If this were true [surprising positives], walking around with a negativity bias would result in more often feeling happiness. Empirically, I don't think that is the case. Maybe they are overall less happy, but experience more episodes of happiness a la your proposal? Idk, would need an EMA design.
If this were true [surprising positives], walking around with a negativity bias would result in more often feeling happiness. Empirically, I don't think that is the case. Maybe they are overall less happy, but experience more episodes of happiness a la your proposal? Idk, would need an EMA design.
Interesting point. It might be that negativity bias is more about interpreting/perceiving things as negative than expecting them to be negative. Or maybe they go together: we tend to both expect and interpret/perceive things in the same way. Agreed it would be tricky to assess empirically.
Damn, maybe this is why IтАЩm usually so happy and optimistic! IтАЩm quite skeptical and try to never expect anything of a given situation, but I also place a great amount of value in potential and creation. To use music as an example, itтАЩs an endless source of challenges and labor, but it equally produces an endless source of interpretation and perception. To use mechanical terms to describe it, anyway. Plus itтАЩs just nice to experience, the stuff that is good doesnтАЩt have to get old if you enjoy it for what makes it good.
Yes, music might well be the exception to the rule of happiness being bullshit. I subscribe to the Arthur Schopenhauer school of thought that everything sucks except for music. Part of the answer of why music doesn't suck is that it's designed to be optimally expectation-violating. The point of a great melody is to set you up to expect a note, give you a different note, and then finally give you the note you want when you're least expecting it. The quest for ever more niche and atonal music is the quest for ever more surprising and expectation-violating music. It might actually be analogous to the quest for happiness, insofar as happiness is just the feeling of one's expectations being violated in a positive way. So I might have just proved my own thesis wrong, at least for the case of music.
Oh man thatтАЩs funny, IтАЩm not a Schopenhauer-ian at all. I subscribe to a mix of Nietzsche, Marx, and Yusuf Lateef when it comes to a background basis for my aesthetic philosophy, and thereтАЩs plenty more names IтАЩm leaving out. Bernstein and Ives are some good American musical influences who also explored aesthetic philosophy, and thereтАЩs plenty of modern era musicians whoтАЩve given some great input on the music medium. Taruskin and Babbit come to mind.
IтАЩm also classically trained, and I have a bone to pick with тАЬatonalтАЭ music and academic musical niches. For one, atonal is a misnomer. What people really mean is dis-harmonious or nonfunctional harmony, or possibly even aleatoric. And ItтАЩs far to common for academic-trained contemporaries to fixate too strongly on their individual aesthetic interests alone, where they forget to contribute to cultivating a larger genre or style that can be popularized in a sense that itтАЩs relatable to an audience who is listening to the music itself. Milton Babbit would be a good read on this further if youтАЩre interested.
Yea, I'm not a huge fan "atonal" music, though I do enjoy it in small bursts for the purpose of catching me off guard. Thanks for the recommendation on Babbit, will check him out.
It's not about expectation violation in general. It's about things being unexpectedly good (e.g. status-boosting, comfort-boosting, etc.). So it doesn't cover things being unexpectedly painful, unexpectedly bright, unexpectedly quiet, etc.
But music is essentially arbitrary, it's not painful or bright or quiet, doesn't inherently signal or carry any status, doesn't provide any intrinsic value, etc. in the way that other things do. It's meaningful because we decided it is, and the expectation violating aspect of it gives it a lot of replay value. It seems to me that if you can decide that an activity is meaningful like we do the music, it could be equally satisfying as music.
If you really subscribe to the idea that everything sucks except music, I would be interested to hear more details about what you think differences music has compared to everything else. Is there a metric we can use to say "is this music?" If everything sucks except music, and something doesn't suck, does that mean it's music?
