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We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?

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Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?

#61

Post by irrational »

munificent wrote: post #46
lqet wrote: post #2

Related: recent studies have shown that there are people with "musical anhedonia", and that this condition may affect 3 to 5% of the world population [1]. These people "get" music, meaning that they can learn to sing or play an instrument, remember and recognize melodies etc., but they are completely unable to receive any pleasure from it. As someone who gets a significant amount of his daily joy from listening to mu…

I was riding with a new coworker to lunch. Trying to get to know him better, I asked what kind of music he likes. Music is such an important part of many people's life that this is often a good opener. He hesitated for a while and said, "I don't know... quiet I guess?" I think his response caused a full hard reboot of my cranial OS. It was the first time I'd ever met anyone whose relationship to music was so fundamen…

This is me. I can't understand why people want to listen to music in their cars when quiet is so much more pleasurable. Though, I also can't understand why people want to listen to music at all. It has no emotional response for me. I'm so glad to know I'm not the only one since it seems like everyone else likes music for some reason.

Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?

#62

Post by irrational »

rimunroe wrote: post #6
lqet wrote: post #2

Related: recent studies have shown that there are people with "musical anhedonia", and that this condition may affect 3 to 5% of the world population [1]. These people "get" music, meaning that they can learn to sing or play an instrument, remember and recognize melodies etc., but they are completely unable to receive any pleasure from it. As someone who gets a significant amount of his daily joy from listening to mu…

Whoa! I had no idea this was a thing! I'd always thought it was just some weird thing about me. I don't really get a whole lot of pleasure out of music, or get moved by music much. I almost never listen to music. When I do listen, it's usually to drown out external noise or help me focus, but in that case I usually just listen to the same song on a loop.

You're not alone. I'm just glad I now know the name for my "condition" (which I sincerely hope there is no cure for).

Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?

#63

Post by irrational »

drblast wrote: post #52
qznc wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too. And by the way, since HN talked about Anki a few days ago [0], this is a nice little fact which I just entered into my database. Copy&pasted the first line of the Wikipedia article and used the cloze mechanism the ask for the term and its definition. Now I will never forget about musical anhedonia anymore. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17846356

This is fascinating! Can any of you with musical anhedonia watch either of these songs and explain how you feel? https://youtu.be/SS0NHlWgi5w?t=3m22s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi5A9OCAyIk

I watched them. Honestly I got nothing out of them. It's just noise. I could see that the guy with black hair on the left in the first video was really getting into it, I just don't know what he was getting out of it.

In the second one, I felt pleasure looking at the pretty girls, but their singing did nothing for me.

Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?

#64

Post by philmcc »

qznc wrote: post #47
rimunroe wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa! I had no idea this was a thing! I'd always thought it was just some weird thing about me. I don't really get a whole lot of pleasure out of music, or get moved by music much. I almost never listen to music. When I do listen, it's usually to drown out external noise or help me focus, but in that case I usually just listen to the same song on a loop.

Me too. And by the way, since HN talked about Anki a few days ago [0], this is a nice little fact which I just entered into my database. Copy&pasted the first line of the Wikipedia article and used the cloze mechanism the ask for the term and its definition. Now I will never forget about musical anhedonia anymore. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17846356

I have a question for musical anhedonics:

Do you find it harder to enjoy movies?

Typically the score does so much _work_ in the name of emotional manipulation, that I wonder if it would make movies less enjoyable.

More specifically I wonder if you would like certain movies (Spielberg) less and other movies (Er, Um. Who doesn't use scores that much?) more?

Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?

#65

Post by swaggyBoatswain »

LyndsySimon wrote: post #27
swaggyBoatswain wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound like me, I get stuff done in dead silence. Music actually distracts me, playing songs in same loop helps out though. I still like practicing singing in the car though on the way to work, and guitar hero is fun to me too. Looking to learn to play the ukelele. I have like almost no musical intelligence, I can't remember song lyrics very well at all

> Looking to learn to play the ukelele Funny you should say that - I've been slowly trying to learn guitar for a couple of months now. I picked up a ukulele last week on a whim and can't seem to put it down! It's simpler than a guitar, but there's still so much to learn: the chords themselves, of course, but also how chords are created and how that relates to the way the instrument is strung; strums/rhythm; fingerpic…

I'm down for that :)

I still have a long ways to go, I can barely play basic chords properly

Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?

