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Comment by joydeepdg | Hacker News Reader

I agree with the points you make, but I really don't see anything but (unscientific) opinions in the linked article.

This article says nothing about why Miles was a good businessman or expound on his leadership skills. All it gives us is insight into his taste in composition styles. That, coupled with the fact that music is a highly unscientific endeavor and the reasons he gives for disliking some of the works might be the exact reasons why others might love those very works, makes this article completely useless IMHO.

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I found it interesting. And, I see parallels to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Both of whom are merciless critics.

Does that make it "HN-worthy"? I dunno. It got voted up. I don't consider that a sure sign of worthiness...memes and jokes would also get voted up if they weren't ruthlessly removed by mods, and they definitely aren't HN-worthy. But, I suspect this has something to teach us...or at least provides interesting conversation fodder in areas that most people here probably previously had none. I studied jazz at a high school for fine arts and in college, and Miles Davis is a huge part of a jazz education; I still feel like this gave me some knowledge about Miles that I didn't quite have before (I knew he was a merciless critic, and extremely forthright, and occasionally an asshole; but I don't think I'd ever read it straight from his mouth...I'd read what his band members had said about him).

The fact that his band members were still loyal to him also parallels Steve Jobs: even though their character is often described as unpleasant, these people still retained their allies.

Also see this econtalk episode: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/06/jonah_lehrer_on.htm...

> And I thought about the following. Jobs and Dylan had something in common, which is they blurted out often cruel things to people around them, which we often call--as adults we call it selfish. [...]

> [Jonah Lehrer]: It all comes back. No, no, it's a fascinating question. What really interests me about that is, especially in terms of Steve Jobs, because I think we've got this epic biography of him at this point, is the way it complicates our traditional notions of self-control. I think we often think of self-control as domain-general : If you've got self-control, you can exert self-control in every facet of your life.

Lord help us if everything unscientific is useless.

On the contrary, anything unscientific is great. I am a musician myself and I find proof based scientific discussions very claustrophobic at times.

All I am trying to say is, in this case, the article is a bunch of opinion from a Jazz musician about fellow Jazz musicians and bands. How does this fit in with other HN threads?

I would say that something like Frank Zappa on censorship [1] [2] is much more suited to HN discussion than this link.

[1] http://www.joesapt.net/superlink/shrg99-529/p51.html#fztesti...

[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ISil7IHzxc

How does this fit in with other HN threads?

But not everything ought to fit in! The mandate is simply to be interesting and not lame.

I'm over my meta quota now.

p.s. I like your use of the word 'claustrophobic' there. Very nice.

" I am a musician myself and I find proof based scientific discussions very claustrophobic at times."

How do you rate the musicians you play with?

I have to make judgements about students and (at this time of year) prospective students in terms of which course and which level to allocate them to.

I imagine that the founders of a startup who are responding to a sudden increase in use/market have to make judgements about their colleagues when scaling up the responsibilties.

The way Davis is making judgements about his peers and the particular recordings shows something about his approach.

>All it gives us is insight into his taste in composition styles. That, coupled with the fact that music is a highly unscientific endeavor and the reasons he gives for disliking some of the works might be the exact reasons why others might love those very works, makes this article completely useless IMHO.

You seem to conflate "unscientific" with "anything goes".

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