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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3305 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 3, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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There is no objectively measurable art

You're only thinking of aesthetic considerations. The craft of modern architects, designers, engineers, educators, bureaucratics, welders etc etc blow their premodern equivalents out of the water by any objectively measurable metric. Like, say, how much weight a bridge can support. How far an athlete can train themselves to throw a javelin. Only in totally subjective considerations is there even an argument to be had -- which I attribute to people's predisposition to ancestor worship and IAmVerySmart-signaling status games.

While I would say your point holds true for materials science, physics, and chemistry (though we didn't figure out how to make Roman concrete until earlier this year), I'm not sure what the objective measures are for architecture, design, and bureaucracy. Premodern homes built with a knowledge of the surrounding climate often require much less energy to heat in winter or cool in summer than modern homes, design seems by its nature concerned with aesthetics, and the recent growth in the number of administrators in just about every organization imaginable seems to have had no apparent benefits.

Yet, technological know-how is almost a separate domain of knowledge from ought-to. Artists don’t just show their technical skill, but they arrange things in a beautiful order.

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