Fantastic writing. I didn't want it to end. It's the warmest and loveliest defence of its core idea that I've ever come across, and likely ever will. The humour

Fantastic writing. I didn't want it to end. It's the warmest and loveliest defence of its core idea that I've ever come across, and likely ever will. The humour in particular -- it's disarming, pitch-perfect in making a case that (ETA: in lesser hands would be) beset on all sides by self-seriousness. And yet... I'm not persuaded. I think its stance is completely understandable, and plausible, and wrong. Not about everything -- I agree 100% that thickening an idea (great metaphor!) makes it more valuable to others, and that the work involved in the thickening process itself is valuable to the artist. But I think this piece is wrong about what I take to be its core idea: That art has inherent objective value about which we all ought to agree. In the words of the author: That a particular cave has treasure or not, independently of the explorer. I say instead that it is enough to treat art the same way as we treat modern human relationships: If two people have a bad relationship, it doesn't have to be that one (or both) of them is a bad person. It can simply be that those two people are not a good match for each other. The explanation can be a predicate on two people rather than on one. Similarly, there doesn't have to be a total order on the set of pieces of art -- or even a partial order. I believe that the only reasons to think that there should be are ultimately rooted in either ego ("I feel smart/cultured/a sense of mastery by liking the 'right' things") or tribal belonging ("I feel a comforting sense of inclusion by liking the 'right' things"). This "purely subjective value" idea has always been a deeply unpopular view for "cultured" people to hold, and nowadays that's also true of the general public in regard to AI-generated works. It is called philistinism, and a person who holds it is properly called a philistine. As jarring as the label is, I would encourage anyone exploring this idea not to stop thinking there -- but to keep going, and consider the implications of both it and its opposite. Perhaps, like with the similarly jarring term "Luddite", people will take another look and decide that it is not something to be written off immediately.