Censorship and Art

Titan_Atlas said:

Well someone's little subjective bubble is bursting. Kinda sound salty.

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When you take the time to click an icon with the intention of it being negative it speaks more about you than the one you're rating.

ZyyzYzzy misspells all of the time. I don't see you getting angsty about it. Never mind that Lendarios probably does it on purpose to get a reaction from you.

ZyyzYzzy said:

You don't rub them, you caress them woth ypur tongue.

God damnit tuco. God damnit.

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You are the easiest kind of debater.

Lendarios said:

It is self evident that beauty been objective is NOT an axiom.

The exact same person will appear more or less beautiful to you depending on a plethora of factors.

There is no objective way of measuring beauty, either in objects or in humans.

Pollocks painting are awful for me, same as some of Picasso work and most of modern art, because it looks like a child drew it, or it is random.

This is the type of art that I personally find beautiful. It is polished, it tells a story, and has a lot of complex elements on it.

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It's ironic that with this post you literally just made the point that beauty is actually objective. Classical art actually had objective standards (Or an "agreed" truth) based on natural phenomenon your brain finds interesting. When you break many classic pieces down, symmetry and other geometric qualities are evident. Post modernism, which began in the 1880's, right when Picasso was coming up? Was an ideology meant to destroy these 'restrictive' beliefs, because they believed all reality was subjective, that human views are crafted and that by admitting anything was objective that you are 'privileging' logic, and thus certain people who are logical.

That's not true though, not entirely. There is subjectivity in beauty, for sure. But there can easily be objective standards we can agree upon for beauty. Ranking a Figure Skating match might be subjective, but anyone who scores well in an Olympic match will appear very pleasing to most people. Because there are AGREED upon standards--and standards which promote things that are pleasing to the majority of people who see them. (And when you dig down into why certain things seem to have these universal qualities of being pleasing? You often find its because, as said above, humans are really just meat machines and a certain part of your brain evolved to find certain things in nature pleasing because those things correlate to something that used to help previous versions of meat machines survive.)

In any case, again, just pointing out the irony that you enjoy art that relied upon objective (Agreed upon) standards for beauty, many of which actually began to develop fairly complex geometry to map why people enjoyed the art. This is why MOST people can see a classical painting and say "that does look interesting/pretty", even if its not their cup of tea (IE not mind blowing, which is where the subjectivity comes in.)....But only a small subset of people who understand the history of Pollock can look at it and even tell its not literal garbage, some mat that painters left their brushes on. (Because Pollock's 'beauty' is based on knowledge of the person and history--ergo, essentially the problem that always arises when people attempt to destroy objectively agreed upon truths, 2+2=5, and what not. Once objectivity is gone, then what's good simply becomes a matter of what the most influential people say is good.)

Feanor said:

You're doubling down to avoid admitting you were wrong. It is easy to break down your mistake.

Couple questions.

Do you get in fights everyday?
If No: Are you a relatively peaceful, law abiding dude?
If Yes: Are you a pacifist?

If you answered no to the last question then by your logic you are lying because you are a pacifist based on your previously assumed answers.

One more.

If a postmodern artist, meaning someone who paints weird shit because they like weird looking shit, has never heard of postmodernism (philosophical/political definition) and would disagree with those ideas if they were described to him, is that person a postmodernist?

Are you seeing the end result? You're doing the same thing you claim to reject. You would be forcing someone inside a neat little box where they don't belong. That, by your own logic, would make you ... wait for it ....

A postmodernist! Ding ding ding

Is the kind of subjectivity you're talking about dangerous? Yes. Does everything (food, art, carpentry, whatever) fall under that category? No.

There is Subjectivism (the concept that there is no external truth, everything is right and nothing is wrong, your personal whims dictate reality) and subjectivity (opinions).

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I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. But whether the postmodernist artists agreed or did not is irrelevant. Part of having objectivity is your views alone do not matter, you ALONE can not dictate reality. If the objective standards we agreed on to measure "postermodernism" are found to be applicable, the man would be a post-modernists regardless of if he agreed or not.

That is what objectivity does. 2+2=4, because I can prove it based on objective rules set in place already, that everyone agrees upon. 2+2=5 could be argued by anyone, because lets face it, they are really just symbols, right? Well, if you have that view, then the person with the most influential opinion simply gets to dictate what 2+2 equals, and whatever they say, fits.

No one is "forcing" anyone into some neat little box--they are all agreeing the box is there. If your artist wants to get into the box, that was on him. But no one is going to simply say 2+2=5 because the confused post modernist believes REALLY hard its 5.

