What are you listening to?

[arton Rotaru]

 

[Madelaine McMasters]

 

[Jeny Howlett]

Listening and singing along (  for those who know russian )

 

Edited May 3, 2018 by Jeny Howlett

[ForrestChild]

 

[Pamela Galli]

On 5/2/2018 at 2:54 PM, Madelaine McMasters said:

Well, there's certainly evolutionary advantage to finding certain things "attractive". We are attracted to certain kinds of potential mates, both visually (we value symmetry and averageness, because they weed out genetic abnormality). We're attracted to displays of intelligence, such as a good sense of humor.

We're attracted to certain types of environments and their particulars (plants, animals, etc.) We're attracted to verdant landscapes with good visibility and/or escape routes and evidence of human habitation, because they're hospitable.

It's not surprising that we invent language to describe these attractions. It's long been thought that our appreciation of "art" is somehow decoupled from our assessment of advantageousness, but that idea is crumbling.

https://www.npr.org/2004/10/04/4057069/in-evolution-a-taste-for-beauty-has-a-purpose

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-evolutionary-purpose-of-our-capacity-to-appreciate-beauty

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-neuroscience-of-beauty/

Here's a fella who's bucking the those theories... https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23431243-100-we-may-have-the-evolution-of-beauty-completely-wrong/

To say that there's no evolutionary advantage to the recognition of "beauty" is, I think, a bit reversed. We create the concept of beauty to explain that feeling we get when our subconscious apprehends the advantageousness of a thing. We needn't understand the feeling to know we have it.

I think there's an evolutionary advantage to gratefulness as well. It's a stress reducer and we're learning just how corrosive to our physical health stress can be. Fortunately, gratefulness is a thing we can manufacture for ourselves. Unfortunately, afflictions like depression can make that difficult to do.

The neurochemistry of all this stuff is becoming better understood with the advent of functional MRI. I do hope that the medical community is once again allowed to experiment with psychoactive drugs like psilocybin, which produced epiphanic experiences in test subjects. Couple that with FMRI and I just wonder what fascinating discoveries we'll make.

It's pretty cool that we can (if and when we do) disagree on things like the evolutionary advantage of recognizing beauty while simultaneously enjoying the opportunity each of us offers the other for the discussion.

Thanks, Pam!

;-).

 

Thank you, I found those interesting. I don’t find in them a persuasive explanation for why a sunset or especially a wild rose elicits such a strong response, tho. And only in humans.

[ForrestChild]

 

[Walelu Summerwind]

When to Fogbound tonight and still in a blues mood 

 

[Zeta Vandyke]

 

[Callum Meriman]

I missed posting this by a day, but we lost the amazing Hide 20 years ago.

 

 

Edited May 4, 2018 by Callum Meriman

[Nostoll]

 

[Callum Meriman]

J-Metal - Syu from Galneryus

 

[Madelaine McMasters]

16 hours ago, Pamela Galli said:

Thank you, I found those interesting. I don’t find in them a persuasive explanation for why a sunset or especially a wild rose elicits such a strong response, tho. And only in humans.

Gonna ramble...

I suspect wild roses elicit stronger responses in bees than in humans, and those bees are able to see "beauty marks" that are invisible to us because we can't see into the ultraviolet. That's a different kind of appreciation, but perhaps only by degree.

Have a look at the puffer fish...

I'm pretty sure that li'l guy doesn't know why he likes making such beautiful art, it probably just feels good to do it. The girlfriend he hopes to win won't know why she likes it, but she will. What makes this pattern so attractive? I suspect it's the novelty of finding such a symmetrical geometric structure on the ocean floor. Novelty/change gets our attention and is often thought to be beautiful.

I can imagine numerous reasons we appreciate sunrises and sunsets. They both mark turning points in the day and a big shift in vulnerability. Being attuned to those transitions was, I think, advantageous to our ancestors. We also find comfort in routine. Sunrises and sunset help time them. Do you need to actually see a sunset to feel the comfort of knowing dinnertime is near, or is any indication of evening sufficient to invoke such feelings? Do you observe, near the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, how rapidly the day length is changing? Do you notice animals also sense the rapidly changing day length? Does that instill any sense of wonder?

A correlation has been discovered between people's belief in benevolent supernatural creators/caretakers and their health, longevity and ability to handle stress. That belief may have evolved from an earlier evolutionary advantage of ours, the linking of cause and effect, with a bias towards erring on the side of safety. You hear a twig break in the woods, presume a predator is about and flee. If you're wrong, you've wasted a little effort. If you're right, you saved yourself. If you didn't imagine the predator, he takes you out of the gene pool, leaving only those do who imagine one.

