WestphalianPeace
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User ID: 184
WestphalianPeace
1d ago
just googled her. Yeah I see what you mean about winning a few Keynesian beauty contests. Anyone describing her as 3/10 is definitely outside my comprehension.
WestphalianPeace
1d ago
I'm really sorry if this post is too long. I hope it will be at least interesting. I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'representing one's preferences in 2D'. But if you find me crude, unimaginative, and close minded perhaps this post will be morbidly fascinating for you. Regardless, I'm thankful for your pushback.
I think what people find beautiful has a basis that is like 80% human nature, 20% human culture. An extreme example of the influence of culture. Japanese teeth blackening!
But I would find it strange if every human culture recreated it. Black teeth don't touch on the human nature nerve ending. It's a cultural influence on aesthetics that seems to die out when not constantly reinforced.
Meanwhile on the human nature aspect I think each person's aesthetic sense is the same filter that applies to nature as it applies to art. Thing's arn't beautiful and then we discover them. It's the reverse. We have beauty preference that reward or discourage us when we find them. These preferences reveal to others what our individual dispositions towards the environment are.
In the beginning there is an advantage for living near running water. That advantage builds into a reward signal for things that indicate running water, like shinyness. "Find running water" is too complex but 'happiness chemical reward for seeing shiny thing' is simpler to build into our nature. So now we have a preference for shiny things and we encounter Jewels. It's a worthless hunk of rock but that doesn't matter. It activates the same 'reward shinyness' part of the brain that is contextless.
It's the old AI joke. "Instead of programming AI to make people happy, why not program people to like Hydrogen. Afterall, there's a lot of hydrogen."
There is a reason we don't get happy about hydrogen. And it's the same reason why people worldwide like shiny things.
So what's beautiful in nature vs what's beautiful in art? Well if our aesthetics are our human nature with individual variation, mediated by culture, then the answer is nothing. Its the same sense organ applying to both objects.
which is why autistic people love Brutalism.
see the following image
On the left is a heat map showing where someone with a typical brain will focus their attention. On the right is how someone with ASD views the same house. Here's what Sussman and Chen state in the article:
Notice how a person on the autism spectrum, at right, avoids details like windows (which might suggest eyes) while a typical brain instinctively goes straight for them, without conscious awareness.
Pause here for a second and imagine Jane Jacob's eyes on the street concept. It's comforting for me to walk down a street full of windows and houses with front porches and pleasant symmetry. I generally welcome the interaction with my neighbors and, while not creepy about it, can't help but glance over now and then to see if I can catch their eye. I think that is typical.
Now imagine that your brain doesn't work that way. Imagine that your brain is completely overwhelmed by the eyes on the street. It's too much to take in, even just the buildings. Or it's an uncomfortable reminder that someone (unfriendly) may be tracking you. Now, is it possible you'd find some comfort — or perhaps just a noticeable reduction in tension — passing a building that instead looked like this?
So there is an instance of nature very strongly affecting preferences. Normal people like buildings that align with our caveman brain's constant search for faces. Austistic people hate making human eye contact. So now the whole world gets to endure Brutalism.
But then there is culture! It can't be thrown away entirely. Turns out we can break people's brains with enough repeated influence. My sincere apologies for the extended quote but it bears repeating in full. Bold parts were added in by me.
In Architectural Myopia: Designing for Industry, Not People we find that
, Gifford et al. (2002) surveyed other research and noted that “architects did not merely disagree with laypersons about the aesthetic qualities of buildings, they were unable to predict how laypersons would assess buildings, even when they were explicitly asked to do so.” The researchers traced this disagreement to well-known cognitive differences in the two populations: “Evidence that certain cognitive properties are related to building preference [was] found.”
Training to See a Parallel Reality.
Training is required to induce “architectural myopia” in a student, as the research suggests. The reason is that the peculiar industrial aesthetic now considered normal within architecture runs contrary to our physiological needs (Salingaros, 2006). We humans have evolved inside a complex, fractal, structurally hierarchical environment, so that our neurophysiology responds positively to and receives sensory pleasure from natural environments. Traditional architecture and urbanism in all of their multiple variations manifested over millennia and across geographical distances precisely follow this natural geometry, which is why our brains recognize them and respond to them.
Training adds additional layers of preference on top of our instinctive, evolved responses. Architecture school invests several years conditioning the student to respond preferentially to abstract industrial forms and surfaces. At the same time, this industrial aesthetic is touted as superior to all previous, traditional expressions of built geometry. Elaborate theories of history and technology are given as apologias for this now-correct aesthetic, solely appropriate to this wholly unique climax period in history (Banham, 1960; Giedion, 1941; Gropius, 1965). All of this effort creates individuals that see things differently from the rest of us.
