Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
I read this post with something close to physical revulsion. (It is the culture wars thread so perhaps that's par for the course.) Not because I dislike those older pictures, I love them. I don't even like Novus Angelus that much. But Klee is a for-real artist who devoted his life to his work and if you look across his oeuvre, you can't deny he was pursuing his interests and exploring interesting themes with craft and intensity and a deep aesthetic sense. To think that an example of his work would be corrupting to teenagers, 'evil' or 'filth' is offensive in its own right. He was great artist even if you don't like the work. And you certainly don't have to find it beautiful. But "filth"? "Evilness"? Absolutely, disqualifyingly, ridiculous.
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
But a restaurant critic certainly could do a double blinded taste test to judge how good the food is,
Could they though? I am imagining a blindfolded critic being spooned with two mouthfuls, not knowing what they are going to be. With classic dishes I suppose it might work. They could say 'This tastes like lasagna. I preferred forkful A over forkful B as it tasted cheesier'. With unique dishes I don't even know what the test is supposed to look like as there will not be an obvious control dish to serve alongside it.
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
the background of the work cannot modify the experience of a blind sampler
You'd have to do an analysis of what counts as 'the background of the work' to determine if this is true. If I am recruited as a blind sampler in a trial but not mind-wiped first, my experience of other art or the subject of the novel is still going to have massive impact on whether I like it or not. I may not enjoy certain historical novels if I start from zero knowledge of the relevant bit of history, but is that really an indictment of the novels? If I were a caveman I expect I'd be totally bowled over by the most rudimentary drawings, but so what?
Ultimately the question is who is a blind sampler? I feel like Scott is imagining a child with uncultivated tastes, and supposing that such a child lives inside all of us. I guess this is what you are talking about above when you mention 'a bare, brute fact of sensory pleasure'. To me that seems obviously falsified by facts such as e.g. I liked very sweet desserts once and now I find them sickly. It seems to imply an 'accumulative' model of how people grow (each layer of the self stays the same but we add on layers as we gain experience) that is very contrary to my intuitive sense of myself or others.
Then again it's the strength of intuitions here that makes it such a debated topic.
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
I suspect you're 90% wrong. If it were this taste-centered, you'd see all the tables at fancy restaurants filled with people on their own and you'd see very fast service geared to deliver as many delicious tastes as quickly as possible (i.e. you'd get McDonald's). The vast majority of people going to a good restaurant go for a social experience shared with the people at their table, the others in their restaurant, the city they're in, the culinary tradition they're participating in etc. The taste is really important but you can't even decompose it as an individual factor as delicious food in a shitty, antisocial environment doesn't bring that much pleasure, and shitty food in a beautiful environment ruins everything.
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
You probably need a lot of men to produce just a few geniuses, so if you want to keep the discovery rate as is, you may not be able to reduce the male population all that much. Also, you might also upset some of the women who wouldn't like the lack of men, so some negative hedons there.
In terms of the moral principle violated, however, I think the small matter of forcing your vision of reproduction on billions of non-consenting people would be the main one!
If you can get everyone to agree to it though, have at it – I'll even sign your petition.
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
It's vice versa: he shortcuts his supporters' brains with these three techniques, and in so doing drives his opponents crazy.
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
Good does mean bad though, and has done since Michael Jackson.
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
Why can't you let Trump's objectives be an ineffable and possibly divine mystery?
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
I can agree it's a euphemism treadmill and that euphemism treadmills are in a sense pointless. But there remains a problem of the commons to solve -- we can't just decide to get rid of euphemism treadmills. You would need a campaign to encourage people to keep using outmoded slurs, and a majority of people would need to care more about ending euphemism treadmills than they do about maybe offending others. Not easy to coordinate.
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
Yes, it's additive. Any sexual abuse that is filmed and shared is graver, even if only slightly, than the same sexual abuse that's not filmed. I really doubt the judges were saying that the distribution component alone is worse than the rape component?
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
I am not too sure what you find objectionable or funny about this? (Unless you assume the bolded sentence is about children viewing pornography rather than being in it?).
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
Yeah, I was thinking about levels of necessity too. Coal mining was possible without slavery and people were distressed when this nightmare job was taken away. Orwell quote, just because the writing is good:
“…each man is shifting coal at a speed approaching two tons an hour. I have just enough experience of pick and shovel work to be able to grasp what this means. When I am digging trenches in my garden, if I shift two tons of earth during the afternoon, I feel that I have earned my tea. But earth is tractable stuff compared with coal, and I don’t have to work kneeling down, a thousand feet underground, in suffocating heat and swallowing coal dust with every breath I take; nor do I have to walk a mile bent double before I begin. The miner’s job would be as much beyond my power as it would be to perform on a flying trapeze or to win the Grand National. I am not a manual laborer and please God I never shall be one, but there are some kinds of manual work that I could do if I had to. At a pitch I could be a tolerable road-sweeper or an inefficient gardener or even a tenth-rate farm hand. But by no conceivable amount of effort or training could I become a coal-miner, the work would kill me in a few weeks.