Lithose said:

It's ironic that with this post you literally just made the point that beauty is actually objective. Classical art actually had objective standards (Or an "agreed" truth) based on natural phenomenon your brain finds interesting. When you break many classic pieces down, symmetry and other geometric qualities are evident. Post modernism, which began in the 1880's, right when Picasso was coming up? Was an ideology meant to destroy these 'restrictive' beliefs, because they believed all reality was subjective, that human views are crafted and that by admitting anything was objective that you are 'privileging' logic, and thus certain people who are logical.

That's not true though, not entirely. There is subjectivity in beauty, for sure. But there can easily be objective standards we can agree upon for beauty. Ranking a Figure Skating match might be subjective, but anyone who scores well in an Olympic match will appear very pleasing to most people. Because there are AGREED upon standards--and standards which promote things that are pleasing to the majority of people who see them. (And when you dig down into why certain things seem to have these universal qualities of being pleasing? You often find its because, as said above, humans are really just meat machines and a certain part of your brain evolved to find certain things in nature pleasing because those things correlate to something that used to help previous versions of meat machines survive.)

In any case, again, just pointing out the irony that you enjoy art that relied upon objective (Agreed upon) standards for beauty, many of which actually began to develop fairly complex geometry to map why people enjoyed the art. This is why MOST people can see a classical painting and say "that does look interesting/pretty", even if its not their cup of tea (IE not mind blowing, which is where the subjectivity comes in.)....But only a small subset of people who understand the history of Pollock can look at it and even tell its not literal garbage, some mat that painters left their brushes on. (Because Pollock's 'beauty' is based on knowledge of the person and history--ergo, essentially the problem that always arises when people attempt to destroy objectively agreed upon truths, 2+2=5, and what not. Once objectivity is gone, then what's good simply becomes a matter of what the most influential people say is good.)


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You are ignoring the future. Cavemen painting on walls might have thought of more modern painters (Leonardo, etc) as garbage. At least according to everything you just said, which is like everything you post (I've noticed little by little), relying on anecdotal half truths and is actually completely subjective. You have opinions, Lithose.

You are either a supporter of the future (technology, advancement, etc.) or you are a luddite. This has nothing to do with subjectivism, postmodernism, whatever other stuff you want to tangle up into a very complicated and intellectual sounding mess. Subjectivism taken to its unnatural extreme (what you are helping to do) is harmful to man. Quite simply, without wasting time, you are rejecting all future ideas based on past ones. That is not very efficient.

Lithose said:

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. But whether the postmodernist artists agreed or did not is irrelevant. Part of having objectivity is your views alone do not matter, you ALONE can not dictate reality. If the objective standards we agreed on to measure "postermodernism" are found to be applicable, the man would be a post-modernists regardless of if he agreed or not.

That is what objectivity does. 2+2=4, because I can prove it based on objective rules set in place already, that everyone agrees upon. 2+2=5 could be argued by anyone, because lets face it, they are really just symbols, right? Well, if you have that view, then the person with the most influential opinion simply gets to dictate what 2+2 equals, and whatever they say, fits.

No one is "forcing" anyone into some neat little box--they are all agreeing the box is there. If your artist wants to get into the box, that was on him. But no one is going to simply say 2+2=5 because the confused post modernist believes REALLY hard its 5.

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I was waiting for you. I knew you would show up here.

Lendarios said:

I agree it is super shitty, by your and our standards. But to pretend that those standard don't vary with time and the individuals is what the heart of this argument is.

Art and beauty is subjective, it varies from person to person, and sometimes even on the same person, it varies depending on how old, and a myriad of other conditions.

To say that beauty in art, or even art itself is objective, because reasons, is what I am against.

If you think is objective give me the definition.

I personally don't like the Mona Lisa, it is too bland. And If people from that time period were doing amazing things such as the Sixteen Chapel, then the Mona Lisa pales in comparison to what their countrymen were doing.

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Again, you're confusing the subjectivity of details (A small range), with larger standards that can be agreed upon. Everyone can walk up to this and see something interesting, they can see it represents something, even if they don't get the meaning or its not mind blowing for them.




This sold for 84 million dollars and 99% of the people, if they walked by this on the street, would think someone just ran out of black paint when they were covering over a section of a wall.



Your entire evolution dictates you find certain specific elements appealing. Yes, there is variation in there, but the underlying reasoning is constant. It's why even babies have the ability to recognize certain things. You literally found tits pleasing from the moment you were born, and were drawn to their shape (Which is a sequence! The nipple is an active color offset center chest). The fact is there are parts of you working that are simply coding in the meat machine--and that's why ANYONE can recognize some work as being something meant to please (Like the statue), while only a small handful can find the garbage black and white idiocy above valuable. The former relies on principles in nature to draw people in (And then their subjectivity takes over) the latter is totally subjective and meant to appeal to people in a special community by specifically making it avoid those natural elements of 'objective' beauty so a bunch of douche bags can sniff each others farts and talk about how enlightened they are for recognizing how amazing it is.

