Armok's random thoughts

[Armok]

because I don't want to spam separate threads for everything.

Link to thing I tried to write collaboratively with normal Anomaly
ages ago but failed due to timezone issues, most of the importnant
stuff is not even started on yet:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pAZDb-BKkwfRLV9pN5a3e_OZ4PKfP43x_Bp_lbIu9qk/edit?hl=en_US

Won't bother digging up harder to find stuff until I know this is
indeed the correct usage of this place.

[John Salvatier]

Thanks Armok!

I've given this a read through and I will take a more in depth look and write down my thoughts and suggestions tomorrow afternoon. I'm glad you've written about this topic as I've seen several people express that they would like to see more discussion of art on LW.

[Rasmus Eide]

Thanks! Although the bigger problem is really entire sections or
concepts that have hardly been hinted at in the existing text, or
which as they stand are saying something completely different than
they are supposed to, rather than saying it badly. Althou there are as
you can see many such as well...

[John Salvatier]

Here's my feedback:

I have put some location specific comments on the document itself. If you have any comments on my feedback or want clarification or help making changes, let me know. We can also talk over video chat if you like, my calendar is here. I am on the west US coast. 

1. You mention that there are many questions of interest that you have not touched on, I think a good strategy would be to keep this post relatively small but explicitly mention the questions that you think are important but are not discussing in this post. This inspires trust in the reader, prevents scope creep and makes people more excited for future posts.
2. also you probably want to mention that this is not a definitive dissolution of the term art (unless you think it is, in which case, I think you need to provide more evidence) but more like pointing in the right direction so some properties could be missing.
3. I think it would be very useful to discuss why these collections of features have a name; why it is they cluster together, or at least mention that it is a question that asks for an answer. 
4. Diseased Thinking deals with concrete questions of how a person should act. You should try to do some of that; linking the category to different behaviors. for example, people might disagree about whether something is art because they disagree whether it would be good to encourage production of things like it. Or one person might mean that you won't find pictures of it in artbooks. or whether it will evoke a strong emotional reaction when seeing it for the first time or whether it would be simple for people besides the author to reproduce. Several of these are dealt with by your categories implicitly, but I think it's a good idea to link these explicitly to decisions, "The meaning of a thing is how you should be influenced by it". 

Are these helpful?

[Rasmus Eide]

1. You mean different questions in the art dissolution, or different
questions in the thread of which the art dissolution is one?
2. It's a *theory* of art, and I'm not really sure how confident to be
in it other than the fact it's the only one that's been singled out in
the huge space of possible theories by strong intuitions that I have
no specific reason to distrust, and I haven't found any
counterexamples despite looking. I'd say it's probably either a
complete dissolution or mostly wrong. It's further complicated by the
fact that I've decided to add a bunch of details that are individually
highly likely GIVEN the core of the theory is correct, but due to
their number and conjunction it's highly improbably that all of them
are.
3 & 4. yea, those were among the things I had planed but never even
started on I think, although you put them MUCH more concretely and
explicitly than I could, which is really a good step on the way.
5. yes, you're being helpful, thanks!

Also responded to the comments in the document.

[John Salvatier]

1
I meant questions about the theory of art .

How do you want to procceed with this? What would be most helpful for you?

[Rasmus Eide]

1. in that case... I would if I could but I don't have that clear an
idea of it myself. And it's been a long time since I worked on this,
I've forgotten most. I'm basically relying entirely on "I know it when
I see it".

> How do you want to proceed with this? What would be most helpful for you?
I'm not sure really. I have the concepts but I have nearly zero idea
of how to communicate them, and really nothing else at all to
contribute.

[John Salvatier]

Do you think the advice I have given you enough for you to make another draft than I can look at? 

One alternative is to take your draft and make an outline based on Diseased Thinking, trying to mirror it as much as possible, and then try to fill that in. 

We can also talk over video if you think that might be better for figuring out how to proceed. 

[Rasmus Eide]

I don't think any amount of advice is enough to let me make a draft. I
only got this for due to massive amounts of help from normal anomaly
and even then that broke down.

I don't really think basing it any more of Diseased Thinking than it
already is will work, the subject matter and the goal of the articles
are to different.

Video could work, although it most likely leads to the same kind of
time zone troubles that killed the idea of me and Normal Anomaly
writing it collaboratively. Just using IM might be a better idea since
it allows more flexibility timewise.