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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 2024

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I think a lot of people out there in ugly places are genuinely insensitive to that ugliness.

This isn't because they have room temperature IQs, it's because of the hedonic treadmill, plus the fact that most people have other things going on besides noticing the buildings. When you're visiting a place and you see some awful cement shitshack of a building it's a terrible affront. When you pass that building twice a day on your commute, you simply accept it and move on.

Which is not to say that it doesn't matter if buildings are beautiful or ugly, simply that the beauty of a building is not always salient. I talked to a guy living in Vienna about what a beautiful city it was, but for him it was just boring.

In general I seriously doubt that appreciation of beauty is tied to IQ, and in fact it might be inversely related to IQ. One of my smartest friends, when faced with some postmodernist affront to the senses and forced to evaluate its beauty, will squirm and change the topic to its "interestingness". He's used his intellectual faculties to conquer his innate sense of what is beautiful and what is ugly. Meanwhile polls of the hoi polloi consistently find a preference for buildings that our ancestors would have considered beautiful. I also suspect that even non-human animals experience beauty, but I admit this is speculative on my part.