Science vs. art

All you can do in science is discover something before anyone else discovers it

I'm not sure there isn't an equivalent of this in the art world. Ok, no-one else would have created exactly the same piece of art as you, but is that what's really imporant? All you can do in, say, literature, is write a book that people read instead of some other book. Given that no-one is ever going to read every book, see every play or listen to every song, the marginal value of your artwork to the world is not how much people enjoy it (or how valuable it is in whatever sense you think art is valuable), but how much people enjoy it (how valuable it is) compared to their second best work already available.

"All you can do in science is discover something before anyone else discovers it"

Mulling this over - maybe I'm taking a false view, but although I never had a particular admiration for the 'race to the south pole' type of exploration, the more general 'Going where no one has gone before' I do admire.

Because the second one does indeed do something - it establishes a new baseline that the next generation can start from. And so with Science - Newton described the real world with a precision greater than anyone before him, but off to the side Riemann established a new mathematics, which obviously had nothing to do with the real world, except of course Einstein proved it actually described the real world even better than Newton. And then of course the Quantum Theorist's described a 'Real World' greater still.

I've no particular advocacy for 'celebrity' science that races to be the first to something we already know can be done, although assuredly the innovation fostered by friendly or unfriendly rivalry has it's place, but science that actually expands our boundaries and tells us of new and different possibilities?

If I had the good fortune to be remembered for nothing more than have expanded the realms of possibility by setting up a base camp in unexplored science territory so someone smarter than I can mark 'Here be Dragons' a bit further out on the map, I could live with that - .

Jonnan

No one seems to have picked up on what I see as the main point of this post, so let me rephrase it in a Yudkowskian way:

Do you expect a Bayesian master to place intrinsic value on knowledge? If so, why?

I think empirical knowledge has intrinsic value. This is not because I'm a rationalist; I'm not a rationalist in the traditional sense (I don't think norms of instrumental reasoning are basic). Empirical knowledge has intrinsic value because it's cumulative. I consider this essentially an issue of identity - i.e., something that is cumulative is valuable. That's my definition of value. It's quite easy to show that something that is not cumulative has no value (most people agree that fads and repetitions are inherently without value) and that misattributions of value usually involve the misidentification of an endeavor as cumulative. It's harder to demonstrate an identity between being cumulative and having value though. There's also the issue of defining "cumulative" more clearly: collecting stones is cumulative in a sense, we can collect more and more stones, but is obviously not cumulative in the same way that science is. Science makes progress and this progress, I think, must sit apart from any supposed instrumental value - i.e., there's a sense in which science is not like collecting stones that doesn't involve reference to what science can do for us (doesn't make reference to any outside source of value).

As I've argued elsewhere, it's common to misidentify happiness and suffering as cumulative, and to then misattribute value to the alleviation of suffering or the promotion of happiness. This is a basic misconception of what a mental or emotional state is; if you have 100 happy people you can't say you've accumulated a lot of happiness any more than you can say you've accumulated a lot of red if you have 100 red balls. What you have is 100 happy people and not 100 times the happiness of a single person. Likewise, a person cannot accumulate happiness over their lifetime; a very happy life doesn't cause greater happiness at the nth instant than a moderately happy life. Emotional states are not cumulative and cannot (on my account) have value.

This is true of art too. There is, of course, a technological side of art that is cumulative; the development of perspective, of materials and pigments, and the development of photography and optics, these are all good examples in the visual arts. The development of music led to developments in acoustics. Art may be cumulative in small degree: artists avoid copying other artists. This, in fact, is probably what drives creativity in art: niche creation. The artist wants to strike out on his own and find a place for himself in the art world. But I think it's obvious this isn't cumulative in the same way science is; it's more like collecting stones than doing science. I do not, therefore, believe that art has any inherent value. (It may have indirect value by entertaining us, and thus creating an environment in which we can flourish in our cumulative endeavors, and by inspiring us. I think the latter is quite important. I think, for example, that fictive and fantastical and even erroneous concepts can be as important in inspiring us to real world discovery as logical or rational concepts, perhaps more so, and this is one of the reasons I do not consider myself a traditional rationalist.)

I should note that I don't believe I personally need to be involved in making scientific advances (although I have chosen to be). A person who is convinced of my ideas might take up political advocacy, or wealth creation with the goal of increasing the efficiency of others who are involved in the creation of knowledge, or might become an artist for the reasons I have given, or might just decide to become the best damn barista Starbucks has ever known. Knowledge creation requires an entire functioning, flourishing human society.

"It doesn't justify giving knowledge intrinsic value"

• the whole point about things that you think are intrinsically valuable is that they require no justification. If I like having lots of knowledge or being the first to discover piece of knowledge X, I can say "intrinsically valuable" as a stop sign; you're not allowed to question that any more. Nice link to the enders game piece, btw.

Hrm... I personally am curious about stuff. I have a "I want to know... just because." for various things. A clever and elegant mathematical trick/derivation/proof "feels like" a good joke, in the sense that I seem to experience similar types of pleasure from both, in some ways. At least sometimes.

So for me, personally, it'd be a terminal value in addition to being an instrumental value. It certainly isn't my ONLY (apparently) terminal value, but it's one of them.