This long-term program of psychological conditioning, has, since its development in the original Bauhaus, turned out to be extraordinarily effective. An architect experiences the world in a very different manner to any person who has not undergone the same training. By internalizing preferences derived from abstract images that override our neurological structure, over time, responses become automatic and crowd out other, more innate responses. The result of this aesthetic hegemony is the phenomenon of “architectural myopia”, an interpretation of reality that conforms to ingrained beliefs.
In those situations where emotion isn’t triggered instinctively by human physiology, our evolutionary makeup is not decisive and can be bypassed. Thus, in front of drawings or designs on a computer screen there is sufficient emotional isolation, and an architect judges the industrial, minimalist, “contemporary” designs positively as isolated objects possessing a pleasing clarity and monadic legibility.... At the same time, anything that resembles the complexity of traditional architecture is automatically judged negatively (its meaning is supposedly associated with reactionary or philistine culture) and it is rejected without any reflection.
In summary, yes. What's beautiful in art is what's beautiful in nature. It's the same instinct, influenced by culture. When you reveal a beauty preference you unavoidable reveal an aspect of how you perceive the world. All that's left is to discover is what percent of that is your predisposition or cultural molding.
WestphalianPeace
1d ago
I get that that's a thing but I'm generally skeptical. Until there is good evidence otherwise I take it for granted that people are honest about their aesthetic preferences.
WestphalianPeace
1d ago
https://www.cnu.org/sites/default/files/architecture-poll.jpg
80% prefer left. 20% prefer right. When presented with other aesthetics I'm willing to bet that the 20% people will not dissolve randomly into like this or that. Their preference for uglyness will correlate. They'll find themselves saying 'you like Right? did you like B in the A/B painting over there? Omg I liked B too what are the chances'.
High. The chances were high.
I'm afraid I have no idea who Zendaya is.
WestphalianPeace
1d ago
Ahh I'm sorry if I gave that impression that I find these things equivalent. I was trying to use extreme examples to illustrate a point that the same trait that exists in the extreme also cascades down into the merely uncommon. I don't think most of these people are Bloated corpse tier, though those absolutely do exist. It's more a natural consequence of my point about propensity to intensity and yes/no being separate traits.
I think of it as a bunch of brackets. First there is the building that 70% of people prefer A to B. Then there are the aesthetic tastes of those who find themselves in the 20%. Those in the 10% minority opinion etc etc.
So for example I mostly find Stevens Universe to be ugly, but I get why it works and am willing to put up with it. Most people probably find it neutral. There is a certain person who adores its style and hates on actual beautiful things. I'd put them in the 30% bracket.
Then there is Ozy who appears to be the 5% bracket. Everything evolution selected for us to find beautiful/important, symmetry indicating health, indication of running water, open plains allowing for awareness of both predators and resources, kin to treasure and protect, Ozy's mind finds completely unstimulating.
Then there are the people who shudder with delight at the idea of fucking amidst flies over a bloated corpse. Sub 1% bracket.
Dunno if that changes your take on my take but I hope that clarifies my own intuitions on the topic.
From Bauhaus: A Graphic Novel, pg 50-54
"I saw them all, their faces as they crossed the threshold, their hands gilding over the textiles searching for the weave, their eyes reflected in the chrome plating as they let their certainties fall away....their certainties about what a house is, or an object...what a human being is, when there is no gender. In the 'Triadic Ballet' I want to show people move in space. The geometric forms represent the rationality that humanizes and merely stages physicality....and I wondered if, when they left the last room and went back out into the world, they would be able to look at it with the same revolution in their eyes.
The exhibition didn't convince the Landtag, which decided to shut me down: too expensive they said...but I was uncomfortable politically: the right-wing parties won the elections and we were bizarre and revolutionary creatures with socialist leanings. The masters' contracts were not renewed, and the Weimar experience ended on the first of April 1925. I was only six years old! Isn't it the same for everyone? You can still become anything but they tell you you're wrong....that you need to color within the lines, that geometry offers only a limited series of shapes, that words are to be written on the lines of a page. The control exerted by the outside world forces you to define your identity, while all you want is to experience yourself in the world. Your freedom is frightening for them.
This a very common sentiment in extremist left circles. Anarchists in particular. Shifting aesthetics first in order to subvert the current social order and show people that another world is possible. It's not intended to be demoralization, no one actually sits down and goes bwahaha now I will make the world ugly to demoralize my enemies. It's exaltation. Revolution. Religious ferver. It's the sincere conviction that they are breaking people out of Plato's cave and liberating them.
