limitation, for they fall so far short of the highly nuanced original that a detailed study of the Qur’ānic language and style on their basis is well-nigh impossible.” http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Q_Studies/Mirliter.html
(As for Facebook—if you’re here, you can construct the social signaling argument why an atheist would specifically avoid publicizing his appreciation of religious literature, if he can even get past his own hangups in the first place.)
You would rather have us clumsily interpreting Pride and Prejudice so that is seems more relevant to promiscuous, polyamorous culture than just write new books?
We do that already, very inefficiently, via universities. And see my previous comment on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies… Writing new books is risky, as Jane Austens are rare; critics & interpreters, on the other hand, are plentiful & cheap.
And just to show that the Bible-as-literature isn’t me, here’s Richard Dawkins:
“Not entirely, sir. Parts of holy writ have great poetic merit, especially in the English translation known as the King James, or Authorized version of 1611. The cadences of the Book of Ecclesiastes and some of the prophets have seldom been surpassed, sir.”
Don’t see how that affects my examples. Here’s another: how could a book of haiku have a less favorable ratio of ‘new mental picture per minute of reading time’ than a Dan Brown novel?
I mean, maybe they don’t. But this haiku also don’t have twisting plots with anti-matter bombs and ancient religious conspiracies. In general though, I don’t think most short stories or most poems have more favorable ratios than thriller novels. But in any case there are other reasons to prefer thriller novels. The relevant comparison is thriller novels of today and thriller novels of the past.
I think I can save it by permitting a small level of current-events production (if you produce too much, then it can’t be consumed while current, after all),
Right, though of course the entire culture won’t want to consume the same set of these works. You’ll want to have timely products specific to age-group and subculture. Now I don’t know where the ideal level of timely cultural production is but I’m not sure why the market wouldn’t have already sorted this out. Publishers, studios and record companies are all profit driven organizations and if they could make more money just re-releasing old works instead of signing new authors and artists I think they would since it would save them money. Why shouldn’t we think the culture market is efficient? In fact, given how little time most people actually spend consuming Shakespeare (compared to Will Ferrell comedies) it seems to me that timeliness is valued far more than eternal truths.
I’m a fan of the book of Job too. I also like Genesis. And I have heard the same things about the Koran. But I couldn’t possibly read the Bible everyday without it seriously diminishing in utility for me. And the are large swaths that are painful to read. I also don’t have any particular need for it to have timely or prescient lessons. The people are getting large portions of the desire for cultural production fulfilled by reading the Bible again and again, day after day are almost exclusively believers.
As for subsidized universities teaching creative writing I don’t have any reason to think that more creative writing (and I guess, Video Game Creation and Film) students actually translates into more resources wasted producing unnecessary cultural works. Those students are only ever going to get paid for their work if there is a market demand for it and to the extent they spend time producing works when there isn’t a demand for it we should just classify that time as leisure time which benefits overall utility.
Now I don’t know where the ideal level of timely cultural production is but I’m not sure why the market wouldn’t have already sorted this out. Publishers, studios and record companies are all profit driven organizations and if they could make more money just re-releasing old works instead of signing new authors and artists I think they would since it would save them money. Why shouldn’t we think the culture market is efficient?
I almost forebear from pointing this out but… we have very good reason to think that the culture market is not efficient. That is, the whole intellectual property regime constitutes massive government intervention & subsidy (as I specifically wrote). If Will Ferrell comedies weren’t copyrighted, how much worse do you think they would do against Shakespeare?
(I’ll note in passing that publishers like Folgers go to great lengths to make their Shakespeare editions copyrighted, by claiming editorial mending (eg. stitching together plays from the various folio and quartos), by adding in useless essays and retrospectives that the target demographic—students—will never ever read, and so on.)
But I couldn’t possibly read the Bible everyday without it seriously diminishing in utility for me.
The people who can do so were raised that way. The Bible shows that to a great degree, the quality and ‘endurance’ (depth?) of a work is subjective & culturally set. If you were raised in a culture that discouraged/didn’t-encourage new works, do you think you would still be literarily restless and footloose all your life? A different point: perhaps the Bible is not your ideal book, but do you think there does not now exist one for you?
Those students are only ever going to get paid for their work if there is a market demand for it and to the extent they spend time producing works when there isn’t a demand for it we should just classify that time as leisure time which benefits overall utility.
