Solenoid Entity (podcast narrator, not Scott Alexander)

Link in post.

Something like regularity, predictability, symmetry is really good.

So why doesn't a metronome make you bliss out?

Andres says it's because you can't concentrate on it hard enough.

It's not engaging enough to occupy your whole brain, entire sensorium, or whatever.

Symphonies are beautiful, and we intuitively feel like it's because they have some kind of deep regularity or complicated pattern.

But they're less regular or predictable or symmetrical than a metronome.

Andres thinks this is because they've hit a sweet spot, regular slash symmetrical slash predictable enough to be beautiful, but complex slash unpredictable enough to draw and hold our attention.

Compare to, for example, games, which are most fun when they're hard enough to be challenging, but easy enough to be winnable.

But this sweet spot is the fault of your own inattentiveness.

If you could really concentrate on the metronome, it would be even more blissful than the symphony.

Emilson says he's achieved these levels of concentration and can confirm.

I talked to another meditator who agrees metronomes can be pretty blissful with the right amount of superhuman focus.

Although, as per the Buddha quote above, total silence is best of all.

I find this to be an elegant explanation of what the heck is going on with Janna's, more convincing than my previous theory, link in post.

It's also a strong contender as a theory of beauty, a little different in emphasis from Schmidhuber's theory, link in post, but eventually arriving at the same place.

Beauty is that which is compressible, but has not already been compressed.

This is an audio version of Astral Codex X provided with the permission of Scott Alexander.

I'm not Scott, I'm Solenoid Entity, and you can contact me at astralcodexpodcast at protonmail.com.

If you like Scott's blog, consider supporting it on Substack, astralcodex10.substack.com.