Lithose said:

Again, you're confusing the subjectivity of details (A small range), with larger standards that can be agreed upon. Everyone can walk up to this and see something interesting, they can see it represents something, even if they don't get the meaning or its not mind blowing for them.

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This sold for 84 million dollars and 99% of the people, if they walked by this on the street, would think someone just ran out of black paint when they were covering over a section of a wall.

View attachment 125269

Your entire evolution dictates you find certain specific elements appealing. Yes, there is variation in there, but the underlying reasoning is constant. It's why even babies have the ability to recognize certain things. You literally found tits pleasing from the moment you were born, and were drawn to their shape (Which is a sequence! The nipple is an active color offset center chest). The fact is there are parts of you working that are simply coding in the meat machine--and that's why ANYONE can recognize some work as being something meant to please (Like the statue), while only a small handful can find the garbage black and white idiocy above valuable. The former relies on principles in nature to draw people in (And then their subjectivity takes over) the latter is totally subjective and meant to appeal to people in a special community by specifically making it avoid those natural elements of 'objective' beauty so a bunch of douche bags can sniff each others farts and talk about how enlightened they are for recognizing how amazing it is.

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How would you classify memes? How would you fit them here, or gifs. Things that are weird but we internet folk are used to.

Feanor said:

You are ignoring the future. Cavemen painting on walls might have thought of more modern painters (Leonardo, etc) as garbage. At least according to everything you just said, which is like everything you post (I've noticed little by little), relying on anecdotal half truths and is actually completely subjective. You have opinions, Lithose.

You are either a supporter of the future (technology, advancement, etc.) or you are a luddite. This has nothing to do with subjectivism, postmodernism, whatever other stuff you want to tangle up into a very complicated and intellectual sounding mess. Subjectivism taken to its unnatural extreme (what you are helping to do) is harmful to man. Quite simply, without wasting time, you are rejecting all future ideas based on past ones. That is not very efficient.

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How do you know if cavemen painting found it pleasing? Maybe they were drawing for records, maybe they were drawing to teach? Also, the entire post wasn't about whether the art was enjoyed--but rather whether someone could even recognize it as an expression of something. If it had enough natural elements of 'beauty' to make the average human stop and say "Someone tried to make something pleasing there--I don't find it particular so, but I can tell someone tried.". Unlike say, the 10 million dollar rock sitting out front of a Museum in California that is literally just a rock, which most people will pass and not even know a human being had anything to do with it. See the difference?

Luddite? What in the fuck are you talking about? (Really...real talk for a moment. Are you high? Because I don't even know where that came from.) And how am I taking subjectivity to the extreme when I want to agreed upon standards, and want to explore the fundamentals of why humans are drawn to something. You sound like the dude in 1984 trying to convince me I'm really the one destroying reality by not agreeing 2+2=5, because if I don't agree it will hurt the party.

And yeah yeah, anecdotal half truths--okay. Just make your argument, okay? Because I can only pick through so much subjective shit in one day.

Feanor said:

How would you classify memes? How would you fit them here, or gifs. Things that are weird but we internet folk are used to.

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I would classify them as information, like language. They often have specific meanings that can be altered by the context of other information--like a word.

Lithose said:

How do you know if cavemen painting found it pleasing? Maybe they were drawing for records, maybe they were drawing to teach? Also, the entire post wasn't about whether the art was enjoyed--but rather whether someone could even recognize it as an expression of something. If it had enough natural elements of 'beauty' to make the average human stop and say "Someone tried to make something pleasing there--I don't find it particular so, but I can tell someone tried.". Unlike say, the 10 million dollar rock sitting out front of a Museum in California that is literally just a rock, which most people will pass and not even know a human being had anything to do with it. See the difference?

Luddite? What in the fuck are you talking about? (Really...real talk for a moment. Are you high? Because I don't even know where that came from.) And how am I taking subjectivity to the extreme when I want to agreed upon standards, and want to explore the fundamentals of why humans are drawn to something. You sound like the dude in 1984 trying to convince me I'm really the one destroying reality by not agreeing 2+2=5, because if I don't agree it will hurt the party.

And yeah yeah, anecdotal half truths--okay. Just make your argument, okay? Because I can only pick through so much subjective shit in one day.

