The best thing about gaining an appreciation of this aspect of life is it opens up so many extra pleasures. I can spend an entire day at the (free entry!) V&A in London and never be bored. Likewise with a great book (when my 11-year-old isn't around!)
I’ve long held the opinion that humans ‘over’-value complexity. It’s why we can spend so much time tasting, analyzing, and enjoying fancy coffee or whisky - despite the fact that almost everyone is repulsed by them the first time they try them. Literature might be the same?
I get your idea but I wonder about the construction of this argument:
Is it the complexity itself people value, or the rewards of engaging it. IME, the most valuable things are complex. Maybe that's because there is not enough capacity in simplicity to contain exceptional value (speaking very generally and loosely - we really need to define terms).
Also, I certainly think people value complex things, but I strongly disagree that they are over-valued. All the best things in my life seem complex.
I could imagine that complexity stimulates the brain in a different way and that adds to reward.
To add on - complexity itself is a perceptual feature introduced by language - we treat and describe things as though they are made of an unimaginable number of tiny parts. So this also increases the fun of the wordy wine/coffee/whisky descriptions!
Although I appreciate the article, what's the deal with calling depth thickness? Is it because it looks like the meme word 'thicc'?
> If you allow for the existence of secret treasures that can only be accessed with effort and analysis, then you empower the elitists and the snobs. “Buddy, don’t even talk to me until you’ve been in the cave!”
I don't agree with this statement. Being a snob and/or elitist means looking down upon others. If you appreciate these 'secret treasures' without being a dick about it, everybody wins.
> The slop-acalypse that so many of us fear, when people will stop looking at anything made by humans and only look at things made by machines—why hasn’t that happened yet?
Unfortunately, I'm pessimistic here. I don't think the slop-acalypse is held back by taste or an appreciation for "thickness". I think there's already very successful slop media in the world (e.g. see microdramas). In other words, it is happening, but like anything else, it's happening in a non-evenly distributed way.
There's a lot of truth to this, but....... fuck they did a great job disincentivizing it.
In high school we had to read and annotate this 900p Greek mythology book during our summer break. Our grade reflected how well we annotated it. I didn't do any of it (thanks Ultima Online).
The very first in-class assignment we had that year took about an hour and had about a 25% bigger impact on our grade than annotating did.
Not saying that grades are the end goal but it felt like a slap in the face that the exploration of such a deep topic just.. didn't matter.
Something I learned recently and which this article sort of hints at - look at the three drafts of Under The Wave Off Kanagawa. The composition is different, but also the colours are much more muted. In the first draft, the only colours highlighted are the people in the corner; in the second, the cliffs. The third draft finally colours the wave, but it's a sedate grey-blue. It's not until the fourth draft that everybody recognizes that we get this brilliant dark blue wave rising up over the the boat, dwarfing the mountain in the background.
And that's because when Hokusai sat down to print that fourth draft, people had recently started exporting prussian blue dye to Japan; prior to that point, he just straight up didn't have access to that striking blue colour that dominates the print.
By rejecting postmodernism and even the Enlightenment (due to the overwhelming reactionary messaging) most people unilaterally disarmed themselves, or so I hypothesize. It's hard to talk about these things in any specific, evidence-based way, but here is the idea:
Without the ultimate postmodern truth that there is none, that deep skepticism of power especially and always of oneself, how do people decide what to embrace? Whatever is effectively sold to them, no questions asked. There isn't an instinctive worry about but an almost survival-level embrace of mass messaging - the way is to be safe in the crowd, not to doubt it or to worry about its power in society and its effect on you.
And without believing in the Enlightenment vision of the transformative power of our minds to make a better humanity, expressed especially in art as the pinnacle of human expression and acheivement, art is ruled out and actually threatens your worldview (and that reactionary messaging) of powerlessness and survival.
I really enjoyed reading this and I've been thinking along similar lines when I imagine viable careers of the future. No one will care if code is "thick" but why would anyone buy a novel written by AI? What does the reader get out of it? It seems like the humanities might be the most stable career path available.
The best thing about gaining an appreciation of this aspect of life is it opens up so many extra pleasures. I can spend an entire day at the (free entry!) V&A in London and never be bored. Likewise with a great book (when my 11-year-old isn't around!)
