That's a nice aphorism, but it's too vague; obviously we wouldn't condone artists breaking rules against child abuse or murder. Figuring out where to draw the line is the hard part.
One could argue that if an artist breaks a law to make a statement (about either the law itself or wider sociological issues), then your perspective of the morality of the act could be influenced by whether or not you agree with the artist's statement.
Okay, fair point. I'll revise: the job of an artist is to break the rules intelligently.
Also, I think you're conflating legality and morality. I can think of situations for all 8 cases of (legal|illegal)(moral|immoral)(agree|disagree). However, you're probably right that agreement/disagreement influences morality judgments.
So probably neither Raphael nor obviously Murillo nor Gongora nor probably any romantic poet were artists. Not to talk about the Egyptians.
I do not know about Shakespeare 'breaking' any rules, or any pre-XIX Century painter. Or the Greeks, you know? What rules did the Parthenon's architect break? Or the sculptor of the Laocoon group?
The 'breaking rules' stuff is all very well for some things but it is not the definition of art. Please.
(Spanish examples because I am a Spaniard, but you understand).
Oups? I do not get this answer and never was my intention to be incivil. Mmh? Sorry if I hurt you but I was just being as clear as possible. And as assertive as the sentences I was reying to.
Possibly the 'please' in my comment is paternalistic, but then again your definition of the job of an artist is quite simplistic. So it may not be paternalistic but a plea for sensible speculation.
Alright, thanks for taking me seriously. I'm feeling a bit touchy today. I think the problem is that I'm using the words artist, job, rules, authority, and creativity in a very liberal way.
I guess my general point is that to be an artist, you have to be creative. To be creative, you have to do something new. To do something new, you have to depart from what exists in some way. Whatever exists can be called authority, tradition, or "the rules". And then something new is a challenge to that authority. If you build a skyscraper in a town with no skyscrapers, you are challenging authority, even if all the other towns have skyscrapers. When parents make a baby, it's a creative act, and the baby ends up challenging the authority of the parents; the baby breaks the existing rules of the family structure. It's the same with the work that an artist does. It doesn't have to be socially rebellious in nature. An expression of beauty that has not been seen before is breaking the rules about the limits of beauty.
Even more generally speaking, when an artist does manage to break the rules, they end up challenging our preconceptions of what can be - these preconceptions are the true "rules" - and it opens us up to a deeper experience of the world. As examples, anything that creates a feeling of awe, anything that touches on sublime beauty, is operating on this level. I think if you look closely, all of the artists you named are working in this way; it's not mere repetition of what came before.
I think it's an artists job to get the viewer to take pause and reflect. Whether that means reflecting on the state of society, the human condition, sexuality, property owner rights, or the raw beauty and majesty of nature, doesn't really matter.
That idea is a relatively recent one, starting with movements like the fauves. Throughout history prior to that, the job of an artist was to produce work his patron/client was satisfied with.
Some would argue that even those now 'breaking rules' have been subsumed by the massive market around art - as soon as the price tag is astronomical, and the method of display only a safe gallery, the rebellion has been captured in aspic and rendered safe.
Banksy is an interesting take on this as much of his work is trying to break out of the confines of the gallery, but he has still been trapped in a system he's at least partly unhappy with by the rising value placed on his work, and has resorted to trying to undermine this with stunts like that $60 sale. It's interesting that the perceived value of the spraypaint with his signature has resisted even that sort of rebellion.
So I don't think saying it must be provocative or break the rules is a very good definition of art, indeed, for most people, even those buying faintly rebellious work in the 20th/21st century, art is decoration (I don't mean that in a derogatory way, but that is how it is consumed), rebellion is an optional extra.
I see what you're saying, but we probably don't have the same interpretation of the words 'job' and 'artist'. More broadly, the nature of creativity is to challenge authority. Look at any time period, any medium, and the most creative work is always going against the grain. Breaking the rules can be as simple as using an uncommon kind of brushstroke. It doesn't have to be against the wishes of whoever is paying for the work, and furthermore, just because something is challenging authority doesn't mean it's creative.
Look at any time period, any medium, and the most creative work is always going against the grain.
You are indulging in a circular definition in which most creative stands in for best or most worthy art, which of course depends on the premise which you set up in the first place, and which is a peculiarly 20C view of art. Only with the break down of the patron system and in quest of a new definition of art and a new place in the world did artists turn to the idea of being a creative force challenging the status quo (economic and artistic).
