From: Elizabeth Childs (echilds@linex.com)
Date: Fri Jul 02 1999 - 23:07:05 MDT
> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> >
> > Actually, I'm still not quite sure where beauty and music and laughter
> > come from. I think it has something to do with sexual selection, but I
> > don't know enough to duplicate it. They don't get any more peculiar
> > than that.
I think at least some aesthetic experience has to do with terrain
selection. For example, my apartment overlooks a courtyard with a
fountain in it. When I open the window, I hear the pleasant sound of
running water. Why is that a pleasant sound? Well, I would speculate
that early humans needed to be near water, where animals go to drink,
and can be hunted. Also, of course, we need water ourselves, and the
most vegetation grows near water, giving the greatest likelihood for
finding edible plants.
A study was done where subjects around the world were presented with
four types of terrain - I can't remember now, but say conifer forest,
African grassland, Artic tundra, and climax forest. People consistently
chose as their first preference the type of terrain that they lived in.
But, around the world, everyone picked the African grassland as their
second choice. (Source: my vague memory of Psychology Today, circa
1984).
The article speculated that it was humanity's African heritage that
causes people all over the world to make lush green lawns, whether the
local ecosystem could support them or not.
Most people hate (but are fascinated by) snakes, spiders, sharks and
scorpions; they like anything that looks like a baby, including cats and
dogs. So many cultures have giant lizard myths (dragons) that I wonder
if we don't have some aesthetic memory of the dinosaurs.
Of course most of these instincts are, for the most part, no longer
useful. I would never tell someone else not to alter them. But for
myself, the idea of no longer finding puppies cute and scorpions
horrifying would really strike at my whole self-concept. (Scorpions!
Creatures of horror! I had to work with them in the Entomology lab, and
one day I opened the cage to find tiny, translucent, ghostly baby
scorpions swarming all over the mother's back. I was rather fond of the
four inch long Madagascar cockroaches, but my reaction to the little
scorpions could not possibly be described as rational. If we find
another intelligent species that looks and moves like scorpions do, I'll
have to sign up for aesthetic alteration immediately.)
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