Comment by hmokiguess | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hmokiguess | Hacker News Reader

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We don't have to agree, but the biggest problem I find with this take you're now bringing is that it leads to an infinite regress, you can forever expand your knowledge about the origin of something. Then, not to mention, that often we construct from evidence which is already an interpretation with data loss.

The Mona Lisa example actually supports both our positions in my opinion: someone can have a profound experience of it knowing nothing of Leonardo, while someone else has a different profound experience knowing his biography. Neither experience is 'false', they're just different modes of engagement with the same work. Personally, I have even experienced the inverse throughout my life.

Growing up not speaking English, and being flooded with American culture through radio, I was deeply moved by lots and lots of music made by foreigners that sounded like absolute gibberish to me. Later in life, after learning about the meaning of certain songs, I, unfortunately, lost some of my appreciation for it. Some may call that alienation, but to me it was a form of naivety of a child that enjoyed just sound in its pure form without it being tainted by any derived or supplied meaning from its creator that was attached to it through accompanied lyrics.

But then do we not agree, for if your experience of the music has changed upon learning the meaning of the songs, then it was true knowledge of the meaning of the piece which in the end determined your appreciation for it. And that our experience is not a fixed thing at one moment in time, but can re-occur and is in flux and subject to change in its quality based on knowledge gained. So from this you cannot return to the naivety of a child unless you reject from your mind the notion that knowledge determines quality and that the meaning supplied from its makers influences our experience of it.

Who is more correct, the child or the adult? If you suggest the child, then what do you say to the adult who objects on the grounds of the meaning of the sounds uttered? The adult would say that though the sounds are pleasant to the ear, they are not good to the mind. Thus, rather than affirming the child's vision, they would reject the pleasant sounds with poor meaning in favor of higher quality ones which are as equal in their harmonic value as with the greater quality in their meaning.

As for the infinite regress, that only proves the value of knowledge all the greater, for if we can expand our knowledge on the origins of something continually, so too can our appreciate of the thing grow in proportion. This only leads to a richer and deeper appreciation for life. In this way I can reread or rewatch a show in time and see more and know more than in my first experience, and so grows my appreciation for the details that I missed the first time. And this may only occur if the subject at hand is of good quality in the first place, for else when we descend further into the details and meaning we would be dissapointed at its lack. But that which is rich in meaning lacks none and may reveal itself new with every experience. This is why knowledge of the good is required, and why AI and lackluster artists may only produce pleasant sounds.

"I neither know nor think that I know," as Socrates said. Perhaps that's where we must leave it.

You see knowledge of origins as the path toward deeper appreciation, an asymptotic approach to the artist's soul. I see each encounter with art as its own beginning, where meaning emerges fresh in the meeting of work and listener, never fully exhausted by what came before.

Maybe both are true in their way. The child and the adult don't cancel each other, they're different movements in the same ongoing piece. I lost something when I learned those lyrics, and I gained something too. Neither experience was false.

There is no end to this question, for there is only beginning.

The debate about where meaning lives may itself be unsolvable, which is perhaps why we've been having it for millennia.

Thank you for the exchange. It's sharpened my thinking, even where we remain apart. :)

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