I don't think Michelangelo for example would have recognised your definition of his art as only meaningful in as much as it breaks the rules. His art was almost all in service of the church, which was the dominant political and economic force of the time. You can try to rewrite the history of art as a history of innovation and rebellion, but why bother? Why not understand it in its totality, which is certainly not as an instrument of rebellion, or even as a force for change - for much of the history of art change was gradual and consensual over decades and centuries, and nothing to do with challenging authority, quite the reverse, it was usually in the service of authority, used as propaganda, teaching materials and social proof. Art was a useful craft for most of its history.
Great art can include rebellion, but it is not confined to it, and frankly I think you're defending a pithy but inaccurate slogan which falls far short of capturing the full role of art in our society.
That was unnecessarily condescending. Incivility is against the guidelines. What I have to say doesn't lose its validity simply because you shame me for my point of view. If you were sure enough of your position, you wouldn't need to humiliate me about mine.
Incivility is against the guidelines. What I have to say doesn't lose its validity simply because you shame me for my point of view. If you were sure enough of your position, you wouldn't need to humiliate me about mine.
I struggle to see what you would find humiliating in either my post or pfortuny's above - you issued a remarkably general assertion (all art is x in any medium, in any time period) which is in my view invalid, and I offered a counter-example.
In my post and I believe pfortuny's there was no attempt to shame you for your point of view, just a disagreement with that point of view based on our understanding of art history. Disagreement is not incivility.
If you disagree and this is true of all things considered art you should be able to reel off lots of examples and easily disprove the counter-examples given, since your assertion holds true universally.
Why is it a waste of research effort? We've made dramatic non-palliative strides in the area of cancer treatment, and most importantly have been able to induce complete remission in a significant number of cases.
Sorry, I don't understand. If you meant PaulHoule's comment I'm not sure how that answers my question, and I didn't find any other comments by you. Do you mean because cancer isn't a simple, isolated thing like polio or TB?
Yes, I meant PaulHoule's comment. If the reason for studying "cancer" is that "cancer" is more widespread than better-defined illnesses, then the reasoning is misplaced; it's surely better to focus on something more widespread, like "illness".
I have seen it expressed, though not in these terms, that asking for a "cure for cancer" is equivalent to asking for bug-free software. Cancer isn't something that afflicts you from without; it's just a failure mode for cells. They can fail for all kinds of reasons (indeed, note that one of our best methods of causing cancer, radiation, works on the principle of "make random changes to the cell's genetic code, and it will eventually become cancerous").
So I think the general claim is that focusing on cancer is a middle ground between seeking treatments for obscure well-defined illnesses and searching for a panacea for illness or disease in general. Cancer has a precise operational definition: unregulated cell growth. It isn't nearly as vague as illness or disease. We understand a lot about all the different pathways inside cells that can lead to it. A "cure for cancer" is an attempt to address the issue upstream, such that it will affect all different types of cancer in the body. Unlike seeking a panacea for all illness, this is not obviously a waste of research effort. There are highly similar mechanisms at work in every cancer. Even if a cure-all cannot be found (I would be surprised, personally), just trying to understand the mechanisms still has value.
Actually, a cyst meets your definition of unregulated cell growth. It's just slower / less greedy. The distinction between a benign tumor and a malignant one is generally ascertained by the process of "let's watch it and see what it does", so I'm not convinced that "cancer" is defined more usefully than "illness".
In my opinion, and my medically-educated mother's opinion (really, I get it from her), people don't look for "a cure for cancer" because they think they can make progress from that viewpoint. They do it because they're looking for funding.
edit:
You might compare "died of cancer" to "died of old age". Old age used to be an accepted cause of death. When autopsies started happening, it was quickly noticed that people who had died of "old age" always had some other, more immediate cause of death. But it turns out that if you take an old person and do your utmost to prevent / cure / treat all of those more proximate causes, eventually one will get past you and they will die.
Okay, but that's not actually how cysts work if you look it up. They are sacs that can have cancerous tissue inside them, but they can also have fluid or air. The operational definition of benign and malignant tumors that doctors use boils down to rudimentary observation, yes, but in the lab we've really identified many of the key mutations in the transition from benign to malignant. So I guess you could say we have a reasonably good idea of what cancer is and how it works, but it hasn't fully made its way onto the front lines yet, either in terms of assessment or treatment.
I understand your cynical point of view about funding, but I guess I would say two things. First, cynicism is a cancer unto itself (ha), and all academics are faced with the corrupting influence of money. Second, if you go and talk to the cancer researchers in the nearest university you'll probably find a great deal of them really do care about the work; they just might care about a very tiny corner of it rather than a cure-all solution.