I don't think most people -- rationalists included -- really assign high intrinsic value to knowledge or science, even if they think at first that they do. They are valued instrumentally, for what they make possible.

If it were possible to have knowledge that was not available to consciousness, that you knew would never again be available to consciousness, but that would be stored away immutably in some part of your brain, would this have value? I don't think so. Knowledge that could never be used (in any sense), knowledge from which there could never be any benefit, that could be connected to other knowledge, would be valueless. If you say that such a thing would not be knowledge, and that knowledge by definition must be able to be brought to awareness, does that not hint that the value of knowledge is derived from the bringing to awareness and using for some purpose (if only aesthetic purposes)?

Likewise, art does not have high intrinsic value. Art is valued for its effects, for the quasi-mystical feelings it can inspire and the joy it can bring. If Bach's music did not move me as it does, if it did not inspire me, the only value I would assign to it is value based on whether and how much it moves and inspires other people.

The instrumental value of science is that scientific progress or lack thereof is what will make the difference between a cosmos of life and mind, versus a cosmos of dead matter in which mind was a transient blip on a single dust speck. It's not that it matters which scientist gets there first - it's that it matters whether we get far enough within the time we have.

Are you so sure that good art isn't destructive? It makes the rest of the world seem bland in comparison. When I started reading, at Eliezer's recommendation, the classic work of literature Fate/Stay Night, I found I had trouble reading other, lesser books, because, who cares?

An analogy might be to the Nymphs of Dungeons and Dragons - people who gazed upon their beauty would go blind or even die from despair that they would never see something so beautiful again.

And which would you rather be - a great scientist, or a great artist of some type? (Pretend that great scientists and great artists are equally well-paid and sexually attractive.)

In a world where war, death and suffering are dealt with for good, I'd be an artist (Edit: who, nevertheless, is intrinsically interested in some scientific problems such as abiogenesis, origin of sexual reproduction, life based on non-DNA replication, Fermi paradox, simulation hypothesis etc.)

In today's world, I'd be a scientist -- even if scientists had less money and sexiness than artists.

Edit: Haven't noticed this: "Also, ignore the possibility that your scientific work can make a safe Singularity. That would be science as instrumental value. I'm asking about science vs. art as intrinsic values." In my reply above, I chose science because it can fix the world, so it looks like I was going for its instrumental value.

All you can do in science is discover something before someone else discovers it.

To my mind, time-discounting feels like a major reason for doing science. It's better for humanity to discover stuff earlier rather than later. For a particularly clear-cut example, there's obvious instrumental value in discovering penicillin 20 years earlier.

I saved this to "drafts". Didn't mean to post it. Does "Save to Drafts" just not work?

"What do the rest of you think? Is there a strong correlation between rationalism, giving knowledge high intrinsic value, and giving art low intrinsic value? If so, why? And which would you rather be - a great scientist, or a great artist of some type?"

I've read through many of the posts on this site, but this is the first I've answered--the first I've felt knowledgeable enough to answer.

Generally speaking there might be a strong correlation--I've seen that pattern often (I'm currently in medical school, and in undergrad was the only LibAr in a houseful of engineers). There is, especially in the West, a dichotomy drawn very early and very deeply between imagination and knowledge--a belief that somehow they must be mutually exclusive. Even Einstein (who really ought to've known better, since his imagination was fundamental to his attainment of knowledge) emphasized the distinction ("Imagination is more important than knowledge"). Most forms of higher learning demand imagination and discipline; artistic creativity demands them as well, albeit in a different tenor.

I'm an artist, and my high valuation of knowledge (and growing valuation of rationality as a tool with which I can temper it) interlocks seamlessly with my desire to create. A greater understanding and integration of the world, more information, more finely honed perception--all of those things increase the quality of both my life and the things I create. This is as true of the areas of physics and mathematics and cellular biology as it is of English literature. Greater understanding produces better art.

It's doubtful that I'm a singular, or even rare, instance of such thinking; many of the Renaissance masters would probably agree. I've often wondered what Michelangelo might have produced if he'd somehow been able to share in Mr. Yudkowsky's beautifully elaborated HPMOR vision of humanity triumphantly ascendant over death and mourning; I suspect it would have outshone his 'David'. In fact, Mr. Yudkowsky's a great example of someone who feels no need to choose between artistic achievement and profound knowledge.

As to your question of preference...I can't choose. If I were offered one of the two, I'd seize each as eagerly as the other. And--like Goethe, Franklin, Khayyam, da Vinci, Pascal--if offered both...I'd choose them both.

Although this is a topic in which I am quite interested (given my own background), I am downvoting this post on account of the following needless provocation:

20th-century developments in orchestral music killed orchestral music

If you're going to casually toss out something like this, the least you can do is be clear about what you mean. The last time I checked, orchestral music was still being written and played. (Three guesses how I might know this.)

Actually, there are ways of interpreting that statement in such a way that I would agree with it. Based on previous comments of yours, however, I doubt that's what you intended.

Well thank you Mr. Bardic Conspiracy. You really think yours is the only Conspiracy in the world besides the beisutsukai?

What happened to wisdom? Knowledge with no understanding is useless.