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Comment by irrational | Hacker News Reader

But there is already more excellent content that has already been created than you could possibly consume in a hundred lifetimes. Do we really need to support people to create more? I feel like we can enjoy what we already have and don't need to continuously look for something new. If people really really really want to create something, they will find a way to do so.

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> there is already more excellent content that has already been created than you could possibly consume in a hundred lifetimes.

I hear this often. Where is this excellent content? 99% of things online recommendations float up for me is garbage. Sometimes I see some gems, but it's rare. Already years ago I was hearing people say that the only thing we need now is good content discovery. Screw any new content. We already have too much good stuff.

I'm starting to think that, if in all this time Internet giants haven't been able come up with a way to get to those hundreds of lifetimes of amazing content, maybe it doesn't actually exist?

Our tastes change over time. Some things that were great 10 years ago haven't aged well. There's a long tail. What's excellent for you isn't interesting to me, and so on. In a sum there might be more content than you can watch in a lifetime, but an intersection of that whole collection with a single person's momentary interests seems to be much much smaller.

Have you really read the entire Western Canon? Listened to the collective oeuvres of Bach, Beethoven and Mozart? Watched the AFI top 100 movies or IMDB’s top 1000? Watched all of The Sopranos, The Wire and Breaking Bad? Read the SF Masterworks Collection?

Nothing about that idea sounds fun to me.

If you've listened to some Bach (for example) and didn't like it, why would you spend 200 hours listening to the rest?

Is there any kind of cultural production, any genre that you like a lot more than most people? Because if there is there’s someone who likes it 100 times more than you and has made a list of the top 100 things in it. If you haven’t gone through multiple of these lists then you you’re not even trying to get through the enormous amount of fantastic content out there that is wildly disproportionately likely to be great, for you.

You underestimate how specific people's tastes can be. There are nano niches. For example what if I like the music of a person so much that I'd rather listen to that person for 100 hours than to anything else? Well, that's exactly what I'm doing but when the author has only ever published 12 songs each 3 min long then that means I've heard the songs over a hundred times already and unfortunately at some point I just get bored of a song. I wish I could enjoy them longer but for me it would be just as good if the same author released a new batch of songs.

You no longer enjoy that person’s music so much that you would rather listen to it than do anything else. It seems unlikely that all of your interests are so specific. If you have some more general tastes there will be lists of good stuff you should check out in those genres. If you love these 12 songs more than acting else but have listened to them so much that all joy has drained from them have you listened to songs others with taste recommend for those who love these songs?

Artistic taste is far from infinitely malleable but it’s flexible enough for many to appreciate metal, opera, pop and classical music. If your tastes are so narrow and specific you are in a tiny minority.

Finally, what is the artist and album?

I understand the enjoyment of collecting stuff or completing lists compiled by other people, but that isn't connected to what I enjoy about art, so I'm still not finding this a fun suggestion.

Per this reasoning, producing The Wire or Breaking Bad and most of the "Western Canon" was already unnecessary. Humanity has produced enough written content in antiquity to keep you reading for a lifetime.

Yes, and? My point wasn’t about cultural production, it was about the availability of enormous amounts of excellent curated content. People will make art of various forms without remuneration, even without audience, for the love of creation. Greater rewards will lead to more. But there really is enough great work in antiquity to spend a lifetime on.

With that reasoning we should have stopped producing music after Bach, Mozart or Beethoven. Instead, our cultural context and technology evolved and so did our forms of expression. There will always be more possibilities and combinations of known elements (ingredients, words, notes, interesting questions) that nobody has tried before. Be it in the realm of cooking, music, programming, podcasting or literature -- the possibilities are (almost) endless. If I find pleasure consuming that content I have no problem rewarding those that produce it -- and I would never be able to produce such content / will find a way to do so. I am a reasonably good programmer and cook, but a pretty crappy musician -- I would never be able to produce musical content like Amon Tobin, Aphex Twin or Black Sabbath.

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