Why is a memetics engineer necessarily a good artist?

[DefenderOfBasic]

(using this issue as a place to dump thoughts as they come to me. I'm thinking this could be a great LessWrong essay, and we can try it on substack/twitter first to iron it out)

A fundamental truth / concept that emerges out of a theory of aesthetics is that any "aesthetic scientist", if successful, is necessarily also an artist (or, has very good/refined taste)

This is now a firm B, and it's old enough/a lot is built on top of it that it feels very difficult to explain to newcomers/outsiders. But I think if we can do that, if we can find the sequences of A's needed to get this, it will be a big breakthrough to most intellectual circles, and will also open this field.

[DefenderOfBasic]

some thoughts I wrote in the ORI discord:

the key point is that a successful theory of memetics can predict what ideas (or pieces of art) will resonate. So you could use it to create beautiful art from first principles, or deduce the existence of certain art (given current conditions, you'd expect this category of thing to resonate, so you go and look for it)

the easiest thing I guess for people to understand is that some people have a good sense of what movies their friends will like. You have good / refined taste if you can make these predictions, not whether you yourself like "the right things"

[DefenderOfBasic]

I guess a pre-req concept to this is that an artist is like a "cartographer of emotion". Art is a truth seeking pursuit. Your lab is your mind. You perceive the world, you note how that feels. You are digging around to find something. That could be a good feeling, or a bad feeling, something intense, but whatever it is, it's something specific. Now, once you find it, you sort of just write down how you got there (that's what a piece of art is, walks you through that path)

if it works for you, then you see what the artist saw. And maybe you like it, or hate it, but it worked

If it leads you towards ANOTHER path, one the artist didn't foresee, that's also good! Now you're off in a different path, but what you found is real (if you are not yourself an artist/don't have good vocabulary, you may not be able to explain what you found)

The way an art may "fail" is if it leads you to something unintended, AND uninteresting. We can "fix" that by forking/remixing the art. If I understand you, and I understand the art, I can probably create a completely different piece of art that works for you. We would say that those two pieces of art are isomorphic, relative to these observers.

[Mr-Ples]

immediate thoughts on the subject:

• the concept of elegance in math as a guiding or evaluative principle, it's clearly functional or has utility and it's clearly something people strive for or want to have if they can (i'd argue it is a prior or bias that influences hypothesis generation, i.e. the axiom that reality in its final form will have a type of unity or harmony or comprehensibility or depth or beauty, which are essentially inexplicit ontological commitments). when an idea isn't elegant or beautiful it is in practice a problem that needs to be solved, in other words it is a valid criticism or indicator that the idea is problematic or incomplete
• the overview effect, which is an aesthetic phenomenon called the sublime, which can be used by artists in order to cause or aid paradigm shifts, which is ultimately the purpose of a memetic engineer

[Mr-Ples]

another stray thought:

the concept of deutch's "fun criterion". he defines "fun" as when your inexplicit and explicit ideas are working together. he says not having fun is a valid criticism of what you are doing vs what you should be doing

the concept that the phenomenology (subjectively experiencing fun as a byproduct of the task) is important to the ethics (what you should or should not be doing) is relevant here since art is widely (albeit implicitly) understood to be about performing transformations in the phenomenology / subjective experience of the observer)

according to tom hyde there is a phenomenology associated with the process of knowledge creation, specifically the experience of "wonder" which consists of curiosity and adoration (at first being curios about the problem and then finding adoration in a good solution). if it is true that knowledge creation is associated with a specific phenomenology, and you have an ethic like "knowledge creation is good and valuable" then you can essentially criticize philosophies or ideologies on a phenomenological level by saying e.g. pessimism as a philosophy when adopted removes the experience of wonder from the subject, which means it is antithetical to knowledge creation, which means it is unethical or should be avoided

all this is just to say the phenomenology is a type of heuristic or shortcut that contains valid information about the ideology or task

and artist as well as a memetic engineer design these types of shortcuts

[huttj]

I guess a pre-req concept to this is that an artist is like a "cartographer of emotion". Art is a truth seeking pursuit. Your lab is your mind. You perceive the world, you note how that feels. You are digging around to find something. That could be a good feeling, or a bad feeling, something intense, but whatever it is, it's something specific.

Inner wayfinding: B

Now, once you find it, you sort of just write down how you got there (that's what a piece of art is, walks you through that path)

Art is your breadcrumbs: U
Art is an impression of how what you found feels, not how you got there

if it works for you, then you see what the artist saw. And maybe you like it, or hate it, but it worked

Interpretation is congruent with creation: U
You see what you see, which is... somehow connected to what the artist saw... same soul, maybe?

If it leads you towards ANOTHER path, one the artist didn't foresee, that's also good! Now you're off in a different path, but what you found is real (if you are not yourself an artist/don't have good vocabulary, you may not be able to explain what you found)

Art will take you to unknown territory: B

The way an art may "fail" is if it leads you to something unintended, AND uninteresting.

Art can be uninteresting: U
Interestingness is in the eye of the beholder. I guess you could say it depends on how clear the map is and how far you've been down your inner territory that it points to... something vivid and novel will likely seem more interesting than something simple and trite

We can "fix" that by forking/remixing the art.

Forking is fixing: A/U
I don't like the frame that art needs to be "fixed," but the idea that it begets forking as a spiritual/aesthetic ACK is 👨🏻‍🍳🤌🏼

If I understand you, and I understand the art, I can probably create a completely different piece of art that works for you.

Understanding implies compatibility: B

We would say that those two pieces of art are isomorphic, relative to these observers.

Derivation is isomorphism: U
After responding to the third one, I'm on the fence about this one. What I saw and what you saw are NOT the same thing. The experience is... almost never isomorphic. And yet... the soul might very well be the same. Like different forms of the letter A