RE: Priming an audience: Information Finding Championship - Season 1 : Round 22 entry MUSIC
Sorry, the part you first quoted was specifically about classical music and not more! But it might have parallel to what you were talking about. The making of classical music into a saleable product has debased many of the things that made it meaningful. Thus the focus meaningless beauty and an emphasis on the visual in an auditory art!
I have to say, the defining of music tastes and musical success by a small group of gatekeepers has been a disaster. Not financially for those in the loop, but for the art firm of music in general. I'm hopeful this wave of decentralisation will go in some part to fixing this abuse of power.
Although, in not sure I would have enough to support where I think you are going with your conclusions! I prefer to blame the mass impact of many individual greed impulses and preservation of mediocrity above a conspiracy! Perverse incentives.
Ah.. Oops my bad for the misunderstanding. Lol..
I do agree it has been a disaster for art in general, and whether simple greed or something deeper, in the end it's still both of those things in my opinion. It's greed and a conspiracy, a conspiracy is just a group of people coming together with a similar goal. Though.. In regards to my kind of conspiracy, yeah I don't expect you to agree with me there. I think it's part of a larger plot to dumb people down and control them. And.. I think you rarely ever get to the pinnacle of fame without being in one of the secret societies. During my research I've found almost every major famous person eventually leads to a secret society, even going back hundreds of years. That doesn't necessarily mean they are all bad, but.. When the world is so messed up and they don't speak out about it, it makes one wonder.
A mass of individual desires and a conspiracy have similar outcomes, but I think they are different in the cure.
A gathering of individual desires suggests that the system and power structures give incentives to act and behave in a certain way. For instance, if we don't place a price on pollution, then there is no real incentive for the mass of the population to favour a cleaner ecosystem. To paraphrase, it is a bit odd to expect that a system that favours maximising personal gain could produce a net social good. In this interpretation (my preferred, unfortunately), people act in a greater good way only if it somehow benefits them (not necessarily in a financial sense). Thus, the way to harness this is to create rules and power structures that channel these individual desires.
In a conspiracy (please correct me if I'm wrong!), the idea is that there is something that is holding back the natural development of society. In that case, the cure is to target the cancer and then things will go to their natural state. It is a more optimistic view, as it suggests that if people were left to develop freely then a potentially better society would emerge? Although, I'm much more pessimistic about this. I would suggest that even if that was possible, a new "power centre" would develop.
I generally agree with your ideas here and I think you have a great way with words and putting these kinds of things into mental pictures.
I suppose that's possible, but this would almost imply this is our human nature. Which is possible.. But.. I'd like to believe we're not limited or confined to this and that there is a better way. I think perhaps in time if enough people learn to truly learn deep spiritual concepts like the "golden rule" then.. No one would ever on purpose try to infringe on others again, that would leave mostly just accidents and people accidentally hurting each other.. But.. I think if everyone truly learned the golden rule, there would be no desire to rule over each other.
I think it is the nature of a large group of individuals (humans and otherwise). I do remember reading a paper about the optimum balance of selfish and altruistic members of a society (animal). It turns out that a balance of the two is required for a stable society.
Completely selfish is destructive, but completely altruistic should also be unstable. A small mutation to have a slightly more selfish trait would in a few generations completely dominate.
I forget the balance though, just that the point of stability was somewhere in between. Admittedly, it is a simplistic model, but I think the idea that a completely altruistic society is unfortunatly not as stable a community as we would hope to believe it would be.
I need to see more data about how altruism is harmful in society before I can comment. I just don't even know how to interpret that without more information.
I would be curious if you could bring me more information about this, cause I'd like to see how selfishness is a good thing and too much altruism is bad. I'm genuinely curious too, not being sarcastic. Please lemme know if you can go into more detail on that.
Oof, that paper I read was such a long time ago. I have searched around for it, but I haven't found it yet.
Anyway, Im not sure I was totally clear in my comment. I (the paper) wasn't making a point on the morality or anything about selfish vs altruism. It was only making a point about the stability of the systems that contained both traits.
The completely selfish system was unstable as it led to self destruction.
The completely altruistic was also unstable, as the merest introduction of a selfish trait (via mutation or otherwise) led to it gaining rapid dominance (as it harnessed more resources selfishly) over multiple generations.
The finding was that a mix of the two traits was needed to provide stability to a system over many generations.
The research and conclusion was about system stability, not about what was better.
I will continue looking, my memory is hazy on how I came across it originally...