This seems to assume an efficient market again. But wages and employment are portions of the economy notoriously irrational/inefficient (eg. ‘wage stickiness’); if a student has spent 4 years learning creative writing (and even more for the masters), likely going into debt for it, are they really going to admit their mistake and work in some more remunerative field?
No, of course not, either out of sheer stubbornness (to do so would be to admit a massive mistake), or because they love the field. Ergo, an inefficiency where there is an oversupply of English majors. (I believe Robin Hanson has a similar theory: that there are too many musicians, resulting in near-minimum-wage average pay, because it’s glamorous/socially-impressive.)
I almost forebear from pointing this out but… we have very good reason to think that the culture market is not efficient. That is, the whole intellectual property regime constitutes massive government intervention & subsidy (as I specifically wrote). If Will Ferrell comedies weren’t copyrighted, how much worse do you think they would do against Shakespeare?
We actually can test this question. On the internet copyright laws are so poorly enforced that they might as well not exist. Do you think Will Ferrell movies are downloaded at a lower or higher rate than Shakespeare? Now maybe we think the reason for this is that Will Ferrell comedies are only available for free on the internet whereas Shakespeare is copyright free everywhere. But we can compare Will Ferrell movies to older movies that are still under copyright and they’ll still do better—maybe not always over the long term, but certainly in the period in which they are timely and relevant.
How exactly are copyright laws supposed to skew the market toward recent works anyway? Sure, it means the production companies need to produce new works and advertise them, but it basically counts as a tax on consuming any work produced in the copyright period. The fact that there is a thriving culture industry despite the existence of copyright termination should count as a reason to think there is a real desire for new production. We might think that the desire is just constructed by the industry through advertising—but the culture industry wouldn’t be different in this regard from any other industry.
The people who can do so were raised that way.
Maybe. But my argument is that they just think they’re reading the words of God. I think that reason is a lot more compelling but I’m not sure how to settle it. Are there non-religious works that draw the same kind of adoration? If I thought there was a book written by God I would read it as much as possible, too.
If you were raised in a culture that discouraged/didn’t-encourage new works, do you think you would still be literarily restless and footloose all your life?
Well that definitely isn’t going to make me want to read one book again and again. If the quality of new works decreased I probably would read old works more but only because of the quality disparity not because I would no longer have a desire to read good, new works. I do wonder though, if there is a neurodiversity issue here. I have pretty serious ADHD which might contribute to my having a steeper drop in returns from repeat consumption.
Re: The English major
You’re right. Though I think an English degree is mostly an inefficient because it doesn’t get used, not because it does. Still it is plausible that a resulting surplus of works drives the production price down...
Edit: I’m not sure I have a response. Or if I need one. It sort of depends on what would happen to the quality of work in a world without English departments which I find very difficult to answer.
Do you think Will Ferrell movies are downloaded at a lower or higher rate than Shakespeare?
Heh. I don’t see any feasible way to measure that!
Now maybe we think the reason for this is that Will Ferrell comedies are only available for free on the internet whereas Shakespeare is copyright free everywhere. But we can compare Will Ferrell movies to older movies that are still under copyright and they’ll still do better—maybe not always over the long term, but certainly in the period in which they are timely and relevant.
Is it fair to simply ignore the long term? It’d be kind of strange to hear advice that bonds are the best investment around ‘because stocks aren’t paying you anything right now’.
The fact that there is a thriving culture industry despite the existence of copyright termination should count as a reason to think there is a real desire for new production. We might think that the desire is just constructed by the industry through advertising—but the culture industry wouldn’t be different in this regard from any other industry.
A local but not global optima? I just read Ainslie’s Breakdown of Will, and it really seems to me like hyperbolic discounting might explain why people go ‘ooh, shiny!’ about new works though they shouldn’t want to pay the copyright tax.
If the quality of new works decreased I probably would read old works more but only because of the quality disparity not because I would no longer have a desire to read good, new works.
Would you really? In your life, there has surely been a year or two where quality of production has dropped (art isn’t so reliable & consistent as to only improve every year); did you shift your reading habits?
Is it fair to simply ignore the long term? It’d be kind of strange to hear advice that bonds are the best investment around ‘because stocks aren’t paying you anything right now’.
