The social obligation to be bad at things • Hacker News Board

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#171

Post by LouisSayers » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 10:13 PM UTC

themacguffinman wrote: post #96

LouisSayers wrote: post #82

Reminds me back when I went skiing for the first time with my gf at the time. She had lots of experience skiing and I guess wanted to “show me the slopes”. In showing me how to do the pizza stop, I said “but all the pros do the side to side thing...” so I did that instead. By the end of the day I was going down all the slopes with her (I still lost my skis a couple times), but she seemed a bit pissed off and I rememb…

The correct answer is "because I had a great teacher". She probably learnt skiing with less guidance and had to figure out a bunch of stuff on her own. I still empathize with the phenomenon though. No matter what mindset you have or humility or conscious understanding of the differences between human ability, it's often viscerally frustrating to see others pick stuff up way quicker than you could ever hope to.

> I still empathize with the phenomenon though. No matter what mindset you have or humility or conscious understanding of the differences between human ability, it's often viscerally frustrating to see others pick stuff up way quicker than you could ever hope to.

The irony of this is that she had a high IQ so was used to learning things much quicker than others.

> The correct answer is "because I had a great teacher". She probably learnt skiing with less guidance and had to figure out a bunch of stuff on her own.

The reason I was good at skiing was because a) I had done aggressive inline skating for many years, and b) I had been snowboarding a few times

The confidence and similarity from rollerblading along with familiarity of how the snow moves from snowboarding allowed me to pick it up quickly.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#172

Post by abathur » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 10:24 PM UTC

arexxbifs wrote: post #163

jmcqk6 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the person you're replying to, but I thought I would jump in. Just the fact that there is a disagreement about what is and isn't art points to the reality that there isn't an objective standard for judging art. Art by it's nature is personal. If there was truly an objective standard of beauty, then you could measure it, and there wouldn't be a debate. Unless you're claiming that there is an objective standard…

Jump right in! I seem to be in rant mode anyway. :) Defining art and defining beauty must not be confused. I don't think art _must_ be beautiful, I was commenting on whether three blank canvases could convey some kind of beauty. Perhaps, to some, depending on how they were arranged, the background offsetting them, the overall surroundings, etc. But having to construct some abstract concept around exhibiting them and…

I don't think you've found bedrock.

Don't confuse being able to measure something with attempts to explain what the measurement means.

Even if everyone agrees the mathematically-perfect face or landscape is beautiful, "we" are what was actually measured. If there isn't absolute agreement that the mathematically-perfect face is beautiful, be very suspicious of the interpretation.

Beauty is an experience, not a thing. It is inherently relational, not absolute or objective. If all things were equally "beautiful", the concept would vanish. If we all had mathematically-perfect faces, that particular spell would be broken.

Art--like beauty, boredom, and curiosity--is a relative, relational experience.

Don't get confused by the art-object; it is not the art. It is, at best, a call to have an art-experience, which you may or may not respond to.

Don't get confused by the art-museum; it is not where art lives. It is, at best, a physical space where it is socially acceptable to have art-experiences and leave art-objects laying around.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#173

Post by jpindar » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 10:26 PM UTC

xigency wrote: post #103

Mvandenbergh wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the main reason people don't like it is aesthetic. If you told people that whatever else was happening, you always made time to have a conversation with your wife at least once a week that wasn't purely transactional (discussing the week's meal planning, children's school schedules etc.). I think people would think that was a good idea. Using a "corporate" term for it, rubs many people the wrong way. Secondar…

> It is considered a bit lame to try. I believe this is the real thesis of the article. Why it is okay to be successful is that you no longer need to try - or if you believe talent is innate that some people never had to try. Struggling to get better, being bad, and improving all reek of “trying.”

Note that the term try-hard is an insult.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#174

Post by wbronitsky » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 10:26 PM UTC

throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #151

wbronitsky wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh boy do I resonate with this. Thank you for sharing this! I remember the first time I saw "Fountain" by Duchamps, which, for the uninitiated, is a urinal, on its side, signed and dated by the artist. For years, decades, I cast it aside in my mind as something silly, something artsy, something that wasn't for me. It was ugly, vulgar, and above all, obvious. For years, seeing replica after replica in modern and conte…

You replied to my ragepost with one that said "I'm very confused as to why my most post caused a response loaded with so much anger." Seems you then deleted it. Well, here's my response, without the context of your post - I wish you had left it. Anyway. ---- A reasonable response. Let me try... I don't like sloppy thinking. You've responded in one useful way but in another, you quite blatantly haven't answered what w…

I deleted my replies to you because I didn't think they added anything to the conversation, and did not raise the level of discussion. I do, however, feel that I now need to point something out.

> Sloppy thinking gets people killed. That's why I get upset.