Now, if you imagine unseen causes for attention worthy effects with the ability to pass such ideas to others with virus like efficiency via language, it's not hard to see that, within the first few years of any human's life, you can fill the mind with endless appreciations for things that have only the most tenuous connection to enhancing survival. Once we evolved the ability to think abstractly, we could project cause on effects other animals don't even sense as effects. Something must be moving the Sun across the sky. We can't see the mover, but she must be there. We think about it, and think about it, and think about it, but until we figure it out, we are happy to imagine a mysterious and intelligent cause. Oh, there's also an advantage in imagining that mysterious causes are intelligent. Imagining that a predator thinks is a safer bet than imagining it doesn't. And, in less dangerous circumstances, anthropomorphism (driven by mirror neurons) is just plain fun. Of course it's also potentially misleading when we're trying to determine just how intelligent other creatures (real or not) are. We seem to have one eye on the outside world and another in a mirror.

My dearest friend often sends me YouTube videos of music of her native Iran. If the music has a Spanish influence, I'm generally able to understand the mood, but if the piece is of Persian origin, I'm often lost, unable to tell if the song is upbeat or plaintive. My inability to grasp the obvious (to her) mood of a song is entirely due to my upbringing. Her sense of the particular beauty of Iranian music is no more innate than my ignorance of it. Yet we both appreciate music because it was very likely the common language of our distant ancestors.

My appreciation for sunrises and sunsets seems, from my personal experience, to be greater than for any of my friends, and I may well be the only atheist in the bunch. When I share a sunset with them, they sometimes roll their eyes at the wealth of "useless" information I'm able to recite. I explain why the sun is orange and dim enough to view directly and the sky is blue (atmospheric dispersion), why it's squished to an oval (atmospheric refraction), why there's a rising dark band over the horizon opposite the sunset (shadow of the Earth), and why the coyotes start howling, sharing our primitive appreciation of the significance of a sunset (and then I might mention the evolutionary advantage of the contagiousness of yawns, which we see in canines). If there are clouds, I'll note their type, direction of travel, and whether there's a difference between wind on the ground and at high altitude. I'll assess the relative humidity of the stratosphere by noting the length of any pretty jet con-trails. I'll go on and on and on, as I do, possibly diminishing their appreciation of sunsets. And they have no idea that as I witness the sunset with them, I'm fondly recalling the countless Lake Michigan sunrises I shared with my parents, during which I learned most of what I just described about sunsets. That was my reward for getting up before dawn.

When I look up at the night sky, I feel a sense of connectedness with the vast universe above me. I sometimes feel like I'm falling up into it. People who have taken psilocybin have described feeling the same thing, a connectedness with something larger. It's pretty cool that I can feel that and it's pretty cool that a pill can make me feel that, too. But I have learned that feeling something is true does not mean something is true. I think it's more a matter of me doing some internal storytelling that makes me feel good. I wish everyone could do it. And I'm at least slightly aware that my internal storytelling ability can be dangerous, so I try to question the validity of my beliefs, or at least I think I try.

I did say I was gonna ramble.

;-).

[Callum Meriman]

(He has an adorable little smile as he makes his art)

... because he was being lazy and thinking "I have heaps of time until the event" for the first three weeks of the month.

[Pamela Galli]

47 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

And I'm at least slightly aware that my internal storytelling ability can be dangerous, so I try to question the validity of my beliefs, or at least I think I try.

I did say I was gonna ramble

Nice job 

As Kierkegaard pointed out, it comes down to ones choice, whether we believe meaning and purpose, justice and love, beauty and kindness, etc. come from within us or without, or some combination. It cannot be proven, only chosen. Which means that one could indeed be wrong. 

[Madelaine McMasters]

1 minute ago, Pamela Galli said:

Nice job 

As Kierkegaard pointed out, it comes down to ones choice, whether we believe meaning and purpose, justice and love, beauty and kindness, etc. come from within us or without, or some combination. It cannot be proven, only chosen. Which means that one could indeed be wrong. 

As someone who's not certain we have free will, I might take issue with "only chosen".

I will agree that we're unlikely to prove those things. I blame Nature (quantum mechanics) for that, and for teasing us with Einstein's "spooky action at a distance", which has the potential to keep the discussion going far longer than "Just ignore and let this one die".

Though it's sometimes frustrating, my being shown wrong usually opens the door to growth. If there is an infallible creator, I pity her.

;-).

 

[Clover Jinx]

8 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

"spooky action at a distance"

 

[Madelaine McMasters]

Nooooo! What the hell, Clover?

This kind of spooky, with the intent of closing the distance for the action...

(I liked the ending of the tune you linked, and not because it meant the tune was over.;-).

Edited May 4, 2018 by Madelaine McMasters

[Walelu Summerwind]

It's a beautiful Friday afternoon here in northern Oklahoma and time to start thinking about tonight! Bad Co. always gets my weekend motor running 

 

[Zeta Vandyke]

 

[Walelu Summerwind]

45 minutes to go till beer o'clock and some good ol red dirt music  

 

[Saraya Starr]

 

[Clover Jinx]

1 hour ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

This kind of spooky, with the intent of closing the distance for the action...

Mine was too. Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston as vampires. I'll be in my bunk.

[Pamela Galli]

3 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

3 hours ago, Pamela Galli said:

 

As someone who's not certain we have free will, I might take issue with "only chosen"

Like so much else, it is a paradox, isn’t it? :-) At the heart of it all is a mystery.

[Saraya Starr]

 

 

[ForrestChild]