#66

Post by trukterious »

shawn wrote: post #28
phyzome wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that like saying "because genetics" or "because chemistry" or "because biology"? It doesn't really answer the question that the article is asking.

That's a bit like saying that Newton's gravity law doesn't explain why the planets move. It's true that "because genetics" doesn't tell you why it happens, but it might be the deepest answer possible. We are servants to our genes.

>We are servants to our genes

If so then how do you explain phenomena like suicide and celibacy?

Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?

#67

Post by qznc »

drblast wrote: post #52
qznc wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too. And by the way, since HN talked about Anki a few days ago [0], this is a nice little fact which I just entered into my database. Copy&pasted the first line of the Wikipedia article and used the cloze mechanism the ask for the term and its definition. Now I will never forget about musical anhedonia anymore. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17846356

This is fascinating! Can any of you with musical anhedonia watch either of these songs and explain how you feel? https://youtu.be/SS0NHlWgi5w?t=3m22s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi5A9OCAyIk

Looked a minute into the first one. Did not recognize the song but since I'm not into music, I don't know that much.

I find myself distracted by the body language of the guy on the left (and later the one to the right). It is more interesting to me to watch how people behave than to listen to the music.

Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?

#68

Post by shawn »

trukterious wrote: post #66
shawn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit like saying that Newton's gravity law doesn't explain why the planets move. It's true that "because genetics" doesn't tell you why it happens, but it might be the deepest answer possible. We are servants to our genes.

>We are servants to our genes If so then how do you explain phenomena like suicide and celibacy?

It is commonly assumed that evolution tries to maximize its outcome using a greedy algorithm. In fact it seems to be a random walk across all possibilities, with unviable branches dying out over time.

Suicide may also be a second order effect of other factors. For example, suicide usually has a cultural basis: you feel some sort of shame, or maybe you think your future outcomes aren't good culturally. But that means you care about society. Therefore suicide may be an indication that we have evolved to optimize society rather than ourselves. If we didn't care about society, perhaps there would be less suicides, but it would also make humans less dominant.

Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?

#69

Post by [deleted] »

munificent wrote: post #46
lqet wrote: post #2

Related: recent studies have shown that there are people with "musical anhedonia", and that this condition may affect 3 to 5% of the world population [1]. These people "get" music, meaning that they can learn to sing or play an instrument, remember and recognize melodies etc., but they are completely unable to receive any pleasure from it. As someone who gets a significant amount of his daily joy from listening to mu…

I was riding with a new coworker to lunch. Trying to get to know him better, I asked what kind of music he likes. Music is such an important part of many people's life that this is often a good opener. He hesitated for a while and said, "I don't know... quiet I guess?" I think his response caused a full hard reboot of my cranial OS. It was the first time I'd ever met anyone whose relationship to music was so fundamen…

[deleted]

Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?

#70

Post by posterboy »

munificent wrote: post #46
lqet wrote: post #2

Related: recent studies have shown that there are people with "musical anhedonia", and that this condition may affect 3 to 5% of the world population [1]. These people "get" music, meaning that they can learn to sing or play an instrument, remember and recognize melodies etc., but they are completely unable to receive any pleasure from it. As someone who gets a significant amount of his daily joy from listening to mu…

I was riding with a new coworker to lunch. Trying to get to know him better, I asked what kind of music he likes. Music is such an important part of many people's life that this is often a good opener. He hesitated for a while and said, "I don't know... quiet I guess?" I think his response caused a full hard reboot of my cranial OS. It was the first time I'd ever met anyone whose relationship to music was so fundamen…

I think his response was low effort as much as the question. Might have been expecting a different conversation and defaulted to the lowest common denominator.
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