Response to Gwern

This is a response to Gwern’s “Culture is Not About Aesthetics,” which argues that:

• "There’s more fiction then anyone could hope to consume
• People would be happier reading only the best fiction
• It’s easier to figure out what the good old fiction is, than it is new fiction
• There’s also more good old fiction than good new fiction
• People write too much new fiction
• They also read too much
• Society shouldn’t subsidize economically inefficient things like new fiction
• We might go so far as to suggest a Pigovian tax on new works because they encourage their own consumption
• The uses of fiction are much less than one might think, and many of those uses are propagandistic, dangerous, or both
• Subsidizing the nonfiction market may be justifiable"

I agree with most of these claims but I think it sells the biggest advantages of fiction short. Here are some points that I think Gwern ignores or underestimates:

People like different stuff

Gwern acknowledges that people have different tastes while kind of laughing at the idea that one person could be so picky as to not find much of interest out of the millions of existing artworks. I think the dismissal assumes that you’re part of a demographic that is heavily targeted by the culture industries. If, for example, you live in a third world country and speak a language that is unique to your nation, there may not actually be such an abundance of art at your disposal. Apart from the fact that you’ll likely have difficulty getting access to most art, especially if its required to be dubbed or subtitled in a specific language, the art that you do come across might not be relatable, comprehensible, or appealing to you.

New art allows for the discussion of new ideas

New stuff comes up: social movements, cultural events, wars, policies, scandals, fashion trends, technological advancements, natural disasters, popular memes, etc. New art allows new generations of people to express new opinions – possibly even with new mediums that were only recently invented. For example, queer people now have queer cinema, literature, etc. In the past, this sort of content wasn’t freely available. This art in turn pumps life into the gay rights movement. It is now possible to find creative content on the terrors of factory farming, the controversy over the latest privacy laws, etc. Shakespeare never wrote us any classics on speciesism.

Art’s persuasiveness can be hugely beneficial

More importantly, narrative fiction possesses tremendous potential to do good in the world in a controlled, systematic way. Organizations like Development Media International use a brand of fiction called entertainment-education (E-E) to change behaviours and save lives in the developing world. E-E might not be able to compete with the classics in terms of artistic value, entertainment value, or other popular criteria for “greatness” but it often blows other artworks out of the water when it comes to what I think matters most: the degree to which it makes people’s lives better. This is counter-intuitive because we evolved in times when persuasiveness wasn’t one of art’s most relevant functions. But now, fiction can target specific demographics numbering in the millions of people around the world, bolstered by decades of psychological and sociological research into behaviour change. Using narrative devices to deliver the right health and social messages to the right communities can now play a crucial role in fighting death and disease – in short, making the world better. There is no evolutionary precedent for a time when art could reach such large audiences that its persuasiveness would become more profitable to humanity than its emotional and intellectual appeal. But here it is. According to GiveWell, producing new fiction in this way could even rank among the most evidence-backed, thoroughly-vetted, and underfunded methods of improving the world.

  

I think everybody in history has been wrong about the effective use of art. As a result, the greatest art of all time likely hasn’t been created yet. Rather than banning new art, we should hope to reform art culture into something that isn’t terrible.

Robert Cialdini's Influence

 A while ago, Peter Hurford told me he had a few books he wanted to see summarized and applied toward animal activism. From his list, I chose Robert Cialdini's Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

After 10k+ words and 20+ pages, here it is.

I previously wrote a summary of Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness.

Investing in Yourself

[This post is my submission for the December edition of Figuring Good Out, the new EA blogging carnival.]

On the quest to be frugal I think many EAs miss good opportunities to invest in themselves.

General wisdom suggests that you shouldn't spend too much of your money on things that you don't need. And that makes perfect sense. As money, time, and attention are limited resources, you need to be selective about how you allocate them. There are a lot of changes most people can make that will save them time and money without sacrificing anything comparable. However, I do think this mindset can be limiting, especially for young people with big dreams and a long road ahead toward achieving them. 

Instead, I think that it's often right to spoil yourself by "wasting" time and money. I recommend spending "too much" on clothing, furniture, and other cool stuff. Whether or not you are materialistic or superficial, most other people are. Possessing nice stuff makes you come off as more impressive, more competent, more self-aware, and more attractive. (Yup, halo effect.) You'll also gain confidence, more relatable things to talk about, and, of course, some cool stuff.

I don't think pinching pennies is the necessary way to live as an EA, especially if you're young and building up career capital. Overspending on nice stuff has social repercussions that most EAs could probably use.

The same could be said for time. Taking breaks, having hobbies, learning about new subjects, and generally spoiling yourself can be really useful for keeping you motivated and on track. This might be especially true for those that feel as if they have unusually high potential. 

In particular, I'm thinking of items and subjects that are generally considered to be for the superficial, materialistic, and hip: expensive clothing, accessories, pop culture, sports, plants, hip restaurants and cafes, etc.

"Wasting" your time and money is sometimes an effective way of investing in yourself.


Note: I don't think this post applies to everyone but I believe it's often true of myself in my current situation.