I’m only ignoring the long term because I’m looking for evidence that the rate at which the market produces new, timely works is reasonably close to what the demand for such works is.
Would you really? In your life, there has surely been a year or two where quality of production has dropped (art isn’t so reliable & consistent as to only improve every year); did you shift your reading habits?
My fiction reading habits have very little to do with timeliness concerns. I read new fiction when an author I like produces it. Otherwise my reading is focused on genre books (science fiction like everyone else here) and classics. The only temporal criteria in my reading involves preferring books written recently enough that the style isn’t so dated it slows me down. There are some occasions for preferring timely topics, for sure. But the frame for timely in these cases tends to be about 5-10 years so my reading habits won’t actually vary from year to year. I don’t even have enough information about books to even make good selections until end-of-the year lists come out. And that is part of the problem. There is very little information around that lets one compare books (and music and movies) in any systematic way except in relation to other works that came out that year. Once in a while there is an instant classic but it is had to know what the choice works of year are until a couple years later.
In short, reading habits don’t correspond to quality of output by year b/c 1) I lack the information to adjust habits accordingly and 2) the time frame for recent is quite a bit more than a year so there is no need to adjust habits accordingly.
I’m only ignoring the long term because I’m looking for evidence that the rate at which the market produces new, timely works is reasonably close to what the demand for such works is.
Indeed, the publishing industry thinks nothing of pulping millions of unsold (or libelous) books each year. And there was no outcry in 2003 when 2.5 million romance novels from the publisher Mills & Boon were buried to form the noise-reducing foundation of a motorway extension in Manchester, England.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/books/review/Schott.t.html
Even the Library of Congress doesn’t want to keep copies of everything:
(Edit to say that this is in response to the culture and aesthetics article)
I take there to be a number of different things we want out of an piece of cultural production.
Expression of universal aspects of human nature, emotions.
Sensory stimuli (why old horror movies aren’t scary, older movies have longer shots, and Michael Bay has a career).
Shared cultural experience- (we like to consume works that are already cultural embedded, we want to share in something nearly everyone experiences- this is why it is worth reading Homer, seeing Star Wars and listening to the Beatles).
Capturing the spirit of the times (we like it when works express what is unique in us, works that capture our sense of place and time, how we’re different from our parents, etc. this is why punk music wouldn’t have worked in the 18th century, why we have shows like the Wire, and why Rambo’s motivations are really confusing for people born after 1980 who never took a modern history course.).
Your argument seems to turn on saying that whatever piece of culture you’re consuming now you could be equally satisfied with something older. This seems to be the case with regard to the first criterion but once one admits the second and the fourth new production is essential.
But what extra sensory stimulation does Dan Brown’s novels have over Don Quixote? If anything, the medieval printings (to say nothing of the illuminated manuscripts) could be much more elaborate and visually complex, and for every adjective Dan Brown employes, Cervantes uses 10 and throws in an allegorical speech. (I kid, but you know what I mean.)
Further, if we imagined that we had only a few books in existence of high quality (ie. not a lifetime’s worth), and nothing else but this hot new medium of video games, then the technical development must come to an end at some point and then regular production will push us ever closer to the point where the argument resurrects itself. Notice that Nintendo has for 2 consoles generations now chosen to not compete on sound or graphics. I don’t doubt that there are further innovations in store, but at some point video games will become like novels are now, and movies are fast becoming: a medium whose full limitations are known and anything desired produced.
With enough superior works of #1, we don’t need that. But I think you’re a little pessimistic. Why couldn’tve punk have worked in the 19th century?
Religious folks read the Bible and Islam in every time period for every conceivable purpose and regularly produce new interpretations for their time. Consider the hippie Jesus compared to the medieval Catholic Jesus; or look at higher biblical criticism. One might think that after 1800 and more years of intensive analysis & exegesis, nothing new could really be said about the text, much less a powerful new interpretation of just about everything that will send shockwaves through Christian & Jewish communities around the world and fundamentally altered many sects—in a way that was more appropriate for a post-Enlightenment/Industrial Age world.
And of course, Shakespeare keeps being tweaked and and reinterpreted to speak to society’s current interests.
