Comment by keiferski | Hacker News Reader

Comment by keiferski | Hacker News Reader

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The section on art collecting highlights the limitations of an economics-based approach to defining "talent." Cowen is an economist and this colors his entire approach.

“You learn about other cultures, you learn different points of view by refining your eye and you develop a skill that is extremely useful for judging other things and cracking cultural codes in other settings. It’s an education in market economics - art markets. Like how do you buy the best pictures in an area Haitian art, or how do you assemble a very good voodoo flag collection? How do you get artists in Mexico to do their best work for you? That’s a business problem that you need to solve.

You want experience at solving a broad diversity of problems, to heighten your aesthetic sense, to learn some real history, and to understand how some of the art world works, surround yourself with beauty.

And you should buy it for the love of the art, and try to find that which other people have not really found or appreciated yet. It’s just like the world of ideas right? It is the world of ideas. It just costs more to play in it in terms of upfront dollar commitments.” [Tyler Cowen: Production Function. David Perrell, North Star Podcast.]

Relying on markets and the opinions of others may be effective in determining current economic value, but it is not a fruitful approach for finding "talent", broadly defined. Contemporary art is an excellent place to observe this phenomenon; there is very little connection between "aesthetic value" and "market value." The art market is a fascinating thing, but make no mistake, the most popular artists are not the most "talented", by whatever definition of talent you may have.

"Slow is the experience of all deep fountains: long have they to wait until they know what hath fallen into their depths. Away from the marketplace and from fame taketh place all that is great: away from the marketplace and from fame have ever dwelt the devisers of new values."

- Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

It may be a mistake focusing on "Cowen is an economist." He does happen to be one, but everyone is something.

This may mean that he's applying a economist's mindset, like an engineer might apply an engineering mindset... but either might be besides the point. More about choice of method and language than substance.

I only brought it up because the author mentions the humanities as being critically important to Cowen's analysis method. Yet I think his approach is fundamentally still economic in nature, likely because of Cowen's economist background.

Tyler calls his study of the humanities “cracking cultural codes,” and he highlights this as the most “importantly novel” activity he practices.

Sure. I don't disagree.

I'm suggesting that this may be besides the point. I don't really know, but I suspect that while being an economist lends a lot of form, it might not be all that important to substance... or less important than other things, even though it's highly visible.

For example, Tyler will try to quantify desires with money. How much would you have to pay me to do this, or how much would I pay to do it. That's a very economist-ey quirk, but I'm not sure it changes outcomes as much as it might seem.

Re: art, I think the identity points that matter is that Tyler isn't an artist. What he is isn't necessarily all that important. He's a pretty weird guy, and a lot of his instincts are probably more artist-like than economist-like anyway.

> Contemporary art is an excellent place to observe this phenomenon; there is very little connection between "aesthetic value" and "market value."

There's something very strange I've noticed in contemporary art, that in the last 20-30 years the value of talent, hard work, and aesthetics have dimished massively in critics and influencers eyes.

I don't think it's made the world a better place. It's almost like creating anti-art is now trendy and popular, creating aesthetic art is seen as boring and old. Chaos is preferred over order, destroying and standing up to old structures is seen as art, not building on previous knowledge.

Now I know there is a lot of value in rebelling, I rebelled a lot myself, but I think it's gone way overboard. You need a balance of rebellion and the old. Rebellion by itself is destructive over the long run.

> there is very little connection between "aesthetic value" and "market value."

Wait, so how do you determine this "aesthetic value" if not by how much people are willing to work to acquire it?

Your personal opinion? Some authority figure? Maths?

Philosophers, artists, and other thinkers have written about aesthetics for thousands of years.

Truly answering your question would take a long time, but a short version might be something like: the collective opinions of a diverse group of highly informed and experienced (not necessarily educated as in a university) individuals. But that's just one approach and there are many others.

Even then, anything is probably superior to using monetary value as equivalent to anything other than what the market currently prices it as. I certainly don't think the most expensive painting is the most beautiful one, although it may be not be totally uncorrelated.

If you're interested in these kinds of questions, definitely look into the philosophical field of aesthetics.

I have some experience with the philosophy of aesthetics from my stints as a slightly more active amateur photographer. I'm sure there's much I could still benefit from learning, though. Do you have a recommendation for a book?

A sibling comment to yours pointed out a critical flaw in using price as a measure: it gives different people very unequally sized votes.

Measuring instead in something like logarithmic uttiles would instead give all people a similarly-sized vote.

My problem with all measures of aesthetics that do not give everyone an equal vote (like your proposal for a committee of experts) is the fat selection bias inherent.

I can think of no way to produce that committee that doesn't involve self-reinforcing feedback loops that bias the committee toward a local optimum that doesn't actually reflect the standards of all of humanity.

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But. Then again, maybe this is one of those situations Weisberg talks about where trying to find the "main effect", i.e. the aggregate opinion of all humans, is meaningless.

Maybe it's more interesting to find out what specific groups of people think, and then I'm sure a committee of such people works. But one has to be up-front about what is then measured.

Unfortunately I don't know of any introductory aesthetics books that aren't heavy on the philosophical language. For that reason I would just recommend reading this IEP article. It covers the standard traditional Western conception of aesthetics, the basic ideas, and so on.

https://iep.utm.edu/aestheti/

If you don't mind reading a dictionary, The Dictionary of Aesthetics by Dabney Townsend is also a good overview of many different ideas and terms.