Figuring Good Out: December

Recently, I've been pitching the idea of an EA blogging carnival where each month, somebody picks a topic and then everybody blogs about it.

As today is the first of the month, I'm going to announce the December topic for Figuring Good Out*, the new EA blogging carnival. If you'd like to participate, just write a post on the topic and mention that you'd like to include it in the carnival for this month.

The topic for December is "Blind spots." You can take that in any direction that you like. For example, what is something altruistically important that you know about that you think most EAs don't know about? Is there a cause, organization, insight, or productivity tip that EAs are ignoring?

On December 31, I'll write a post linking to all the submissions. If you'd like to volunteer to host the January carnival, then let me know below. We can start a queue. As host, you can choose any topic you like but keep in mind that some topics will get more responses than others. If you intend to contribute to this month's carnival, I recommend commenting below.


*The title "Figuring Good Out" is negotiable if everybody really hates it but it works for me.

Compilation: EA Epistemology

In preparation for the start of the first EA blogging carnival, I am creating compilation posts for topics on which various EAs have expressed opinions. An example of this that has already been done is Julia Wise's post on Giving Now vs Giving Later.

This post is on the epistemology of cause and charity selection.

Holden Karnofsky - Sequence Thinking vs Cluster Thinking
Nick Beckstead - Common Sense as a Prior
Brian Tomasik - Cost-Effectiveness in an Uncertain World
Carl Shulman - What Proxies to Use for Flow-Through Effects?
Jonah Sinick - Many Weak Arguments vs One Relatively Strong Argument
Jonah Sinick - Knightian Uncertainty from a Bayesian Perspective
Paul Christiano - Beware Brittle Arguments
Luke Muehlhauser - Model Combination and Adjustment
Eliezer Yudkowsky - The Weak Inside View
Philip Tetlock - Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?
Robin Hanson - Beware the Outside View
Peter Hurford - Why I'm Skeptical About Unproven Causes

EA Blogging Carnival?

I discovered the concept of a "blogging carnival" through the asexual community. For all I know, they invented it.

How it works is that each month, a different blogger "hosts" the carnival by selecting a topic. Everyone interested in participating for that month then writes a blog post about that topic. The host then writes up a post linking to all the submissions. Here is an example of what a link roundup would look like.

Given that there are so people blogging about EA issues, I think this concept would transfer really well into the EA community. Each month, have somebody choose a topic such as "Donating Now vs Later" or "EA Outreach" or whatever and then accept submissions from the various contributors.

One advantage of blogging carnivals is that they draw attention to a variety of blogs, including those that fly under the radar.

A second advantage is that they provide a variety of voices on one topic. Rather than just reading one EA's thoughts on cause prioritization, you could get 8 of them side-by-side. There's something more democratic about hearing from multiple competing voices.

This then creates mini crash courses on what EAs tend to think about a particular subject at a particular time. If I want to read about issues regarding EA and religion, I can a whole bunch of posts from different people that take a different approach to the month's theme. I see this being especially useful to outsiders that want to catch up on EA quickly. 

My Briefest Summary of Artistic Value

A lot of people seem to believe in something called "artistic value." The idea is that some art is better than other art according to some set of criteria. Intuitively, this makes a lot of sense. If artistic value doesn't exist then we have to admit weird things like that any child's scribbled drawings are artistically equal to the Mona Lisa.

The problem with conversations about artistic value is that nobody can define "great art" in a way that satisfies everyone else. Some people think great art must be timeless and universal. Other people think great art is art that expresses the most "truth" about what the world is really like. And so on. There's no real way to resolve these disagreements because there isn't much reason to favour one definition over another. You can define words however you like but nobody else is forced to use your definition.

Thus I think tailoring art to score within the goalposts of any particular definition of "artistic greatness" is kind of arbitrary considering the existence of plenty of equally valid definitions.

HOWEVER - I do think there's a way to sensibly evaluate art without appealing to artistic value. Okay, so maybe the Mona Lisa isn't inherently "artistically greater" than some kindergarden kid's drawings but that doesn't mean that art is a pointless waste of time and that there's no reason to try when you can just scribble. Art has plenty of positive (and sometimes negative) effects on the world - it can increase empathy, tolerance, improve social skills, deliver ideas across cultural boundaries, train people to think creatively, educate, etc.

These don't seem like arbitrary accomplishments (although there's debate about that too that I won't get into here). They actually improve the world. And so I think it makes sense to think of art in this way, as a force for improving the world, and that the most meaningful way to evaluate art is to evaluate the degree to which it can be shown to make the world better or worse.

This isn't to say that you can't also have a working definition of "artistic value" and then go around saying weird things like "Film A is artistically better but Film B is morally better." You might prefer Film A but what you happen to prefer is based on all kinds of factors that aren't directly tied to the social effects of those preferences. And I think it's easier to justify the legitimacy of social effects than it is to justify the legitimacy of your subjective preferences.

In most conversations, it'll make more sense to replace the symbol with the substance. If a novel is more creative than another novel, call it "more creative," not better. If a painting looks nicer to you than another one, call it "nicer looking," not better. It's unhelpful to insist on a definition of "artistic value" that you know other people will reject.