I admit to never having read Don Quixote. I’ve read Dan Brown and mostly hate him. But it seems pretty obvious to me that Brown’s pace is a lot faster and thats basically what we mean by sensory stimulation for books. Its the equivalent of shorter shots in film. New problems are always popping up, the setting is always changing, etc. And the mind’s eye can only adjust to so much additional description. I don’t think a longer, more detailed description of a single scene creates more stimulating than more basic descriptions of three different scenes.
While this is true of some technologies I’m not sure this is necessarily true of all mediums. Either way, the technological advancements are permanent. Old black and white and color films don’t suddenly become equally simulative once the technology plateaus. This means that the argument doesn’t resurrect itself until well after the technology plateaus as you have to give the industry time to match older accomplishments in the other criteria. In other words, you don’t oversaturate society with films until you’ve matched what is good about Citizen Kane, Casablanca and Seven Samurai but added high tech sensory stimulation.
/#1 and #4 aren’t interchangeable. You can’t quell the desire to consume works that speak to our uniqueness and “The Moment” by supplying people with universal works. Try forcing a teenager to listen to their parent’s music (there is a surprising revival of classic rock with this generation but historically music taste revealed large generational differences).
The scholarly work on the rise of punk music almost always talks about punk as a response to a particular socio-polico-economic condition. Obviously cultural studies isn’t a hard science and lacks ideal standards of evidence, but I’ve found this particular claim convincing. See Subculture: The Meaning of Style by Dick Hebdige. More obviously, the reaction to new music by older generations seems to suggest that what constitutes good music can be temporally relative. I think any invocation of “youth culture” pretty much suggests this.
I’m not sure what the force of your paragraph on reinterpreting the Bible is supposed to be?
Then shouldn’t short story anthologies rule the roost? Those beat out any regular novel for scene changes (each story has several scenes, stories usually aren’t long), yet they are almost as commercially suicidal as poems (even quicker than short stories, for that matter). And we don’t see much travel fiction like Marco Polo or Ariosto these days.
Sure, but this point is only important to prevent people from having an escape hatch: ‘Aha! We have plenty of books, sure, but how about movies? video games, etc.’ This point says that the clock is ticking even for them. In order for a new medium or genre to defeat this argument, it would have to be capable of improving itself for forever, and at a competitive price-point. I don’t think this can be done short of the Holodeck or simulated worlds or something, and even then there may be issues. (Consider Pascal’s mugging and bounded utility functions—if we create enough art to reach the bound, then we neither need nor want more.)
The point is that I think your modalities 1-4 are like saying that there are different incommensurable kinds of utilons, and no number of 1-utilons can make up for a deficit in 3-utilons. The Bible example is specifically intended to show that people can derive all of those utilons from even the narrowest or most worthless resource, and that they can do so apparently ad infinitum (no sign of weariness of the Bible yet...), which all suggests to me that there’s really just one utilon.
The criteria isn’t scenes per page, its new mental picture per minute of reading time.
Conceded. But its a minor concession. Yes, when we have perfect-as-possible world-simulators new technology will at some time after that no longer be a driving force of cultural production. When we have perfect computer graphics/camera and film techniques technology will no longer drive the production of films once top-level films match earlier productions in the other criteria.
There are diminishing returns with all the modalities. So you won’t maximize total utility by just maximizing one of the modalities. So lets say modality #2 ceases to be relevant because of technological plateau. In that case people will best maximize their utility by consuming top-of-the-line productions that satisfy large amounts desires for #3, #4 and #1. Modality #3 is mostly contingent on the consumption decisions of everyone else so put that aside. Then the ideal cultural production will speak to the times and touch on universal themes. These might be rare but will only be possible if cultural production continues indefinitely. Aside from these works one would want to consume an equal of “speaking to the times” works and “universal” works (holding constant for preferring one over the other generally). Unless we value universal themes a heck of a lot more than timeliness this means there is additional need for new cultural production even when that production doesn’t speak to universal themes.
I’m still not sure if I get the Bible thing. It is true that there are a lot of people who derive a lot of utility from reading the the Bible repeatedly. But the people who do this aren’t reading the Bible as literature (are there non-theists who just love the Pentateuch? Is the Koran any atheist’s “favorite book” on Facebook?). They’re getting utility because they think they’re reading the work a superbeing wrote to speak to their narrow parochial concerns. These are the only people who come up with modern interpretation and they do so precisely because the Bible taken at face value says so little about modern concerns. They’re trying to make up for the shortcomings of the Bible with regard to #4.