Social pressures both to differentiate and conform to a particular sub-group during adolescence, and the kinds of groups that girls and boys tend to form. At least in part.
The thing about personal experience is that you can't really quantify it. His 3 anecdotes (3 SSDs over 3 years) are just as valid as your 13 anecdotes.
If you don't sleep for long enough (about 7 days), you'll start to have visual and auditory hallucinations and also delusional thinking. You'll also experience severely reduced effectiveness of just about every system in your body. You might not die if you don't sleep for a year (say), but you'll probably get permanent brain damage.
I think i believe this. A friend of mine is a virgin to late nights and all nighters. We were studying one night trying to cram for a test and communicating every so often on WhatsApp. At around 12AM, he told me he thought he was hallucinating. I laughed as he was only up for like 14 hours. He fell asleep shortly thereafter.
I can relate. I've only had two "all nighters" in my life, and felt utterly miserable each time.
Towards the end of both, I would develop minor visual hallucinations (seeing little things in the corner of my eye, etc.). 14 hours is a bit silly, though. 24 hours is probably the minimum for most people.
The point of science is to never fall back on claims like "you'll probably get permanent brain damage" unless it's known what brain damage you may get, along with bounds on a confidence interval. Otherwise we're just philosophizing.
> Taken together, these changes in brain and body are further evidence that sleep deprivation is a chronic stressor and that the resulting allostatic load can contribute to cognitive problems, which can, in turn, further exacerbate pathways that lead to disease.
On reflection, maybe I got confused with the number of days you can go without water (also 7, at least according to my memory). I stayed awake for 5 days once and there was only a bare minimum of hallucination at the end. I could have stayed awake longer, it wasn't really hard by that point. The people I've known who stayed up forever on crystal meth typically started hallucinating after a week. I'm surprised that the limit is so much shorter, but I'll believe it, thanks for the link.
Women are defined relative to men, just as men are defined relative to women. If there were no men, women would just be "people". In discussing one, you implicitly discuss the other. Whatever makes women into women, men are not that. Except, "woman" and "man" can also be seen as archetypes, and it's possible to integrate both, at least to some degree.
Damn, I meant I wince when I see someone espousing inherent gender differences, because the poor sod that brought it up finds himself or herself shouted down.
Obviously there are gender differences. Stating that gender differences result in inherent preferences tends to get people's hackles up.
Part of the problem is amateur evolutionary biologists starting sentences with 'Just like monkeys, women tend to... ' or 'Men tend to...'
Oh shit, I totally misread your sentence! I think the problem is most people just aren't in touch with their bodies and the effect that having a body has on the mind.
Sure, whenever there's a massive imbalance between the genders, it's going to be less productive than when there's a balance. It also doesn't help much if the sexism discussion occurs among a group of 95% females - which is typically what happens.
> The issue is that with some particular topics, HN is unable.
Agreed, it's actually just impossible to have a non-polarized discussion if people identify too strongly with one of the poles. This isn't unique to HN, we essentially live in a bipolar society. Even if you present a middle ground, someone identifying with either pole will assume you are identifying with the opposite pole, because they see that part of the world in black and white.
Nevertheless, these discussions are good for clarifying your understanding of the world, just try not to expect much in the way of respect, appreciation, agreement, or understanding.
Religion, politics, professional sexism, all these are topics that infringe on people's identities, causing a strong gut reaction that leads to terrible discussions. Even programming languages can end up in a similar category, if you have too many people that identify as a "C++ programmer" or a "Pythonista", or a "Lisper", which leads to the oft-seen programming language flame war.
> Nevertheless, these discussions are good for clarifying your understanding of the world, just try not to expect much in the way of respect, appreciation, agreement, or understanding.
That's a good point; an effective compromise may be to allow heavily flagged discussions to continue after being pushed off the front page, instead of [dead]'ing them (which halts conversation abruptly.) This is actually what happens currently most of the time (as far as I have seen anyway) and I don't think it is particularly bad. The people who are already involved in a discussion can continue it, but more people are not drawn into it as the poisonous discussion doesn't stay visible on the front page.
That's an interesting philosophy. I guess it's like that, with the exception that eventually I'll withdraw from a persistently hostile conversation because I know my own limits and I want to avoid getting destructively angry. Similarly, I'm learning to avoid saying precisely what I think on certain topics around certain people, even if I know that it's a balanced position, because dealing with the aftermath isn't worth it. But yes, it's nice hanging out with friends who don't get all worked up just because I happen to have an opinion that they don't share.