I have to say, this guy should teach English to high-schoolers.
Great piece. Seeing that depth and context is one of the best parts of gaining intellectual maturity.
I’ve long held the opinion that humans ‘over’-value complexity. It’s why we can spend so much time tasting, analyzing, and enjoying fancy coffee or whisky - despite the fact that almost everyone is repulsed by them the first time they try them. Literature might be the same?
To be clear, I enjoy all three!
I get your idea but I wonder about the construction of this argument:
Is it the complexity itself people value, or the rewards of engaging it. IME, the most valuable things are complex. Maybe that's because there is not enough capacity in simplicity to contain exceptional value (speaking very generally and loosely - we really need to define terms).
Also, I certainly think people value complex things, but I strongly disagree that they are over-valued. All the best things in my life seem complex.
I could imagine that complexity stimulates the brain in a different way and that adds to reward.
To add on - complexity itself is a perceptual feature introduced by language - we treat and describe things as though they are made of an unimaginable number of tiny parts. So this also increases the fun of the wordy wine/coffee/whisky descriptions!
Don't forget software engineering
Although I appreciate the article, what's the deal with calling depth thickness? Is it because it looks like the meme word 'thicc'?
> If you allow for the existence of secret treasures that can only be accessed with effort and analysis, then you empower the elitists and the snobs. “Buddy, don’t even talk to me until you’ve been in the cave!”
I don't agree with this statement. Being a snob and/or elitist means looking down upon others. If you appreciate these 'secret treasures' without being a dick about it, everybody wins.
Really enjoyed how thick this essay was.
> The slop-acalypse that so many of us fear, when people will stop looking at anything made by humans and only look at things made by machines—why hasn’t that happened yet?
Unfortunately, I'm pessimistic here. I don't think the slop-acalypse is held back by taste or an appreciation for "thickness". I think there's already very successful slop media in the world (e.g. see microdramas). In other words, it is happening, but like anything else, it's happening in a non-evenly distributed way.
There's a lot of truth to this, but....... fuck they did a great job disincentivizing it.
In high school we had to read and annotate this 900p Greek mythology book during our summer break. Our grade reflected how well we annotated it. I didn't do any of it (thanks Ultima Online).
The very first in-class assignment we had that year took about an hour and had about a 25% bigger impact on our grade than annotating did.
Not saying that grades are the end goal but it felt like a slap in the face that the exploration of such a deep topic just.. didn't matter.
Something I learned recently and which this article sort of hints at - look at the three drafts of Under The Wave Off Kanagawa. The composition is different, but also the colours are much more muted. In the first draft, the only colours highlighted are the people in the corner; in the second, the cliffs. The third draft finally colours the wave, but it's a sedate grey-blue. It's not until the fourth draft that everybody recognizes that we get this brilliant dark blue wave rising up over the the boat, dwarfing the mountain in the background.
And that's because when Hokusai sat down to print that fourth draft, people had recently started exporting prussian blue dye to Japan; prior to that point, he just straight up didn't have access to that striking blue colour that dominates the print.
This is also true in science; some things reward depth of study in a way that just isn't apparent from the outside.
https://xkcd.com/877/
By rejecting postmodernism and even the Enlightenment (due to the overwhelming reactionary messaging) most people unilaterally disarmed themselves, or so I hypothesize. It's hard to talk about these things in any specific, evidence-based way, but here is the idea:
Without the ultimate postmodern truth that there is none, that deep skepticism of power especially and always of oneself, how do people decide what to embrace? Whatever is effectively sold to them, no questions asked. There isn't an instinctive worry about but an almost survival-level embrace of mass messaging - the way is to be safe in the crowd, not to doubt it or to worry about its power in society and its effect on you.
And without believing in the Enlightenment vision of the transformative power of our minds to make a better humanity, expressed especially in art as the pinnacle of human expression and acheivement, art is ruled out and actually threatens your worldview (and that reactionary messaging) of powerlessness and survival.
I really enjoyed reading this and I've been thinking along similar lines when I imagine viable careers of the future. No one will care if code is "thick" but why would anyone buy a novel written by AI? What does the reader get out of it? It seems like the humanities might be the most stable career path available.
> ... and I was like ...
And you'll need to add an apology for using that phrase too.