Thanks, Kevin. These are great points. I'm afraid I have no compelling theory of music. It might be a byproduct of language processing, vocal signals of emotion (scary music does kind of sound like screaming), habitat preference (environments with clearly differentiated sounds are easier to navigate than cacophonies), and group coordination (it feels good to move and sing in synchrony because it shows we're cohesive and unified). But I have no idea why certain kinds of musical expectation-violation are appealing and others aren't, and I have no idea what kind of adaptive value those violations might be signaling. Maybe it's a kind of information value? We're learning to better predict the sonic profile of our environments? Not sure.
In any case, the reason why I think music doesn't suck is because it's not obviously connected to any unflattering social motivation like status-seeking. The sounds themselves are pleasant or unpleasant, regardless of who is making them or who else might be around to hear them. There is something pure about that. One could say the same thing about enjoying the beauty of nature. I have a post called "there is a problem with our desires" that talks about how most of our desires are saturated with unflattering competitive motivations. But I think music and natural beauty are the exceptions. There is no problem with those desires. That's what I mean when I say they don't suck.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I like those evolutionary theories of why music is so captivating. I'm also really intrigued when I meet people that don't like music - what might be different about them that they don't like music - or have they just not heard the right music - and what does that mean for the idea that music holds some kind of universal interest for humans? I find it very interesting that out of 7000+ languages, all of them have words for music and dance. However, not all of them have words for "three" or "blue". There is something truly primitive about our relationship with sound and movement when used for play/enjoyment.
I think that it must boil down to physical/physiological reactions from our primary senses that directly create pleasure. As you said, the sounds themself are pleasant, regardless of who is making them (see: people hate Kanye West's politics but continue to listen to the music). So I would argue that it a whole gamet of things that don't suck, and they're the things that are directly enjoyable because of what they are - not because of what they do for us, what they mean, or what they can become - they just are. Additionally, they can't be controlled and commodified. You can lock me in a cell so I can't see the forest, but if I find enjoyment in the beauty of vision itself, I can find the metal of the bars of the cell aesthetically pleasing too. I'd say anything derived from our 5 main senses can be things that don't suck - sounds, smells, tastes, touches, and sights.
I fall into the latter camp. Music not only precludes the encoding of formal language, but it operates as a medium for emotional communication, which can be combined with other communication methods in a social context. It also operates as a signal for sexual fitness (skill development, adeptness and desirability). There are further philosophical considerations I could go into that argue for the salience of musicтАЩs value (manifestation of religious or spiritual experiences, itтАЩs dialectical nature of abstract and material conditions), but that would require more than a comment.
Thanks for sharing. I've never heard of this term before but I'm a bit skeptical of its validity or at least, its meaning
"Something is adaptive if it helps an organism survive in its environment."
Does this mean if it has a "neutral" effect it's not adaptive, or does it have to be negative to be "not adaptive"?
If it's the latter, we'd we subscribe to the cheesecake theory, then we enjoy music but it is detrimental to our survival. Seems weird and probably wrong?
If it's the former, then how much of a "positive impact" does it have to have in order to be considered adaptive? What if it has a positive impact for some people but a negative for others?
It seems hard to argue for adaptiveness when it is hard to define the concept and determine whether something actually does help an organism survive. But it seems to me that if something makes people really happy (the "cheesecake") without seeming have any side effects (like heroin does) then how can it not help a (human) organism survive?
When humans aren't happy, they don't want to be alive. Existence is a choice for us. Anything that makes us happy makes it worth it for us to keep going, and with something like music that has all the other benefits, it seems clear to me that it is surely adaptive.
This is such an odd description of music to me. I agree that it has value because we assign it value, but that alone gives it the merit of being intrinsically valuable in-itself for the sake that we devised it from sound and/or тАЬnoiseтАЭ.
This makes it not arbitrary by definition, and I think in our other thread you would agree there are ways we use it as humans that would suggest as much. We do ascribe qualities such as bright or quiet to music to describe it, and we do use it in common to convey status and symbol.
The funny bit about тАЬexpectation violationтАЭ (not your fault for using the term here haha) is that itтАЩs a backwards understanding of music. Music constantly prepared and set us up recognizable patterns, thatтАЩs why melodies are so catchy. I think your hunch that the qualities of enjoying music apply to other activities or factors of life is correct.
