5 ms·

"Poor musical taste"? What is an objective measure of that?

by mojoe 10y ago

cronjobber 10y ago
Better titles: "Poor musical taste? Blame their upbringing" "Poor musical taste? Blame your status insecurity" Edit: Post title has been edited, context has been lost. Original title was: "Poor musical taste? Blame your upbringing"
- unit91 10y ago
  Still problematic. What does it mean to have "poor" taste? I'll throw in the epistemic problem too: if I have poor musical taste, how will I know it?
  - cronjobber 10y ago
    Though downvotes indicate that it isn't obvious, my suggested titles fix all these problems. Everybody can easily think that other people have poor musical taste, just subjectively. We now can "blame" their upbringing. If I think I have poor musical taste, I know that's a strange thing to believe, your "epistemic problem". I conclude that I have been led to believe this because people of quality claim to love Stockhausen and I don't.
    - unit91 10y ago
      It seems like this still conflates the quality of a person (objective) with the quality of one's music taste (subjective). Your example of quality (moral and rational, I assume) people loving Stockhausen and you not loving it informing your self-assessment only works if music taste is an objective good, like preferring non-murder to murder. Even then, we would need to know that preferring Stockhausen or non-murder is an objective good, since presumably preferring it is among the quality-making properties of your quality friends. So unless I can know which music is objectively good in a properly basic or evidential way, I'm stuck never knowing whether my music taste is good or bad. Or, as I think is the case, music taste is subjective.
      - cronjobber 10y ago
        https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/quality https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/quality of high social status “people of quality” “a quality family” Synonyms: upper-class occupying the highest socioeconomic position in a society
cr1895 10y ago
It's a bad title that isn't reflected in the article. FTA: "'Our results show that there is a profound cultural difference' in the way people respond to consonant and dissonant sounds, says Josh McDermott, a cognitive scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and lead author of the paper. This suggests that other cultures hear the world differently, he adds."
doktrin 10y ago
I think I can shed some light on this issue - "good musical taste" == "liking the music that I like"
- cr1895 10y ago
  I'd offer that "good musical taste" is one that is at least somewhat conciously expanded or music is proactively consumed. Someone who "likes just whatever is popular on the radio" has poor musical taste, whereas someone who can dives more deeply into music has "good music taste," irrespective of the music itself. But of course it's not something that can be quantitatively measured.
Qantourisc 10y ago
Given there is no such thing as "poor taste", the non clickbait title should be : "Your music taste is affected by your upbringing"
- mhartl 10y ago
  Given there is no such thing as "poor taste" You might be interested in the contrary view, expressed by Paul Graham in "Taste for Makers" [1]: Saying that taste is just personal preference is a good way to prevent disputes. The trouble is, it's not true. You feel this when you start to design things. Whatever job people do, they naturally want to do better. Football players like to win games. CEOs like to increase earnings. It's a matter of pride, and a real pleasure, to get better at your job. But if your job is to design things, and there is no such thing as beauty, then there is no way to get better at your job. If taste is just personal preference, then everyone's is already perfect: you like whatever you like, and that's it. [1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html
  - doktrin 10y ago
    > But if your job is to design things, and there is no such thing as beauty, then there is no way to get better at your job Sounds like nonsense to me. Design, to my mind, is less about "beauty" than it is about communication. Achieving beauty is the goal of the artist, but the designer is trying to achieve something much more concrete : helping the user understand your product. Thus, it follows that design can to a degree be assessed & measured. If your users understand your product and how to use it, then it's probably competently designed. If they have no idea WTF is going on, then probably not.
  - kansface 10y ago
    I'm sorry you are being downvoted for merely quoting PG. The article is from 2002; I wonder if he still believes what he wrote? In any case, PG is almost certainly in the wrong. > Saying that taste is just personal preference is a good way to prevent disputes. Sure, but that's not why practically everyone in academic music/art say it, or refuse to make value judgments about art. > You feel this when you start to design things. My experience has been exactly the opposite - I have a degree in music though I work as a programmer. > Football players like to win games. CEOs like to increase earnings. Both of which have well defined, internal metrics (higher numbers are better). > It's a matter of pride, and a real pleasure, to get better at your job. It may be for some people for some jobs, but this does not relate to generalizing personal taste to universal truth in any way. > But if your job is to design things, and there is no such thing as beauty, then there is no way to get better at your job. It does not follow that iff beauty is in the eye of the beholder then designers can not improve. Cultures share values. Improving design (in a professional setting) is something closer to optimizing in the eyes of the target market... to click a button. Of course, the solution space is both practically infinite and time dependent. Neither beauty nor taste need be intrinsic or universal, we just need to agree upon a shared language (social convention).
Bromskloss 10y ago
Interesting question. Would it perhaps make sense to consider good music to be the music that those people like who are knowledgeable about and skilled in music themselves?
- HenryTheHorse 10y ago
  > ..those people like who are knowledgeable about and skilled in music themselves? This is an age-old question and implies that aesthetic judgements can only be made through knowledge. The Pop revolution that started in the 1950s pretty much destroyed the argument (only to have Rock music - as opposed to Pop - make similar elitist arguments). Jazz and Classical music continue to make those claims (and then complain they don't attract bigger audiences). Good music is that which moves you. No more, no less. If it doesn't move you, it doesn't make it bad, it just means you need to find something different to listen to.
  - Bromskloss 10y ago
    > The Pop revolution that started in the 1950s pretty much destroyed the argument How so? > Good music is that which moves you. No more, no less. If it doesn't move you, it doesn't make it bad, it just means you need to find something different to listen to. Still, there are some things that almost everybody agrees are better than some other things. For example, someone singing out of tune, or a beginner playing the violin. Musicians and non-musicians alike would say that those things sound bad. Doesn't that mean that there is something more to it than individual taste, or, rather, that all our individual tastes agree on some things, which might be thought of as decidedly good or bad, in some sense?
    - HenryTheHorse 10y ago
      Pop simplified musical structures. It made music accessible to both the player and the listener. Anybody could make and enjoy pop and this was a major departure from the previous generation's code. The bands of the 1960s turned their lack of musical training into an asset. > Still, there are some things that almost everybody agrees are better than some other things Within the accepted confines of a genre or style, yes. For instance, if you are playing the blues and cannot do a decent note bend, you are boring the audience. But bending a note is not a criterion in every style. So how does one employ that as an aesthetic criterion for ALL music? The problem with a universal aesthetic criterion is that we run into the same old arguments about how rap is not music, how metal is noise and how free jazz is chaos (or how Philip Glass is just repeating three notes). Does that help?
HenryTheHorse 10y ago
I called that out too. If they wanted to go all click-baity, they could have gone with "Your favorite band sucks, but now we know why you listen to them".

"Poor musical taste"? What is an objective measure of that?

by mojoe 10y ago

"Poor musical taste"? What is an objective measure of that?

Better titles: "Poor musical taste? Blame their upbringing" "Poor musical taste? Blame your status insecurity" Edit: Post title has been edited, context has been lost. Original title was: "Poor musical taste? Blame your upbringing"

unit91 10y ago
Still problematic. What does it mean to have "poor" taste? I'll throw in the epistemic problem too: if I have poor musical taste, how will I know it?
- cronjobber 10y ago
  Though downvotes indicate that it isn't obvious, my suggested titles fix all these problems. Everybody can easily think that other people have poor musical taste, just subjectively. We now can "blame" their upbringing. If I think I have poor musical taste, I know that's a strange thing to believe, your "epistemic problem". I conclude that I have been led to believe this because people of quality claim to love Stockhausen and I don't.
  - unit91 10y ago
    It seems like this still conflates the quality of a person (objective) with the quality of one's music taste (subjective). Your example of quality (moral and rational, I assume) people loving Stockhausen and you not loving it informing your self-assessment only works if music taste is an objective good, like preferring non-murder to murder. Even then, we would need to know that preferring Stockhausen or non-murder is an objective good, since presumably preferring it is among the quality-making properties of your quality friends. So unless I can know which music is objectively good in a properly basic or evidential way, I'm stuck never knowing whether my music taste is good or bad. Or, as I think is the case, music taste is subjective.
    - cronjobber 10y ago
      https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/quality https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/quality of high social status “people of quality” “a quality family” Synonyms: upper-class occupying the highest socioeconomic position in a society

cr1895 10y ago

It's a bad title that isn't reflected in the article. FTA: "'Our results show that there is a profound cultural difference' in the way people respond to consonant and dissonant sounds, says Josh McDermott, a cognitive scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and lead author of the paper. This suggests that other cultures hear the world differently, he adds."

doktrin 10y ago

I think I can shed some light on this issue - "good musical taste" == "liking the music that I like"

cr1895 10y ago
I'd offer that "good musical taste" is one that is at least somewhat conciously expanded or music is proactively consumed. Someone who "likes just whatever is popular on the radio" has poor musical taste, whereas someone who can dives more deeply into music has "good music taste," irrespective of the music itself. But of course it's not something that can be quantitatively measured.

Qantourisc 10y ago

Given there is no such thing as "poor taste", the non clickbait title should be : "Your music taste is affected by your upbringing"

mhartl 10y ago
Given there is no such thing as "poor taste" You might be interested in the contrary view, expressed by Paul Graham in "Taste for Makers" [1]: Saying that taste is just personal preference is a good way to prevent disputes. The trouble is, it's not true. You feel this when you start to design things. Whatever job people do, they naturally want to do better. Football players like to win games. CEOs like to increase earnings. It's a matter of pride, and a real pleasure, to get better at your job. But if your job is to design things, and there is no such thing as beauty, then there is no way to get better at your job. If taste is just personal preference, then everyone's is already perfect: you like whatever you like, and that's it. [1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html
- doktrin 10y ago
  > But if your job is to design things, and there is no such thing as beauty, then there is no way to get better at your job Sounds like nonsense to me. Design, to my mind, is less about "beauty" than it is about communication. Achieving beauty is the goal of the artist, but the designer is trying to achieve something much more concrete : helping the user understand your product. Thus, it follows that design can to a degree be assessed & measured. If your users understand your product and how to use it, then it's probably competently designed. If they have no idea WTF is going on, then probably not.
- kansface 10y ago
  I'm sorry you are being downvoted for merely quoting PG. The article is from 2002; I wonder if he still believes what he wrote? In any case, PG is almost certainly in the wrong. > Saying that taste is just personal preference is a good way to prevent disputes. Sure, but that's not why practically everyone in academic music/art say it, or refuse to make value judgments about art. > You feel this when you start to design things. My experience has been exactly the opposite - I have a degree in music though I work as a programmer. > Football players like to win games. CEOs like to increase earnings. Both of which have well defined, internal metrics (higher numbers are better). > It's a matter of pride, and a real pleasure, to get better at your job. It may be for some people for some jobs, but this does not relate to generalizing personal taste to universal truth in any way. > But if your job is to design things, and there is no such thing as beauty, then there is no way to get better at your job. It does not follow that iff beauty is in the eye of the beholder then designers can not improve. Cultures share values. Improving design (in a professional setting) is something closer to optimizing in the eyes of the target market... to click a button. Of course, the solution space is both practically infinite and time dependent. Neither beauty nor taste need be intrinsic or universal, we just need to agree upon a shared language (social convention).

Bromskloss 10y ago

Interesting question. Would it perhaps make sense to consider good music to be the music that those people like who are knowledgeable about and skilled in music themselves?

HenryTheHorse 10y ago
> ..those people like who are knowledgeable about and skilled in music themselves? This is an age-old question and implies that aesthetic judgements can only be made through knowledge. The Pop revolution that started in the 1950s pretty much destroyed the argument (only to have Rock music - as opposed to Pop - make similar elitist arguments). Jazz and Classical music continue to make those claims (and then complain they don't attract bigger audiences). Good music is that which moves you. No more, no less. If it doesn't move you, it doesn't make it bad, it just means you need to find something different to listen to.
- Bromskloss 10y ago
  > The Pop revolution that started in the 1950s pretty much destroyed the argument How so? > Good music is that which moves you. No more, no less. If it doesn't move you, it doesn't make it bad, it just means you need to find something different to listen to. Still, there are some things that almost everybody agrees are better than some other things. For example, someone singing out of tune, or a beginner playing the violin. Musicians and non-musicians alike would say that those things sound bad. Doesn't that mean that there is something more to it than individual taste, or, rather, that all our individual tastes agree on some things, which might be thought of as decidedly good or bad, in some sense?
  - HenryTheHorse 10y ago
    Pop simplified musical structures. It made music accessible to both the player and the listener. Anybody could make and enjoy pop and this was a major departure from the previous generation's code. The bands of the 1960s turned their lack of musical training into an asset. > Still, there are some things that almost everybody agrees are better than some other things Within the accepted confines of a genre or style, yes. For instance, if you are playing the blues and cannot do a decent note bend, you are boring the audience. But bending a note is not a criterion in every style. So how does one employ that as an aesthetic criterion for ALL music? The problem with a universal aesthetic criterion is that we run into the same old arguments about how rap is not music, how metal is noise and how free jazz is chaos (or how Philip Glass is just repeating three notes). Does that help?

HenryTheHorse 10y ago

I called that out too. If they wanted to go all click-baity, they could have gone with "Your favorite band sucks, but now we know why you listen to them".