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Me too. You don't know this, but whenever I run into your posts I start scrolling. Sometimes I'm surprised when I scrolled past two other people by accident. That means you didn't type as much as you normally do.

Lithose said:

I would classify them as information, like language. They often have specific meanings that can be altered by the context of other information--like a word.

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Art is a language. Musicians know how to talk to each other. You can't know this language unless you know how to play. Painting is the same, I assume dance is, and whatever else.

How are memes different? Are video games different too?

Feanor said:

Me too. You don't know this, but whenever I run into your posts I start scrolling. Sometimes I'm surprised when I scrolled past two other people by accident. That means you didn't type as much as you normally do.

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Well, I mean this explains why Post-modernism and subjective standards of reality appeal to you. In order to live in an objective world you need the patience to learn things and be able to predict information (Which allows you to more accurately describe reality). If you just make arguments half reading people's shit, and only half knowing what you're talking about, I imagine an philosophy that says your truth is as good as anyone's is very appealing.

Maybe you should join the movement to decolonize science.

Lithose said:

Well, I mean this explains why Post-modernism and subjective standards of reality appeal to you. In order to live in an objective world you need the patience to learn things and be able to predict information (Which allows you to more accurately describe reality). If you just make arguments half reading people's shit, and only half knowing what you're talking about, I imagine an philosophy that says your truth is as good as anyone's is very appealing.

Maybe you should join the movement to decolonize science.

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You are not Objectivity. You are just Lithose. Why I should I care about what you have to say.

Stop fucking around. I know science, you do too. I watched that video months ago.

Feanor said:

Art is a language. Musicians know how to talk to each other. You can't know this language unless you know how to play. Painting is the same, I assume dance is, and whatever else.

How are memes different? Are video games different too?

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The universe is just a series of information transfers, technically all of existence is "language" then; photons bosons and gluons are just "talking" to other particles--your reductio ad absurdum is silly.

Your point would only make sense if music and art could not be engaged and followed by people with NO experience. But they clearly can. Which is what makes them different. They don't convey specific meaning that requires history to understand. Language does.

Which is ironically (And thanks for pointing this out) why modern art is more like language, or more like memes than actual art meant to capture beauty. It's a specific composition meant to communicate with people who have studied it. Which is exactly what I said, see?

The former relies on principles in nature to draw people in (And then their subjectivity takes over) the latter is totally subjective and meant to appeal to people in a special community by specifically making it avoid those natural elements of 'objective' beauty so a bunch of douche bags can sniff each others farts and talk about how enlightened they are for recognizing how amazing it is.

So, thanks for taking only a few posts to agree with me there. Glad this didn't take long, and you walked right up and swallowed my logic. You're welcome.

Lithose said:

The universe is just a series of information transfers, technically all of existence is "language" then; photons bosons and gluons are just "talking" to other particles--your reductio ad absurdum is silly.

Your point would only make sense if music and art could not be engaged and followed by people with NO experience. But they clearly can. Which is what makes them different. They don't convey specific meaning that requires history to understand. Language does.

Which is ironically (And thanks for pointing this out) why modern art is more like language, or more like memes than actual art meant to capture beauty. It's a specific composition meant to communicate with people who have studied it. Which is exactly what I said, see?

The former relies on principles in nature to draw people in (And then their subjectivity takes over) the latter is totally subjective and meant to appeal to people in a special community by specifically making it avoid those natural elements of 'objective' beauty so a bunch of douche bags can sniff each others farts and talk about how enlightened they are for recognizing how amazing it is.

So, thanks for taking only a few posts to agree with me there. Glad this didn't take long, and you walked right up and swallowed my logic. You're welcome.

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Blah blah blah.

Is art subjective?

Feanor said:

You are not Objectivity. You are just Lithose. Why I should I care about what you have to say.

Stop fucking around. I know science, you do too. I watched that video months ago.

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You're responding to me, though. You need to view all of my actions in any given argument and then apply it to the objective paradigms we're arguing under. If you only ever read half, or nothing at all, then you've already set yourself out to make up your own reality.

Objective "truth", for human beings? Is really just an agreed upon view of reality--which hopefully had predictive qualities. Those standards can be as loose or as rigid as needed to at least categorize things. Art may have a ton of variation in it, for example, but there are broad standards we can agree on. If I throw a kettle against the wall, it will make a noise--is that noise music? If it is, then is music really a thing if ANY sound can make it? Why not just fucking call it sound then?

So in order to arrive at any truth, you have to understand what you're debating--which if you're debating ONE other person? Means you have to read what they are writing and then judge it against the standards applicable. If you don't read, then again, I can totally see why this belief that whatever truth you desire is the truth is appealing.