You would rather have us clumsily interpreting Pride and Prejudice so that is seems more relevant to promiscuous, polyamorous culture than just write new books?
Don’t see how that affects my examples. Here’s another: how could a book of haiku have a less favorable ratio of ‘new mental picture per minute of reading time’ than a Dan Brown novel?
This is your best point so far. Now, diminishing returns doesn’t mean no returns, nor does it necessarily implie converging on any constant (if I remember my limits correctly); but given a finite lifespan, hitting any diminishing returns means a suboptimal set of choices. So we could have thousands of Shakespeares waiting for readers, but if they are all eternal-veritied out, it’s still a suboptimal situation.
This definitely blunts my argument. I think I can save it by permitting a small level of current-events production (if you produce too much, then it can’t be consumed while current, after all), and there would still a lot of cost-savings—I saw my little sister with a copy of the very popular Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which is certainly a current-events literary production if ever there was one, yet I’m sure it cost very little to write (Grahame-Smith claims he wrote only 15% of the final text, and the constraints surely made it much easier to write that), and no doubt much less than subsidizing universities to educate in creative writing hundreds of students.
I’m an atheist, but I’ll freely admit I derive tons of pleasure from the Book of Job, to just name one book. And as for the Koran: I was reasonably impressed on my read-through of the translation by its literary qualities, and I have been given to understand that the original Arabic was so highly regarded even by non-believers that Arabic literature can be divided into pre- and post- periods, and has since dominated Arabic prosody. Here’s a random quick description:
(As for Facebook—if you’re here, you can construct the social signaling argument why an atheist would specifically avoid publicizing his appreciation of religious literature, if he can even get past his own hangups in the first place.)
We do that already, very inefficiently, via universities. And see my previous comment on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies… Writing new books is risky, as Jane Austens are rare; critics & interpreters, on the other hand, are plentiful & cheap.
And just to show that the Bible-as-literature isn’t me, here’s Richard Dawkins:
I mean, maybe they don’t. But this haiku also don’t have twisting plots with anti-matter bombs and ancient religious conspiracies. In general though, I don’t think most short stories or most poems have more favorable ratios than thriller novels. But in any case there are other reasons to prefer thriller novels. The relevant comparison is thriller novels of today and thriller novels of the past.
Right, though of course the entire culture won’t want to consume the same set of these works. You’ll want to have timely products specific to age-group and subculture. Now I don’t know where the ideal level of timely cultural production is but I’m not sure why the market wouldn’t have already sorted this out. Publishers, studios and record companies are all profit driven organizations and if they could make more money just re-releasing old works instead of signing new authors and artists I think they would since it would save them money. Why shouldn’t we think the culture market is efficient? In fact, given how little time most people actually spend consuming Shakespeare (compared to Will Ferrell comedies) it seems to me that timeliness is valued far more than eternal truths.
I’m a fan of the book of Job too. I also like Genesis. And I have heard the same things about the Koran. But I couldn’t possibly read the Bible everyday without it seriously diminishing in utility for me. And the are large swaths that are painful to read. I also don’t have any particular need for it to have timely or prescient lessons. The people are getting large portions of the desire for cultural production fulfilled by reading the Bible again and again, day after day are almost exclusively believers.
As for subsidized universities teaching creative writing I don’t have any reason to think that more creative writing (and I guess, Video Game Creation and Film) students actually translates into more resources wasted producing unnecessary cultural works. Those students are only ever going to get paid for their work if there is a market demand for it and to the extent they spend time producing works when there isn’t a demand for it we should just classify that time as leisure time which benefits overall utility.
I almost forebear from pointing this out but… we have very good reason to think that the culture market is not efficient. That is, the whole intellectual property regime constitutes massive government intervention & subsidy (as I specifically wrote). If Will Ferrell comedies weren’t copyrighted, how much worse do you think they would do against Shakespeare?
(I’ll note in passing that publishers like Folgers go to great lengths to make their Shakespeare editions copyrighted, by claiming editorial mending (eg. stitching together plays from the various folio and quartos), by adding in useless essays and retrospectives that the target demographic—students—will never ever read, and so on.)
