Why our “wandering brains” are wired to love art and nature | Hacker News Reader

Why our “wandering brains” are wired to love art and nature

salon.com

You can't read anything about brains or minds without instantly running into non sequiturs, unsupported claims, and general nonsense.

The first study linked was a pilot study that has never been replicated, and essentially amounts to saying: people who are more creative have more interesting pareidolia. Not very interesting or surprising.

The next section talks about "conscious thought" taking up only 5% of brain activity, which is not remotely supported by any study, and in fact cannot be supported because we simply don't know anything about the connection between brain activity and consciousness, except that some areas look different in an fMRI machine when we are sleeping or under general anesthesia.

Seems weird to write about fractals, seeing patterns and so on without a single mention of psychedelics. Anyone with any experience of psychedelics would tell you how our brains see everything differently while tripping, and seeing fractals or patterns is one of the most obvious one. Probably the brain works similarly while not tripping, but while tripping it becomes so much obvious and "in your face".

I was reading about Nietzsche's "will to power" concept yesterday and found there an interesting take on why people love art:

> This cosmic Will manifests or expresses itself through each individual in the form of the sexual drive and the “will to life” that can be seen throughout nature. It is the source of much misery since it is essentially insatiable. The best thing one can do to reduce one’s suffering is to find ways to calm it. This is one of the functions of art.

This is actually more of a Schopenhauerian idea. It’s why he considers music the highest art form, because it is not replicating a Form from the tangible world, but is closer to the Will itself.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schopenhauer-aesthetics/#...

Also just as a side note, be skeptical when reading about Nietzsche’s Will to Power idea. While he did mention it in his actual published works, much of the idea comes from his posthumous Will to Power collection of notebooks which was put together and published by somewhat nefarious actors.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Will_to_Power_(manuscrip...

I've been trying to find the "true and correct" visualization of music that would reflect its "inner symmetry". I started with an assumption that music is a much simpler entity than drawings, simply because it's one-dimensional. Now I think it's actually more complex because it represents an abstract entity that has no shape, yet has symmetry and for this reason it's so difficult to "draw music". Schopenhauer apparently knew this well:

"Absolutely direct experience of the will is impossible, because it will always be mediated by time, but in first-personal experience of volition and the experience of music the thing in itself is no longer veiled by our other forms of cognitive conditioning."

Music is a graph.

Everything is a graph

Nothing is a graph

Everything is a node

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Music is everything?

Drawing music makes as much sense as singing a painting or dancing architecture.

Music has many different concepts at play, some of which are easier to conceptualize geometrically than others. Waveforms are one, but another visualization that resonated (pun semi-intended) with me was to visualize triads in three dimensions by plotting the pure sine wave of each note of the triad on its own axis as a function of time.

When you plot triads like this, you immediately see that the more harmonic a chord is, the visually simpler its graph is. This is unsurprising to anyone who knows the basics of the math behind music (simple ratios = harmonic, complex ratios = dissonant), but it's striking to actually see it drawn out like that.

I definitely would not say music is one-dimensional. Whether you're considering the interplay between intervals, the movement and manipulation of various emotions and motifs in a piece, or whatever, maybe the thing that strikes me most about music relative to other media is its arbitrary dimensionality.

Not sure I get the idea about triads. Say the three notes are just sine waves with frequencies 200Hz, 300Hz and 500Hz. What will the graph look like?

I've kind of wondered what made impressionism so interesting to people. it can look sloppy but life like and interesting. People really are drawn to the style. I find it so much more interesting then a realistic style painting, even if it's well done and I can appreciate the technicalness of it. Some brains really like loose styles of art.

There's a common principle in art that it's good to make your audience work for a reward.

You can do that by packing in a lot of fine detail, so they have to work to explore it. You can do it intellectually by including a lot of cultural and historical references only some people will get.

You can also do it by leaving out and fuzzing detail, so they have to work to make sense of what they're seeing - taking a detour through various aesthetic associations along the way.

Beyond impressionism you end up with abstract expressionism, which is all associative and evocative aesthetics, and no figurative subject to recognise.

And that still works for a surprisingly large number of people.

“Nothing is more important than that you see and love the beauty that is right in front of you, or else you will have no defense against the ugliness that will hem you in and come at you in so many ways.” ― Neal Stephenson, Anathem

I have a different idea, I think it is coming from our oldest mammalian ancestors.

Mammals have very good eyesight, and night vision in comparison to most non-mammals.

A lot of mammals, and especially primates, and relatives, like to seek out good vistas, and vantage points.

People after all pay higher prices for top floors in highrises

> A lot of mammals, and especially primates, and relatives, like to seek out good vistas, and vantage points.

The article mentions this as well, but expands on the "why", not just the "what", so you and the article basically have the same idea.

> The physicist, Richard Taylor at the University of Oregon, speculates that humans are "wired" with a "fractal fluency" because we evolved surrounded by the natural fractal patterns of plants, clouds, and rocks. Studies confirm that fractals increase attention, pattern recognition, navigation, reduce stress, and have aesthetic appeal.

I wish they defined the term fractal... At least whatever they mean by using that word, since fractal has very simple definition and is even measurable (fractal dimension measure). Fractals tend to repeat their structure at different sizes.

Do they mean "unorganized non-abstract shapes with elaborate structure" or something similar?

“ When we let our minds wander and daydream, they become increasingly open to these divergent "bottom-up" diffractions and weak associations.”

This is really good to read. I like to take long drives and let my mind relax, and daydream a bit, it’s been great for helping me to figure out parts of the novel I’m still writing. I had not thought of it that letting my brain relax to daydream like that was changing the way it processed. I need to take more long drives!

Instead of driving, I suggest taking long walks.

We don’t have self walking shoes yet, do we?

? We don't have self-driving cars either. And arguably, driving a car requires more attention, even when in a "robot state" than walking will ever.

Sleeping/sitting is the only thing I can think of that you can't do while walking (that you could do in a car, i.e. not tivial exceptions like 'visit the Sydney Opera House while walking the Appalachian trail') - it's basically an autopilot thing anyway, only breathing bests it.

It may be related to the horizontal eye movement, or the scanning of the environment. I heard this in Huberman Lab podcast, and iirc it's related to neuroplasticity. I wish I recalled more details, or at least in which episode he discussed this. If I do, I'll return and post more.

The article reminded me of this quote, which I've heard in various forms:

"Do not despise my opinion, when I remind you that it should not hard for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or the ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places, in which, if you consider them well, you may find really marvelous ideas. The mind of the painter is stimulated to new discoveries, the composition of battles of animals and men, various compositions of landscapes and monstrous things, such as devils and similar things, which may bring you honor, because by indistinct things the mind is stimulated to new inventions."

--Leonardo da Vinci

> we are not biologically programmed to like or this or that object, but rather inclined to enjoy the process of play, improvisation, trial, and error in all things

Yep

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