Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I can see, there is no upside to enjoying music. People spend so much time and money (attending concerts, paying for streaming services, buying music, buying instruments, practicing instruments, listening to the music, etc.) that I'm able to happily use elsewhere. If I enjoyed music I might want to start using my time and money for those things.
> If I enjoyed music I might want to start using my time and money for those things. If you were enjoying it then how would it differ from any of the other variety of things you already enjoy that you spend money on?
We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?
171–180 of 180 posts
Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?
#172Related: 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 know I have listened to a lot of enjoyable music and yet I go for long periods of time not seeking it, not thinking about it, and probably unable to list off things I used to listen to.
For instance, years ago, I was buying any CD with some sort of concerto grosso. These days I am listening to mostly streaming electronic music from the early 2000s. For a while I was listening to FM radio, but not enjoying it much.
I also at times have had a visual imagination connected to music and at other times not.
Anyway, anhedonia/apathy may not be total or one-dimensional, is my point.
Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?
#173Earlier 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?
Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Suicide usually has a cultural basis Yes -- hence copycat suicides. But cultural , not genetic. Ideas, not genes.
I would argue that culture is incorporated into our genes. For example, humans show signs of domestication, just like certain animals. But domestication is another name for cultural genetics.
Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?
#175Related: 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…
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3
- https://youtu.be/JTEFKFiXSx4
An anecdote: when my semiotics professor talked about this composition for the first time, I was recording the lecture, and when colleagues asked for a copy, I sent them only the pauses between the sentences. When art meets sarcasm, it spreads really fast.
Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're missing the point. To me music isn't qualitatively different to any other sound sequence, or lack of sound. "Silence" is something you can listen to, just as much as "running water", "conversational din", or "Beethoven's 5th". Yet because it is structured in the form of certain integer ratio harmonics, 95% of the population treats it as something categorically different. Objectively, that is what's wei…
If you abstract enough, everything is just the movements of particles; and yet, you can distinguish and categorize certain kinds of such movements, and music is no exception. It's no weirder than any of the categorizations you no doubt assume every day. If for you, there's no value in that categorization, that's fine, of course.
I say music is "weird" because it doesn't fit into either of these categories of useful natural or constructed forms. People didn't first make music in order to feel good, but because that music made them feel good. They already had an instinctual response. It's more like those odd visual illusions that are due to the freaky things our brains do to correct for visual blind spots in our eyes: a species-specific thing largely without intrinsic survival value. Audio hallucinatory masterbation, essentially.
(Some things probably are evolutionarily driven. Percussion sounds a lot like a moving herd of animals being hunted. Makes sense this would dump adrenaline into your system to make you run faster and harder. But being moved to tears by a violin concerto or lost in ecstasy at a rock concert is categorically something else.)
Anyway, to the point which started this sub-thread if someone asked me "what music do you like?" I'd interpret that question as "what kinds of things do you like to listen to?" since in my experience that's what most people mean by the question. And indeed, I have noise cancelling headphones I don't even bother plugging into my computer because "silence" is what I prefer to listen to when working, thinking, etc. If you get shocked by the answer.. that's the fault of you and your own assumptions. You asked; I answered: I prefer to NOT listen to music, thank you very much.
And turn the radio down, while you're at it.
Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I feel sorry that you don't gain the joy and pleasure that I get from music, but on the other hand I'm guessing you also don't suffer from the utter distaste and even hatred of boring, repetitious pop music that you get exposed to when out in public.
Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you mind sharing what kind of music triggers this in you? The closest to this for me has been late 60's psychedelic music.
Yeah sure, it's a huge range of things that are paradoxically highly specific to a few moments. Certain classical moments are pretty reliable. For example, the first few seconds of the Paganini variation here at around 23:00 minutes. https://youtu.be/c33q87s03h4?t=1375 except not this recording. I used to have a recording of it I inherited from my great grandfather and it was that specific recording that used to send…
Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Maybe he only listen to anime soundtracks and was embarrassed to tell you