Destroy 2000 Years of Culture is a prayer, not a conspiracy.
I want to be clear though. This doesn't mean the average person making this kind of art is thinking in these terms. That's an entirely separate issue. It's more like how the average conservative might say 'washington is holding back Americans with too much red tape' and then when you keep digging at where that phrase came from you eventually find a Mises Libertarian arguing with a Ancap. Or how a normal left leaning person might say "Healthcare is a human right. We have to help everyone" and then when you keep digging at their phrase you find a Kropotkin-poster arguing with a Noam Chomsky fan about whether the point is to liberate humanity from all Social Exploitation or if it's about liberation from all Material Inequality which Generates Social Exploitation. The tails tug at the core.
WestphalianPeace
1d ago
They don't think it's ugly. They actually prefer it. They are the ~1% approve at the end of any poll about do you prefer building A or building B.
People like Ozy really exist. They really do have actual disdain for things a statistically normal person finds beautiful. From Ozy's own self-description:
"One could very reasonably make the case that the natural human aesthetic sense prefers realistic paintings of beautiful landscapes with water, trees, large animals, beautiful women, children, and well-known historical figures"
"However, art of this sort leaves me cold"
"The first time I saw it, Joan Miro’s The Birth of the World moved me to tears from its sheer beauty. I make a special effort to visit it every time I am in New York City, including taking my husband to see it on our honeymoon so he could understand my aesthetics better. "
This is Joan Miro's The Birth of the World
To them uglyness isn't ugly. It's genuinely mindnumbingly beautiful.
In Malcolm & Simone Collins "A Pragmatist's Guide to Sexuality" they model sexuality with two polarities, one for intensity and one for Yes/No. So most people have an inborn strong intensity towards Bloated Corpses and that is often paired with a disgust reaction. Makes sense evolutionarily. But evolution is a blind idiot god without context. So sometimes the intensity meter stays the same but for the Yes/No marker the 1 becomes a 0, and they become sexually attracted to Bloated Corpses with all the intensity that most people are repulsed.
WestphalianPeace
2d ago
I use race to point towards someone's uncontrollabe physical features. People generally default to height, hair colour, and skin colour but this also includes internal features like pelvic tilt affecting butt shape.
I use ethnicity to mean culture, language, & upbringing. But culture almost always includes an accounting of racial features. A Japanese Beauty is largely a social construct, but it includes notions of long straight black hair. Mormon face is apparently a thing. It would be strange to read accounts of "the ideal Dutch beauty" of the 12th century and find requirements for Afros, even if the other 90% just describes social virtues. Kaufman points out that while many cultures place a value of skin lightness relative to their own norm, they also find the extreme paleness of Europeans to be ugly.
So ethnicity accounts for race, but race is only at most a statistical indicator for someone's ethnicity.
I'd say your personal ethnicity has drifted away from the broader Moroccan core. Different cultures have different notions of what's within their cultural cloud vs what goes beyond the boundary. There are many accounts of people born and raised in Japan still being ostracized as 'not really japanese' because they don't fullfill 100% of all expectations of what it means to be Japanese. Many settler-colonial societies like the US & Canada meanwhile have a much more open conception of what it means to be American. Of course these self-conceptions can massively shift overtime, but there's always a self-conception. I don't know how expansive the Moroccan conception is but i'm sure it's something you've navigated & negotiated about with both your family and with strangers.
I was born in Canada but came to the US in my adolescence. When I go home everyone immediately comments on how American I've become. But most Americans didn't grow up being told to 'Go Back Where You Came From'. And every Remembrance Day I'm reminded of my difference from the typical American. Meanwhile my Jamaican-Canadian-American coworker complains about she feels racially alienated living in America. She misses Jamaica where everyone looks like her. But she's culturally a much cleaner fit into the American mainstream than I am.
WestphalianPeace
3d ago
I think we need to make a clear demarcation between race vs ethnicity even if the one often incorporates the other. The old Yamato Nadeshiko trope is a clear example of something that's like 90% behavior, 10% physical attributes.
So personally I think ethnicity groups are constructive/useful. I think a physical attribute description like race is only useful when it correlates with ethnicity with such overlap that it's meaningful information at a glance. People want the ethnicity information so badly that in monoracial societies people often play shibboleth games to figure out what someone's sub-identity is. Naming conventions/accent is a common one. My sister worked in a town that specifically renamed itself so that anyone who pronounced it as it's naturally read would be immediately outed as an outsider. To pronounce it 'correctly' you had to pronounce it incorrectly. Done after the American Civil War to identify Yankees. And I've heard that in Ireland a way to checking if someone is protestant or catholic is ask them what school they went to growing up. No idea if that information is outdated or just rumor though. But it illustrates the point.