Otherwise, I am a big fan of Japanese aesthetics, which is much more "in the world" than the more abstract Western philosophical approach. For this, I really recommend the short essay A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics by Donald Richie.

Also, one of my favorite novels is My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk. It is about Ottoman miniature painting and has extensive discussion on aesthetics, painting, and similar topics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Name_Is_Red

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On your other comment, I might agree with Weisberg that we aren't really going for an aggregate opinion of everyone. Instead, we need a way to measure the opinions of a diverse group of experts, whatever that might mean specifically.

A good analogue might be military strategy. If we were to ask "Who was the best general of all time?", we'd likely want to ask military historians (academic experts), actual generals (experiential experts), as well as amateur enthusiasts that are extremely knowledgeable but don't have the right credentials. We'd also probably want various other groups of people like soldiers, politicians, (resurrected) great generals like Napoleon or Hannibal themselves, etc.

As long as we had a decent method for validating membership of these different groups, I think we'd get a reasonably decent answer.

In terms of architecture, this expert-only approach might have some limitations and we would need to add the townspeople and library readers to our analysis. But this is more because buildings are something practical used in the world and not just art in a gallery.

This reminds me of a debate we're having in Sweden presently around architecture. Most contemporary architects seem to prefer buildings as big concrete blocks while most "common folk" would prefer something... less modern? A perfect example is the new art museum which you can see here https://www.svd.se/liljevalchs-tillbyggnad--ett-bankvalv-for.... I personally find it revolting, but am I then the person without taste?

I think much of contemporary art and architecture is stuck in a monocultural loop. There is no input from aesthetically-educated people that are outside the academy or architecture/art industry. It is extremely anti-diverse, especially compared to previous centuries where you had the entire swath of society working on a structure. Hence you’ll get things like that building.

And no I wouldn’t say you have no taste. Most aestheticians throughout (global) history would likely dislike that building. It’s only a recent phenomenon that such styles became so prevalent, largely out of ignorance or rejection of previous things.

Here's a direct link to the image: https://svd.vgc.no/v2/images/f5f90c1d-319d-475b-8988-15ca80c...

Since the modern web is terrible, I was confronted with a pop-up dialog in Swedish (I assume) which prevented seeing the image

It's not you, it's them. That building is revolting.

I looked up the architect, Gert Wingårdh. Wikipedia reports his father owned the local cement factory.

Taste.

I realize this is unsatisfying to many, but there really is no other choice. A strict empiricist has no way of knowing whether or not art is good. In fact, a purely empirical worldview will find it hard to have art in it at all. There's no way to distinguish subjective from arbitrary.

If you do accept that taste exists and that subjective != arbitrary, we can move forward and discuss it without expecting externally verifiable tests for it. If you can't, maybe you shouldn't believe that art exists at all... or that we can gain any knowledge of it if it does.

Substituting price or popularity for quality is redundant. Just think in terms of price or popularity, and forget about quality. Calling popularity quality just because it's easier to define or measure muddies things up, whether or not you believe in taste.

But money doesn't measure work. One hour of work by Jeff Bezos trumps what most make in a year.

Moreover, it doesn't even work as a relative scale. If Jeff Bezos spends half his fortune on one art piece, he is still one of the wealthiest individuals on the planet. He won't be materially affected by this in any way. If I spend half my savings on an art piece, that puts me at a substantial risk (2 catastrophes and I'm broke).

Basically, Jeff has little opportunity cost to spending 50 billion, while I have enormous opportunity cost to spending 50,000. But Jeff doesn't work 1 million times as much as I do for that.

Sure, so measure it in utiles instead.

At the very least we can recognize that "market value" and "aesthetic value" are two different things. The only thing you are really measuring when looking at the economics of art is the "market value" so the other thing you have to pass over in silence, as Wittgenstein would say.

The art world is notorious for being a tax avoidance scheme, on top of money laundering and all sorts of other related activities. Tying market value and aesthetic value in the art world makes about as much sense as introducing the concept of "aesthetic value" when talking about Apple's stock price.

> Tying market value and aesthetic value in the art world makes about as much sense as introducing the concept of "aesthetic value" when talking about Apple's stock price.

What about introducing it when talking about GameStop's stock price?

So artistry has long included subverting people's expectations and perspectives. That doesn't mean aesthetics, which is linked to artistry, is the same as the thing being subverted, or innately measured in the same way as how subverted the thing is.

Parts of art economics are probably one of the few areas where Keynesian beauty contests actually exist in real life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest

> Your personal opinion?

Yes, what's wrong with that? With a little katharsis mixed in, of course.

Let me reverse your question: why would you use "how much oligarchic wealth someone has" or, possibly, "how intent on money laundering the buyer is", to determine aesthetic value?

Because that's how art is sold today.

Because it's the worst alternative except for all the others.

> if not by how much people are willing to work to acquire it?

Over what time period?

> Your personal opinion?

Of course. It’s entirely possible to value something you personally cannot afford.

> there is very little connection between "aesthetic value" and "market value."

Art appreciation extends beyond mere aesthetic value. For example we are able to create pottery that is far more aesthetically pleasing than ancient times. Yet a rare, archeological pot is probably going to fetch far more value than a piece from your neighborhood artist who probably has far more knowledge about pottery than his ancient equivalent.

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