If this were true [surprising positives], walking around with a negativity bias would result in more often feeling happiness. Empirically, I don't think that is the case. Maybe they are overall less happy, but experience more episodes of happiness a la your proposal? Idk, would need an EMA design.
Interesting point. It might be that negativity bias is more about interpreting/perceiving things as negative than expecting them to be negative. Or maybe they go together: we tend to both expect and interpret/perceive things in the same way. Agreed it would be tricky to assess empirically.
Damn, maybe this is why IтАЩm usually so happy and optimistic! IтАЩm quite skeptical and try to never expect anything of a given situation, but I also place a great amount of value in potential and creation. To use music as an example, itтАЩs an endless source of challenges and labor, but it equally produces an endless source of interpretation and perception. To use mechanical terms to describe it, anyway. Plus itтАЩs just nice to experience, the stuff that is good doesnтАЩt have to get old if you enjoy it for what makes it good.
Yes, music might well be the exception to the rule of happiness being bullshit. I subscribe to the Arthur Schopenhauer school of thought that everything sucks except for music. Part of the answer of why music doesn't suck is that it's designed to be optimally expectation-violating. The point of a great melody is to set you up to expect a note, give you a different note, and then finally give you the note you want when you're least expecting it. The quest for ever more niche and atonal music is the quest for ever more surprising and expectation-violating music. It might actually be analogous to the quest for happiness, insofar as happiness is just the feeling of one's expectations being violated in a positive way. So I might have just proved my own thesis wrong, at least for the case of music.
Oh man thatтАЩs funny, IтАЩm not a Schopenhauer-ian at all. I subscribe to a mix of Nietzsche, Marx, and Yusuf Lateef when it comes to a background basis for my aesthetic philosophy, and thereтАЩs plenty more names IтАЩm leaving out. Bernstein and Ives are some good American musical influences who also explored aesthetic philosophy, and thereтАЩs plenty of modern era musicians whoтАЩve given some great input on the music medium. Taruskin and Babbit come to mind.
IтАЩm also classically trained, and I have a bone to pick with тАЬatonalтАЭ music and academic musical niches. For one, atonal is a misnomer. What people really mean is dis-harmonious or nonfunctional harmony, or possibly even aleatoric. And ItтАЩs far to common for academic-trained contemporaries to fixate too strongly on their individual aesthetic interests alone, where they forget to contribute to cultivating a larger genre or style that can be popularized in a sense that itтАЩs relatable to an audience who is listening to the music itself. Milton Babbit would be a good read on this further if youтАЩre interested.
Yea, I'm not a huge fan "atonal" music, though I do enjoy it in small bursts for the purpose of catching me off guard. Thanks for the recommendation on Babbit, will check him out.
If you believe this to be the case, then I think there must be other things that are optimally expectation-violating.
It's not about expectation violation in general. It's about things being unexpectedly good (e.g. status-boosting, comfort-boosting, etc.). So it doesn't cover things being unexpectedly painful, unexpectedly bright, unexpectedly quiet, etc.
But music is essentially arbitrary, it's not painful or bright or quiet, doesn't inherently signal or carry any status, doesn't provide any intrinsic value, etc. in the way that other things do. It's meaningful because we decided it is, and the expectation violating aspect of it gives it a lot of replay value. It seems to me that if you can decide that an activity is meaningful like we do the music, it could be equally satisfying as music.
If you really subscribe to the idea that everything sucks except music, I would be interested to hear more details about what you think differences music has compared to everything else. Is there a metric we can use to say "is this music?" If everything sucks except music, and something doesn't suck, does that mean it's music?
Thanks, Kevin. These are great points. I'm afraid I have no compelling theory of music. It might be a byproduct of language processing, vocal signals of emotion (scary music does kind of sound like screaming), habitat preference (environments with clearly differentiated sounds are easier to navigate than cacophonies), and group coordination (it feels good to move and sing in synchrony because it shows we're cohesive and unified). But I have no idea why certain kinds of musical expectation-violation are appealing and others aren't, and I have no idea what kind of adaptive value those violations might be signaling. Maybe it's a kind of information value? We're learning to better predict the sonic profile of our environments? Not sure.