On a racial level if a 3rd generation japanese-american visited Japan I think it's perfectly reasonable for the local Japanese to initiate conversation with him in Japanese after a quick glance and then be surprised when he only speaks English. But it would also be reasonable if the native Japanese looked at the 3rd gen, had a second to process all the other information, the manner of dress, hair style, posture, gait, social manners, nearby company, and concluded 'I bet that's an American'
There is also one other issue of identity groups being useful. And that is the tragedy of victimization on the basis of ones attributed race/ethnicity by others. As illustrated in the movie Operation Finale. A young woman is unknowingly courting the son of Adolf Eichmann. When Israeli agents explain to her that she's at risk to she protests that she and her family aren't Jews, her grandfather was Jewish but her father converted and they are good Catholics. To which the agents respond rightfully 'you think that matters to him?'.
I think it's useful, inevitable even, for people to form identity groups based off of mutual aid against threats they each can't avoid by disclaimer.
I hope my writing is precise. This is such an awful topic to discuss because of the constant ambiguous 2 step people perform going back and forth between race, ethnicity, and individual's position in race-ethnic-cloud-space.
WestphalianPeace
3d ago
A comprehensive history of how European Americans have imagined themselves overtime, the social conditions preceding each shift, when Reaction happened and how it manifested, leading up to the present day US, UK, & Canada.
In the podcast a lot of your comments seemed focused on Why not sort for the Cultural Trait Directly (The high IQ Ugandan) as well as Why focus on this broadest possible identity group (proxy of a proxy of a proxy). He doesn't really address point 1, but the entire book is about the inevitable social patterns people display regarding point 2.
Kaufmann traces over time how ethnic shifts intensify otherwise dormant identifications (case studies in voting patterns & self identification in the same city at 5%, 10%, and then 30% Hispanic. How previously blase National Symbols become are suddenly realized to be Ethnic Distinction symbols once the population of an area sharply shifts. Tipping points movement patterns in the UK mirroring the US), distinguishes between ethnic stories of 'who are we' changes vs how intermarriage may create more colorism distinctions, uses mono-racial but multiethnic societies as case studies for what happens when societies experience massive shifts over a short amount of time (Northern Ireland, Antigua, Ivory Coast).
Briefly flipping through it again (it's been a few years) It's really a mostly empirical work. As far as I can tell Kaufmann's primary adversary is less the cultural right than the old economic focused left. I'd contrast it with Mark Blyth's "Angrynomics" which makes the old left case for economics as the primary driver of social forces as an explanation for Trumps victory in 2016 and the broader populist shift in Europe. Kaufmann hammers over and over that the cultural conflict over ethnicity explains far more of the data in self-identification, voting patterns, school choice, internal migration, de facto spatial segregation, and support for X or Y policy.
It's most salient chapters for the non-academic are the final fourth and final. Kaufmann both extrapolates what will happens and then also illustrates a few plausible near future scenarios depending on how society responds. His go to example for contrast is Mauritius vs Mexico, which stand in for a closed off society vs an open mixed one.
WestphalianPeace
3d ago
There is also the issue of budgets. It costs more and more to make a video game. How big did a studio need to be to make a JRPG for the ps2 vs how big does it need to be for the ps4. As it gets more costly to make a console game the harder it is to justify taking a risk on an interesting narrative. I loved Specs Ops: The Line and I maintain that it's the best way to read Heart of Darkness. But I simply can't imagine it getting made in this environment.
PC gaming is getting better and better though, if only through accumulation over time. And if you consider visual novels like Utawarerumono to count as video games then things have never been better. More top 5% of visual novels are out then ever before. I remember when it was regarded as an unprecedented victory when we got VNDB's 3rd most highly rated VN (Muv Luv Alternative), let alone the more obscure stuff, or legendary H games like the Rance series, Evenicle, or Dohna Dohna.
On a more narrative stories with plots, etc point we did get Disco Elysium, which was pure lightening in a bottle never to be regained. If you have not played it before it simply must be experienced. Suzerain may count, although it's characters are more expressions of political factions that exist and the real character is the nature of Turkiye post WW-2. But books have used individuals to express such situations for a very long time now.
Overall I think both your initial argument and your critique of my own are strong.
Perhaps it's that when graphics were bad and gameplay restricted that one of the only options left was to rely on strong writing. But now that graphics are good pretty much everywhere and gameplay design is a fairly well mastered craft there is just not as much pressure to perform on narrative. But that's just an intuition.