The people who can do so were raised that way. The Bible shows that to a great degree, the quality and ‘endurance’ (depth?) of a work is subjective & culturally set. If you were raised in a culture that discouraged/didn’t-encourage new works, do you think you would still be literarily restless and footloose all your life? A different point: perhaps the Bible is not your ideal book, but do you think there does not now exist one for you?
This seems to assume an efficient market again. But wages and employment are portions of the economy notoriously irrational/inefficient (eg. ‘wage stickiness’); if a student has spent 4 years learning creative writing (and even more for the masters), likely going into debt for it, are they really going to admit their mistake and work in some more remunerative field?
No, of course not, either out of sheer stubbornness (to do so would be to admit a massive mistake), or because they love the field. Ergo, an inefficiency where there is an oversupply of English majors. (I believe Robin Hanson has a similar theory: that there are too many musicians, resulting in near-minimum-wage average pay, because it’s glamorous/socially-impressive.)
We actually can test this question. On the internet copyright laws are so poorly enforced that they might as well not exist. Do you think Will Ferrell movies are downloaded at a lower or higher rate than Shakespeare? Now maybe we think the reason for this is that Will Ferrell comedies are only available for free on the internet whereas Shakespeare is copyright free everywhere. But we can compare Will Ferrell movies to older movies that are still under copyright and they’ll still do better—maybe not always over the long term, but certainly in the period in which they are timely and relevant.
How exactly are copyright laws supposed to skew the market toward recent works anyway? Sure, it means the production companies need to produce new works and advertise them, but it basically counts as a tax on consuming any work produced in the copyright period. The fact that there is a thriving culture industry despite the existence of copyright termination should count as a reason to think there is a real desire for new production. We might think that the desire is just constructed by the industry through advertising—but the culture industry wouldn’t be different in this regard from any other industry.
Maybe. But my argument is that they just think they’re reading the words of God. I think that reason is a lot more compelling but I’m not sure how to settle it. Are there non-religious works that draw the same kind of adoration? If I thought there was a book written by God I would read it as much as possible, too.
Well that definitely isn’t going to make me want to read one book again and again. If the quality of new works decreased I probably would read old works more but only because of the quality disparity not because I would no longer have a desire to read good, new works. I do wonder though, if there is a neurodiversity issue here. I have pretty serious ADHD which might contribute to my having a steeper drop in returns from repeat consumption.
Re: The English major
You’re right. Though I think an English degree is mostly an inefficient because it doesn’t get used, not because it does. Still it is plausible that a resulting surplus of works drives the production price down...
Edit: I’m not sure I have a response. Or if I need one. It sort of depends on what would happen to the quality of work in a world without English departments which I find very difficult to answer.
Heh. I don’t see any feasible way to measure that!
Is it fair to simply ignore the long term? It’d be kind of strange to hear advice that bonds are the best investment around ‘because stocks aren’t paying you anything right now’.
A local but not global optima? I just read Ainslie’s Breakdown of Will, and it really seems to me like hyperbolic discounting might explain why people go ‘ooh, shiny!’ about new works though they shouldn’t want to pay the copyright tax.
Would you really? In your life, there has surely been a year or two where quality of production has dropped (art isn’t so reliable & consistent as to only improve every year); did you shift your reading habits?
I’m only ignoring the long term because I’m looking for evidence that the rate at which the market produces new, timely works is reasonably close to what the demand for such works is.
My fiction reading habits have very little to do with timeliness concerns. I read new fiction when an author I like produces it. Otherwise my reading is focused on genre books (science fiction like everyone else here) and classics. The only temporal criteria in my reading involves preferring books written recently enough that the style isn’t so dated it slows me down. There are some occasions for preferring timely topics, for sure. But the frame for timely in these cases tends to be about 5-10 years so my reading habits won’t actually vary from year to year. I don’t even have enough information about books to even make good selections until end-of-the year lists come out. And that is part of the problem. There is very little information around that lets one compare books (and music and movies) in any systematic way except in relation to other works that came out that year. Once in a while there is an instant classic but it is had to know what the choice works of year are until a couple years later.
In short, reading habits don’t correspond to quality of output by year b/c 1) I lack the information to adjust habits accordingly and 2) the time frame for recent is quite a bit more than a year so there is no need to adjust habits accordingly.
Close enough for government work, I suppose:
Even the Library of Congress doesn’t want to keep copies of everything: