> By "better" he means exactly more positively stimulating. He's not saying it's morally superior. Maybe. Yet I think he contradicts that with his own words:

> By "better" he means exactly more positively stimulating. He's not saying it's morally superior. Maybe. Yet I think he contradicts that with his own words: "This...suggests that music is not a superstimulus in the sense of music being a "better speech than speech". But, what if we suppose the opposite? What if we suppose that music is a "worse speech than speech"? What if we suppose that music is a superstimulus for some aspect of speech perception which involves a negative perception of the quality or usefulness of perceived speech?" [my emphasis] Here he seems to be directly equating better/worse as quality and usefulness judgments, not just in terms of the amplitude of the stimulus. > but the whole point is why? Why don't we attend parties with no background sound? My personal opinion is that it is basically a secondary channel of stimulus, something that provides people a baseline of entertainment value irrespective of the foreground conversation, and papers over the awkward or boring moments. To refer to it as a superstimulus for speech, whether normal or "negative," is a complete red herring in my opinion. > He's asserting that music lyrics without music (i.e. spoken word) encourages the user to listen to it and think critically about its truth value instead of just implicitly taking it in. Is that true? When I was young I'd spend hours trying poring over and deciphering the meaning behind various music lyrics. But plain poetry? It had to be assigned to me and even then I often found it boring and inscrutable. I'm sure others are different, but that's my point. I don't know how he can assert the universality of his own experience here. >Songs (and limericks) are not meant to be forms of spontaneous communication. > Right. And if they aren't that... why do they exist? As persistent forms of communication, for one. Just like writing and poetry, music can persist for generations and spread easily throughout preliterate civilizations. Anyway, my understanding is that as far as we know, music and speech processing developed in parallel in the human brain, and complement each other. That's why: 1) People who use tonal languages tend to have better musical pitch perception 2) Children who are taught music at a young age tend to have somewhat better language acquisition skills and 3) Musical training given to older folks can slow linguistic cognitive decline. So I think if anything, the available knowledge indicates that music helps with linguistic understanding instead of detracting. He needs to give more than just his own bare assertions. For example, in the recent TV version of Asimov's "Foundation" there's a scene where a color-blind character has an advantage in hunting due to his lack of color perception. I believe that's drawn from reality. If there were a study that analogously showed that people with amusia (inability to process music) had an advantage in speech comprehension or in detecting falsehoods, that would be solid evidence in favor of this blogger's hypothesis. Anyway, you gave me a great deal to ponder over, thanks for the detailed response.