It's a bit more circular than that. The music you were raised with sounds good to you, which means you want to understand how to make music like that hence the dominance of 12 tones and major and minor scales in Western music.
But also, nobody bothers to talk about this because for beginners without sufficient focus on mastery by copying other people, they're generally not going to be able to do anything notable with music anyway, so this kind of meta-theory is an unnecessary distraction. (And by the time you are actually decent with music literally years have passed and you've probably stumbled upon this idea by then)
What is meant here is that there are different musical cultures around the world, and if you grew up in one that, for example, prominently uses quarter-tones/microtones (e.g. a lot of music from Arabic and Indian cultures) then we know that you will have a different reaction to, say, Bach, than someone who grew up in a culture that uses strict equal temperament.
It does not mean "my parents played a lot of <X> and that doesn't sound good to me".
I grew up with Western music, and now Arabic music is one of my favorites. I really don't think Westerners hear semitones differently. Also, a lot of Arabic music is 12-tone, and even if it weren't, they probably appreciate Bach the same way.
You can re-train your ear of course. But on average a lot of people used to western music feel that classical arabic/indian music with half/quarter tones in it sounds 'out of tune'/wrong.
I really like classical arabic music. But when I tried to play the half tones in a tune I studied hard on the syrian guy I was playing with told me to please not attempt those because I was horribly out of tune :-P . Not because I played a half tone, of course. He did play them. But because my half tone was subtly slightly off the right half tone.
I think you have to be extra careful with things like the bayati scale besides just being in tune. The quarter-tone has its role but is easy to misuse, like staying on it too long. The opposite is pentatonic where you can spam random notes and nothing sounds too bad, but it's not very interesting, and then blues or 8-note Western scales are in the middle.
When it's done well, I don't notice unless I'm looking for it. Like speaking of Syria, I think this George Wassouf song uses quarter tones, not even sure https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsD7ixyFm90 . It's more noticeable in oud solos, but someone who doesn't know better could write it off as just the way the instrument sounds.
No, people don't "hear semitones differently" but ... practicing musicians from one culture will choose to use semitones, quartertones and microtones differently, and a listener with a lot of musical exposure will notice this when listening to music that does and does not involve such practices.
And in many cases we don't need to tolerate this because most instruments barring guitar and piano allow musicians to tune chords to just temperament, and players will do this automatically and completely subconsciously.
I’m convinced that “Safe and Sound” by Capital Cities became a major hit because it uses an actual trumpet for the lead, causing the perfect intervals to be exact instead of the every so slightly off intervals 12-tone equal temperament has.
The linked article makes the case for equal temperament by showing that 12 just fifths played in sequence is flat compared to seven octaves.
I'm not saying a real, recorded trumpet doesn't make an appreciable sonic difference, but if it were a sampled trumpet "Safe and Sound" would most likely still be a hit.
Attributing it's hit status to the perfect intervals is ignoring all of the other choices (and supporting infrastructure) that go into making a hit. It's like saying that the Dodge Charger was a successful car because the windshield wipers are of a certain make.
“"Safe and Sound's" trumpet line is partly responsible for the popularity Capital Cities is currently enjoying”
>>>The trumpet line in ‘Safe and Sound’, for example, didn’t appear in the production until nine versions into the song. The final version, on a whim, we decided to try using a trumpet, a live trumpet, to play that line and it stuck. We ended up actually using the trumpet a lot throughout the album after we included it in ‘Safe and Sound’.
"It was trial and error, right? We felt like that line was an epic line and we thought about different instruments that sounded epic, and the trumpet is obviously one of them,<<<
The thing about trumpets is this: Their fifth is a little “sharp” because it’s a perfect just intonated fifth (i.e. a perfect 3/2 ratio).
Given that the purpose of a measure is to make predictions: IQ can be used to improve predictions of academic outcomes, whereas the multiple intelligences models are worse at this.
Whether or not there are multiple intelligences or not is an implementation detail unless knowledge of this has measurably lead to some better prediction.
There's no actual IQ test. Any data you've ever seen using "IQ" to predict academic outcomes is actually just using prior academic scores bent into the shape of a symmetric normal distribution.
It's telling how out of touch the evaluators of these things are that the grand winner designed a tool that's been in use by fire services for decades. (Software that predicts fires based on lightening strikes). But you slap LLM on it, and assert that somehow you can replace the arborists and helicopter pilots with drones (as if the human piloting the thing is the expensive part of a multi million dollar vehicle hauling tonnes of water around anyway) and that tricks non-professionals into thinking you're disrupting a field.
There's a whole class of software people who think the rest of the world is a bunch of pitiful and sadly ignorant apes stuck in the past who just need the loving administration of the clarity, vision and genius of the software engineer to fix all their problems.
