Why do we not like uncertainty?

Discussion in 'Lounge' started by Lager, Jan 31, 2020.

  1. tun

    tun Rock Star

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    I hate being that guy, but the whole left right brain thing is an old, debunked myth.
     
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  2. Lois Lane

    Lois Lane Audiosexual

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    It is obviously designed to supply all three, happy being the reward that we can savor at the end of the day with a nice doobie if we survived, and then having great sex with a happy loved one with a happy making awesome orgasm (or two) for dessert. Continuing the cycle of life after we are dead and buried we can help the worms be happy while eating our eyeballs and brains and so fertilize the soil to enable future plants and animals be happy too. This all makes me happy. Positive reinforcement creates happiness and a positive flow, negative reinforcement fosters unhappiness and unease. Happy is as happy makes.

    Why aren't you happy?

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  3. Mynock

    Mynock Audiosexual

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    I'm sure there are groups of enculturated listeners (something like "first-culture learning") who love musical uncertainty: they are restricted to a well-defined audience of new music aficionados, mostly made up of hi-brow art composers and a few performers (yes, these art composers/adepts will always remain restricted to a little specific locus)!

    Obviously, anyone have the right to isolate yourself from music communities based on enculturated listeners. However, regardless of your will, if the material you write does not have recognizable musical schemata (genres, styles patterns), it will be categorized as culturally disengaged (even if it contains other types of patterns - like serialism, new complexity, post tonal, whatever) by a enculturated listening community (by large population samples, not isolated groups).

    If these musical schematas are recognized but they're arranged in a new way, they may be categorized following the process of acculturation (like a second-culture learning, like changes in each culture due to acculturation, as co-evolution, by processes that occur over time due to exposure and categorization resulting in something like the expansion of personal taste).

    By all means

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  4. Lager

    Lager Guest

    Dear John, you shouldn't say that. You're a cultured composer.

    If you listen to public music, you would simply confirm that public music largely deals with the surface of music.

    I don't know what you have fixed your eyes on from behind those spectacles but of course it's not the surface.

    Besides, why do you prefer to use Avant-Garde term? Avant-Garde is a trivial matter isn't worth even spending time on it.:yawn:
     
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  5. Mynock

    Mynock Audiosexual

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    Simply because this post is very similar in terms of content and proposition to other polls created by a type of intermittent member of this community, known as TR(fo)LL(ster), who constantly claimed for some music "stylistically unified within its own self-defined universe"

    Answering your question (which I suppose is related to the field of music, this is still about it, right?), what makes people stick to a music is, in part, the perception of the salience in its surface. 'Cos the general public doesn't want to count how many notes are missing in a set or in a row, don't care about mathematical calculations about magical numbers, new complexity (atonal, highly abstract, dissonant and experimental music characterized by the use of techniques which require complex musical notation), and other distal hi-brow abstractions. They want comfort and familiarity that genres and their musical styles offer (hybridizations that don't set up music that is pulverized and rebuilt, every 2-4 measures, might be appreciable), coupled with the sensations of tension and relaxation that comes from tonal, modal and even post tonal music (in terms of preference for detecting rhythmic, harmonic and melodic schemata).

    It may be important to note that uncertainty and indeterminacy regarding the perception of musical parameters can make it difficult to detect the structural importance present in the groupings of musical objects, since our brain likes to detect both patterns (specific elements contained in the genres of our preference), and surprises related to the treatment of these same patterns (hybridizations, mixtures, ellipses, etc.). Since genres and their styles stand out in the midst of perceptual tangles, the perception of these elements as salient allows organisms to concentrate their limited perceptual and cognitive resources in detecting more relevant subsets of available sensory data, in this case the pleasure of detecting patterns, instead of trying to find salience in music that has myriads of/or no rhythmic, harmonic and melodic motifs, no repetition, no reference to recognizable genres and styles, superposition of several layers generating complex textures or simply a state of flux that refers to music always in constant transformation.

    On the other hand, the simple detection of some kind of schemata, in itself, has relative importance ('cos it is possible to realize the perception of schemata and structural stability even in experimental music). What should be taken into account is: what are these musical objects related to? broad communities and their activities experienced/disseminated within a culture or very small audiences culturally disengaged and/or engaged with procedures immersed in metalanguages (like new music aficionados, mostly made up of hi-brow art composers and a few performers)?
     
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  6. Lager

    Lager Guest

    I was almost expecting such words from a guy whose model of thinking in many ways is more akin to some general folkways. You didn't leave out anything. Very neat...:deep_facepalm:
     
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  7. mp5

    mp5 Producer

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    Not quite so. Adventurists, explorers of the wild (including the Moon) or extreme sports (or any other sport, in fact), firemen, soldiers, etc. are just some examples of the contrary. Uncertainty / no predictable situations do not worry optimists, only pessimists. (Cowards belonging to the latter). In fact, total predictability would be not only dreary, but in fact terrifying - we would feel as a part of a machine of doom.
    Uncertainty / no predictable situation an sich does not imply any more risk and danger, it just causes the feeling of insecurity, which is merely subjective.
     
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  8. Mynock

    Mynock Audiosexual

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    Yes, and I speak sarcasm as a second language. Well who knows, maybe you could participate in the discussion about your own post and enlighten us with your notorious knowledge on this adventurous repertoire of uncertainties!

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