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
I heard Anthony Scaramucci on his podcast give the theory that Trump would have posted the image (and done all the other recent catholic-baiting posts) in order to own JD Vance and maybe Rubio as well, who as the most prominent catholics in his cabinet will be obliged to defend Trump instead of their own religion. I can see how putting them in that demeaning position would satisfy Trump, don't know if it's really plausible though.
My own take would be that pushing the boundaries further and further to gauge pushback and keep going whenever there's not much resistance is just what he does. If people had liked these images he'd have been able to go full 'I am your God' cult leader, but sadly he didn't get a warm enough response.
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
I don't think it has to be all that deep. It's not like you require a truly Freudian and unfalsifiable notion of a subconscious to understand the idea of someone who has a false narrative that gives them a license do what their baser self really wants to do. Confronting the fallible bad guy with a truth about themselves that they can't handle but deep down know is true is a common part of thousands of thrillers.
As you say, we're deep in the weeds here though.
Rosencrantz2
3mo ago
Just because someone thinks they are doing something for good doesn't mean it's their true motivation though. People who enjoy cruelty, find purges orderly and tell themselves they're helping could also be included in a definition of evil. This would cover e.g. a sadistic cop.
Rosencrantz2
4mo ago
One aspect of this is that it's plausible that men are fundamentally more violent and prone to criminal behaviour than women, outside of extraordinarily unusual cultural circumstances. Whereas it seems more likely that Islam is not fundamentally violent insofar as it can over time evolve to be less violent than other religions. It's a cultural superstructure of a type that can change radically over the centuries – we see this with religions across history in a way we don't really with gender differences.
This distinction can be hotly debated of course but one of the thoughts at play is that suspending prejudice helps allow what can improve to improve, whereas if there's not much chance of improvement, there is less motivation to suspend prejudice.
Rosencrantz2
4mo ago
The US does this too, no? We're on this slippery slope already.
Rosencrantz2
4mo ago
It's not okay, but it's self-evidently better. With great power comes great responsibility etc.
Rosencrantz2
4mo ago
Will need some kind of truth and reconciliation process after this. Can't have another weak Democrat administration pretending it never happened.
A lot of his base has always said that they don't like his more extreme rhetoric. 'I like what he does but why does he have to talk that way?'. They're kidding themselves of course. They enjoy having a dog that they've let off the leash, and they enjoy pitting his aggression against people who've committed themselves to some level of public decorum.
I don't know if the escalation in frothiness is just insanity, or more of Trump's gut instinct and bone-deep understanding of madman theory. I don't think he's necessarily wrong in his approach, given he is now in this mess. By doubling down on incoherence and anger, he makes himself somewhat invulnerable to critique for e.g. not actually following through on his deadlines and ultimatums. If the guy is a divinely appointed gut, he can do exactly as his gut chooses at any given moment, making Trump(now) much freer to ignore things that Trump(then) said. If he went about his threats in a calm way, his failure to follow through on a given occasion would be informational for his enemies. As it stands it is easy enough to believe he really meant each and every ultimatum in the moment he said it, whether or not he did.
Nonetheless a certain amount of rhetorical escalation is necessary to maintain this effect, hence his decision to use the f word.
Rosencrantz2
4mo ago
Depends what you watch. It'd be easy for visiting aliens to see the Iranians as the more composed and understated party in this war. Their latest statement was to call for a ceasefire, arguing that it would "give the US and Israel a short pause to regroup and commit new crimes", which is straight up funny vs Trump's unhinged anger.
Rosencrantz2
4mo ago
Definitely weird, but hard to believe he has a ghostwriter who's even more cooked than he is. I'll wager his posts will get even more demented from hereon.
Rosencrantz2
4mo ago
I think many European criticisms of American culture and red states are psychologically grounded in fear of American foreign policy posture and its impacts on the rest of the world. Going on about your Big Gulps, guns and megachurches may not be entirely rational, because in themselves they do not affect us much. But Europe doesn't spend a lot of time thinking itself superior to rural regions of other countries (it doesn't think of them at all). When it comes to America, though, there's sometimes a tendency to focus critically on the traits we see projected out into the world in the form of foreign policy and through multinational companies.
We might be wrong about the details of whatever southeastern state you're from, but we're not wrong about the material effects the US people's choices have on us, and sometimes that disgruntlement comes out wrong.
Rosencrantz2
4mo ago
They won't say all that directly to your face, but 2 out of 3 Euros are unable to contain their seething contempt and will eventually have to get in a "witty" (passive-aggressive) dig about guns/racism/big cars/food/etc apropos of nothing in an otherwise friendly conversation.
There's some truth in this but seething contempt is a mischaracterisation. Most Europeans really like and look up to many aspects of America but are afraid and panicky about the path it's gone down, which sometimes comes out, for reasons of ego-protection, in superiority speak.
I think there are still visual combos of technique and modern subject matter/point of view to explore, even in traditional figurative painting. See for example Dana Schutz, someone who is making exceptional, critically acclaimed paintings that are stylised but not abstract.
I like the idea of artists coming up with generative AI btw. I wonder what they'd have done with it? Probably they would have tried to monetised the output instead of the mechanism.
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