I'm living in this ecosystem right now, and I see this every day. The mentality that "normal people" are beneath them.
I live a fairly social life and enjoy going to karaoke and going on hikes with friends or strangers not in tech/startups, and many of the others in the residency simply can't understand why I'd want to interact with people they perceive as less intelligent than them.
"Think about it. Think of the most average person you know. 50% are more stupid than them. And you won't get any value out of speaking to those"
> "Think about it. Think of the most average person you know. 50% are more stupid than them. And you won't get any value out of speaking to those"
Possible response: “And yet they’re all still more intelligent, compassionate, interesting, and a better company than you.”
There are many others: “The average person I know is pretty smart. I’m sorry to hear about your family, though.”
Or: “You’re right, I do indeed not get any value out of listening to you. I feel stupider already.”
Alright, alright, let’s actually try to be kind and change some minds: “There are different kinds of intelligence, and everyone has a full life rich in perspectives that we know nothing about. Making a blanket statement that someone we never met is “stupid” is reductive, lacking in empathy, and stifling to our own personal growth. To put it in your terms: What’s the best <relevant tech stack>? The answer is, of course, that it depends. They all have strengths and weaknesses and to be good you must learn to identify what those are. People are similar. If you only hang out with one type of person, you are the proverbial hammer who sees everything and everyone as nails.”
This is the reason why the rest of the world rolls their eyes when a software developer starts speaking...
There are the people doing actual work and science to move society forward, and then there's the people who stroll up and confidently peddle their idea to replace them with a barely thought-through app...
The scary part to me is that it actually works. Not practically, but that upper management and whatnot actually buy it.
Most early stage startups around me right now are built on the premise of replacing groups of people. There's a startup strapping sensors and cameras onto blue collar workers in developing countries to take "egocentric" data and train "world models" to the get robots to replace skilled physical labor. Lots of "ambient capture" to then automate away the work of the employees getting recorded.
Even what I'm building right now, which was initially just a tool to help me with my ADHD and memory problems is slowly getting twisted towards the same direction based on where the money is.
I would love to know how to build a company that serves real humans rather than the accumulation of capital and the extractive nature of corporations.
> The scary part to me is that it actually works. Not practically, but that upper management and whatnot actually buy it.
That “below average” intelligence pool are well represented in upper management. FOMO is a powerful thing, smart people are often tricked by dumb ideas because they don’t want to miss out on something or be perceived to not understand the value of a bad idea
> I would love to know how to build a company that serves real humans rather than the accumulation of capital and the extractive nature of corporations.
Clearly not. Otherwise Bezos wouldn’t create a culture where employees feel the need to pee in bottles and continue working while a colleague is dead on the floor.
> It is not possible, actually.
I don’t believe that. Sure, if you want to be filthy rich you’ll exploit people, but there are plenty of smaller companies who treat their employees well (some owners have even left their companies to their employees) and genuinely care about customers as people.
I don’t even know what you’re talking about. Why would Bezos be spending money to make me believe it is possible for small companies who can treat their employees well, all the while making me think even worse of him for how he treats his own employees? That makes no sense.
Bezos doesn’t want you to abolish private property.
If you believe it possible to build a company that serves real humans rather than the accumulation of capital and the extractive nature of corporations, you will try that instead.
> If you believe it possible to build a company that serves real humans rather than the accumulation of capital and the extractive nature of corporations, you will try that instead.
No. That is wrong. Saying it is possible to generate less harm within a system does in no way mean I don’t think the system is flawed and rigged and incentives bad behaviour.
Ah, sorry, I didn’t realise I was the sole arbiter of private property and it was within my hands to abolish it. I’ll get on that first thing tomorrow, send me the papers.
Its kind of insulting how many people look at other industries and think they can "solve" the problems with their simple solution. As if the people in these industries havent been thinking about this problem for decades.
Yes. But in my limited experience, the practically useful fresh takes come from people who have immersed themselves deeply into a problem, not from people who spend a weekend with ChatGPT.
Reminds me again of crypto. Lot of stuff being done in banking and payments happens for a reason. Or because someone from outside like politicians meddled into it. And forget that people are extremely gross when it comes to getting their bank balance wrong...
I’ve been at multiple hackathons over the past 15y that rewarded impractical or copies of existing products. And I think that’s fine? A hackathon doesn’t have to be about creating something revolutionary IMHO.
Still LLMs do remove most of the fun of hackathons
The human pilot is not an expensive part of it but it is a dangerous job and when mistakes or issues happen you lose a life you didn't need to lose. Out of all jobs to eliminate that doesn't sound so bad.