We are discussing a urinal on a platform in an art museum.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#175

Post by executive » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 10:29 PM UTC

mikeyouse wrote: post #35

evmar wrote: post #12

I found that, as a person who (sometimes) creates things, my attitude towards other people who create things has significantly shifted. When I was younger I would just see the fault -- the typos, the narcissism, the pointlessness, the already-been-done-better-by-others -- of people's work. But after trying a bit, it sometimes (for the same reasons the OP talks about) creating anything new ends up being really hard in…

I had a similar experience after visiting a modern art museum with a creative friend of mine. I jokingly said "Even I could have done that" about one of the pieces and my friend replied, "But you didn't" -- hit me in one of those profound realization kind of ways. I started thinking about all of the effort it takes to envision something, find the resources, build it, work to get it displayed somewhere. Just creating…

Don't think any of us could have done this beauty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_Fire

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#176

Post by throwaway_pdp09 » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 10:41 PM UTC

wbronitsky wrote: post #174

throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You replied to my ragepost with one that said "I'm very confused as to why my most post caused a response loaded with so much anger." Seems you then deleted it. Well, here's my response, without the context of your post - I wish you had left it. Anyway. ---- A reasonable response. Let me try... I don't like sloppy thinking. You've responded in one useful way but in another, you quite blatantly haven't answered what w…

I deleted my replies to you because I didn't think they added anything to the conversation, and did not raise the level of discussion. I do, however, feel that I now need to point something out. > Sloppy thinking gets people killed. That's why I get upset. We are discussing a urinal on a platform in an art museum.

I was pretty certain you'd raise that. Training people to think sloppily (in any area) is not what education is about. It is not a recipe for responsible citizenry capable of good decisions.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#177

Post by jmcqk6 » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 11:00 PM UTC

arexxbifs wrote: post #163

jmcqk6 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the person you're replying to, but I thought I would jump in. Just the fact that there is a disagreement about what is and isn't art points to the reality that there isn't an objective standard for judging art. Art by it's nature is personal. If there was truly an objective standard of beauty, then you could measure it, and there wouldn't be a debate. Unless you're claiming that there is an objective standard…

Jump right in! I seem to be in rant mode anyway. :) Defining art and defining beauty must not be confused. I don't think art _must_ be beautiful, I was commenting on whether three blank canvases could convey some kind of beauty. Perhaps, to some, depending on how they were arranged, the background offsetting them, the overall surroundings, etc. But having to construct some abstract concept around exhibiting them and…

>Objective beauty is measurable. There's for example a definable, codifiable way of determining what we consider to be a beautiful face (it's about symmetry and averages).

>Nature is objectively beautiful. Symmetry. Harmony, for example in matching colours or colours offsetting each other in specific ways (such as complementary colours).

These are opinions. I can find things that are symmetrical that are not beautiful. I can find things from nature that are definitely not beautiful.

Many times it's the exceptions to things that are beautiful - the out of place line in something that's otherwise symmetrical. But there are very few things in life that I think people will universally say is beautiful. There are always exceptions, people who do not like this thing or that.

You really seem to be suffering from an inability to differentiate opinion from fact.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#178

Post by the_af » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 11:02 PM UTC

vertex-four wrote: post #156

camjohnson26 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally anything can move you, so by that definition everything is art. If everything is art the term loses all meaning.

Last year, I went to a hacker event held in an art space - various things owned by the space were labeled "this is art, don't hack it". However, as the event want on, hastily-printed copies of the same signs appeared on more things - a vending machine, someone's laptop, a staircase, someone's sleeping bag on a balcony. It gave me the opportunity to see these things in a new light - in my opinion, there was art there…

> does it matter? If the word "art" has indeed lost all meaning, does that change the way we interact with the world, or communicate with each other?

It does for me. If "art" and "everything" become synonyms, I feel I've lost a valuable concept, and one I definitely use frequently.

Your anecdote about the "don't hack this" label is indeed clever and funny, and it's making a statement I can relate to. It's like hacking the event, in a way.

I don't see that anyone so far has argued that only a poem, a sculpture or a painting can be art. I'm surprised so many people in this conversation have made a logical connection between "I don't like snobbery like the Fountain/I don't think it's art" and "art must be pretty and only poetry/painting/music are acceptable". Why do people assume it's binary instead of a continuum between art and not-art?

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#179

Post by ImaCake » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 11:07 PM UTC

Maybe part of the problem is the author is engaging with people on Twitter. Twitter appears to me, an outsider, as a messy hateful place where people throw one-liners of hate at each for reasons that are very difficult for outsiders to understand.

Somewhat unrelated, but last night I was trying to make sense of the trans-activist hatred towards J. K. Rowling and I could not understand what was going on. Like, it wasn't that I couldn't understand the argument that was generating such strong emotions, it is that I couldn't even find the argument in the first place. There was just a heap of hatred and anger being spewed across twitter and I had no idea who they were really angry at and what their argument was. Frankly, I think we would all be better off if Twitter didn't exist. It seems to be a very stupid place.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#180

Post by stickfigure » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 11:09 PM UTC

andrewzah wrote: post #97

the_af wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I remember the first time I saw "Fountain" by Duchamps, which, for the uninitiated, is a urinal, on its side, signed and dated by the artist I totally, completely agree with your point and with the parent post ("I could have created this", "but you didn't"), but... ...you can still, after all of this, conclude that the piece of art is snobbish, artless garbage. In fact I reserve the right to do so. I agree with you…

> I don't know if Fountain is or isn't art. That's the entire point. The fact is so many people discuss this one thing from 1917- it provokes a good discussion on what is and isn't art. I don't see how this is viewed as snobbish. There is no reason one is obligated to make "traditional" art. > and didn't because I didn't think it's the kind of art I want to make or celebrate Celebrate isn't really the right term here…

Here's how I look at it: "Fountain" is art, but miscategorized as sculpture instead of performance art.