In any case, the reason why I think music doesn't suck is because it's not obviously connected to any unflattering social motivation like status-seeking. The sounds themselves are pleasant or unpleasant, regardless of who is making them or who else might be around to hear them. There is something pure about that. One could say the same thing about enjoying the beauty of nature. I have a post called "there is a problem with our desires" that talks about how most of our desires are saturated with unflattering competitive motivations. But I think music and natural beauty are the exceptions. There is no problem with those desires. That's what I mean when I say they don't suck.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I like those evolutionary theories of why music is so captivating. I'm also really intrigued when I meet people that don't like music - what might be different about them that they don't like music - or have they just not heard the right music - and what does that mean for the idea that music holds some kind of universal interest for humans? I find it very interesting that out of 7000+ languages, all of them have words for music and dance. However, not all of them have words for "three" or "blue". There is something truly primitive about our relationship with sound and movement when used for play/enjoyment.
I think that it must boil down to physical/physiological reactions from our primary senses that directly create pleasure. As you said, the sounds themself are pleasant, regardless of who is making them (see: people hate Kanye West's politics but continue to listen to the music). So I would argue that it a whole gamet of things that don't suck, and they're the things that are directly enjoyable because of what they are - not because of what they do for us, what they mean, or what they can become - they just are. Additionally, they can't be controlled and commodified. You can lock me in a cell so I can't see the forest, but if I find enjoyment in the beauty of vision itself, I can find the metal of the bars of the cell aesthetically pleasing too. I'd say anything derived from our 5 main senses can be things that don't suck - sounds, smells, tastes, touches, and sights.
Just stumbled on this! HereтАЩs a debate over what youтАЩre looking for:
https://brianjump.net/2020/11/02/why-does-music-exist/
I fall into the latter camp. Music not only precludes the encoding of formal language, but it operates as a medium for emotional communication, which can be combined with other communication methods in a social context. It also operates as a signal for sexual fitness (skill development, adeptness and desirability). There are further philosophical considerations I could go into that argue for the salience of musicтАЩs value (manifestation of religious or spiritual experiences, itтАЩs dialectical nature of abstract and material conditions), but that would require more than a comment.
Thanks for sharing. I've never heard of this term before but I'm a bit skeptical of its validity or at least, its meaning
"Something is adaptive if it helps an organism survive in its environment."
Does this mean if it has a "neutral" effect it's not adaptive, or does it have to be negative to be "not adaptive"?
If it's the latter, we'd we subscribe to the cheesecake theory, then we enjoy music but it is detrimental to our survival. Seems weird and probably wrong?
If it's the former, then how much of a "positive impact" does it have to have in order to be considered adaptive? What if it has a positive impact for some people but a negative for others?
It seems hard to argue for adaptiveness when it is hard to define the concept and determine whether something actually does help an organism survive. But it seems to me that if something makes people really happy (the "cheesecake") without seeming have any side effects (like heroin does) then how can it not help a (human) organism survive?
When humans aren't happy, they don't want to be alive. Existence is a choice for us. Anything that makes us happy makes it worth it for us to keep going, and with something like music that has all the other benefits, it seems clear to me that it is surely adaptive.
This is such an odd description of music to me. I agree that it has value because we assign it value, but that alone gives it the merit of being intrinsically valuable in-itself for the sake that we devised it from sound and/or тАЬnoiseтАЭ.
This makes it not arbitrary by definition, and I think in our other thread you would agree there are ways we use it as humans that would suggest as much. We do ascribe qualities such as bright or quiet to music to describe it, and we do use it in common to convey status and symbol.
The funny bit about тАЬexpectation violationтАЭ (not your fault for using the term here haha) is that itтАЩs a backwards understanding of music. Music constantly prepared and set us up recognizable patterns, thatтАЩs why melodies are so catchy. I think your hunch that the qualities of enjoying music apply to other activities or factors of life is correct.