I've literally heard someone say that we should remove the protection circuits because it's two dollars of parts protecting under a dollar of amplifiers.
Yes, the amplifiers are cheap, but the rest of the board isn't and if the amplifiers get blown up that's 1000 dollars in support costs and RMAs, bad customer opinion and a line stoppage to boot.
I'm not disagreeing with your overall point, but autistic in that comment is attempting to capture that "literal rhetoric but socially unaware" style of argument people can have when they argue a point too black and white.
"Retarded" does not imply this
I would say the problem with the comment is more in line with how OCD or adhd is used, improperly. Like despite autism being a spectrum with traits that can't be reduced to that one stereotype.
It's being used to invoke a stereotype of neurodivergence. Not as a stand in for general stupidity.
It's being used as a stand in for a very specific example of stupidity, and it is "clever" because it evokes strong imagery in an unexpected way. Which is why it is funny. But still offensive. It's best to avoid black and white thinking about things like this, as hard as it is for the ego to admit that it takes pleasure from cruelty.
Most of our insults against intelligence come from medical terminology originally. Every word eventually starts being used offensively, and then a new one gets coined and the cycle continues.
I assume you're being sarcastic, but moron, retard, stupid, dumb, idiot, mad, imbecile, mongoloid, spastic, lame, lunatic, maniac and psycho were all used as medical terms before they became stigmatic. Filter out sexual and scatological insults and there is very little left.
Governments have been working on this for more then 20 years now. 40 maybe. As long as I've been alive at least. It's just that all of the actions to try and deal with this have been continuously undermined by fossil fuel industries and right-wing politics.
Hansen is still going and has been ringing the alarm that we have deeply under estimated the relative carbon loading and heating potential on emissions. There is a real fear that we have locked in a lot more warming potential than the models have been predicting via several factors. Namely carbon warms slightly more than anticipated, more methane releases, great water vapor levels as a result of the previous two and reduced reflective materials decreasing our relative albedo.
There is a national election in Sweden this year. Which parties or blocks are against construction of thermal power plants, and which are against it? Thermal power plants are primarily fueled by oil or natural gas. Party platforms are public and posted on their websites.
A few years ago EU voted to define two technologies as green. One was natural gas, and the other was nuclear. Which parties voted for natural gas, and which parties voted for nuclear?
There is a EU decision to phase out ICE in cars. A good continuation would be to issue a similar decision to phase out ICE in the energy grid. It would be nice if both sides could just join together on such decision.
For me, it has degraded to the point where I simply presume that no significant promises are going to be kept after the election anyway. The respective parties will promise what they think they need to get the votes, and will then target whatever is relevant for the ever-evolving social-media driven zeitgeist.
"A completely fossil-free energy system" ("Ett helt fossilfritt energisystem" (1)) yesteryear and now lower fuel prices than 20 years ago (adjusted for inflation, yes).
Fuel prices is one of those things where people will complain about Iran war driving prices up, and then in the next sentence complain that low fuel taxes will encourage consumption. The reduction in taxes has basically removed half of the price on gasoline, but with the increase in global market price this has only resulted in a minor price reduction in total. For diesel the price is still above that of last year.
It will be interesting to see if researchers will find any significant behavioral change from having half the fuel prices compared to nearby countries. Personally I doubt it will be a significant statistical difference, but it is a perfect time to get some real data if people treat fuel as a necessity and pay what the market demands, or if its a luxury product where consumption goes up and down based on price.
Right-wing politics being opposed to environmental action is so weird when back in the day right-wing politicians didn't have such an issue with it (for example this speech by Margaret Thatcher: <https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107346>).
This is downvoted, but exactly right. Moreover, government is not a singular entity. Blaming the whole government just serves to take the blame from actually guilty and attributing it to those whonwere doing the right thing.
No, its that all the action consistently denies the fact that human societies can not keep i together if degrown. The policies produce regression aka facism.
The fact that Arch is bleeding edge has been an explicit part of the Arch philosophy for as long as I've been using it (for 20 years now). It breaks a lot less frequently than it used to.
I personally think the whole bleeding edge argument is funny. Imagine me telling macOS27 is bleeding edge. Or any stable version of software u use is bleeding edge and that we should wait 6 months before using it.
Arch reflects the state of linux. I will never say it's perfect. But rolling releases give u the latest stable version of software. Like I said, I've found arch to be easier to fix. I've been burned too many times cos of Ubuntu and the lots.
But also, nobody bothers to talk about this because for beginners without sufficient focus on mastery by copying other people, they're generally not going to be able to do anything notable with music anyway, so this kind of meta-theory is an unnecessary distraction. (And by the time you are actually decent with music literally years have passed and you've probably stumbled upon this idea by then)