WestphalianPeace
3d ago
This is a great list of narratively strong games but I think this misses something unique in how video games deliver narrative. The interactive nature of video games means that the reader/player can experience narrative through gameplay itself. Video games are distinct in this player experiential means of narrative communication.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice for example has the player personally experiencing being beaten down by it's punishing combat system, then getting passingly good at that system, getting over their fears within that system, and then experiencing mastery over it. The endboss line "Hesitation is defeat" is not just a good character line, it is an expression of what is being experienced by both the in-game character and also the player. You the player have to get past your desire for safety and instead fight on the knifes edge, and overcome. Your experience mirrors the character's own experience of repeated trial, overcoming of the desire for safety, and success. But there is little dialogue, just experience.
Victoria 2 has no narrative at all. It's a grand strategy game full of mathematical expressions of interest groups, migrations, military power, & prestige. But through repeated games you the player experience the narrative of what it means to be a nation amidst Great Power politics. Of the iron faced incentives structures set by the world around you. Play as france and you may find yourself willing to go to war over this pointless piece of land in Africa no one had ever heard before called Fashoda just as an excuse to start a war to devastate a nation simply to avoid them overcoming you economically and subsequently militarily. So you have to go to war now, before it's too late. But there is little dialogue, just experience.
Frostpunk is a city builder that takes place in a steampunk Victorian Era cold driven apocalypse. There are a few dialogues to set the tone or inform you about what's causing the next crisis. But overwhelmingly the narrative is told through decision making. The first time you play (before repetition causes desensitization) you sit grim faced at each challenge. You may demand people work extreme hours with no rest. Children into coal mines. The butchery of innocent sick and wounded just to make room for the next batch and because it's not worth it to recover them when food is so low. The sincere temptation of dictatorship or religious fanaticism just to keep control of the populace long enough to make it to the next day. 'we can always loosen things up later' you tell yourself. Your jaw has been clenched for three hours without realizing it as you make Sophies Choice tradeoff decisions that you deem necessary because your people are all that's left and The City Must Survive. But there is little dialogue, just experience.
I think video games have a really powerful means of getting a person to emotionally understand a narrative or setting in a way that books and movies simply canot. It's different to read an idea or see it versus being personally constricted by a system and condemned to navigate a world within it's rules. So while I think your list is a fantastic set of games, a golden age even, I think your comment on decline since the ps4 overlooks how games more broadly can communicate narrative outside of the traditional considerations of dialogue or imagery.
Imagine Shinigami Eyes but applied to people who merely engage seriously with an author.
I want to be able to talk with progressive minded people that 2+2=4 without a tag next to my name that's the same as the one next to Walt's and have my thoughts dismissed out of hand.
WestphalianPeace
4d ago
Is there any desire out there for a book review of Whiteshift by Eric Kaufmann by someone who is not of Walt Bismarck's milieu?
It was brought up in the podcast and address's a lot of what Yasine brings up. But it's also a bloody tome to reread and something that someone without context of who I actually am could use to immediately disqualify any other points I may make in the future. So I'm reluctant to just put it out there.
WestphalianPeace
6d ago
Ommegang Witte
Spring is here. The weather is warming up. Stout season is done and it's time to embrace lighter beers again. The beer is a Belgian white ale, heavy with coriander & orange peel. Just a delight everytime.
Social Construction radicals have to attribute all thought to social construction. They can't admit to any inbuilt preferences, only social constructs. So when they find someone's who has 'converted' they can't attribute it to helping someone who was already inclined to like X realize who they are. Instead it has to be that they finally broke through their socially constructed preferences into liberated ones.
In my personal experience with these types of people there is a strong case of "my expansive preferences are natural, which is proof that your narrow preferences are socially constructed." Similar to the 'well obviously we'd all fuck dudes if we could, but society would collapse so we need social pressure to keep men straight' phenomena. Just a total inability to model other minds. Very similar to polyamory people. Their end of bell curve genetic inability to feel jealousy is obviously perfectly normal. Your jealousy meanwhile is a patriarchal social construct you can be liberated you from.
For people on the tail end of the bell curve the typical mind fallacy is a hell of a drug.
I do think Tumblr took these people's pre-existing preferences and intensified their conviction of their moral superiority. AO3 is not Pornhub and everyone used to understand why they attracted different sexes. It took tumblr to convince people that the only reason men don't rely on AO3 is because they've been socially constructed not to. For the average person of this 'if we just push body type X enough people will change!' mindset I think it's more likely that they went to tumblr because they had a predisposition to like the art there and then got socially radicalized. Not that they were a straight guy who got converted and now wants to spread the good news.
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