Thanks for sharing. I’m hesitant about this post’s thesis because I thinkconflating the aesthetic with the political is the reason why so many efforts at improving things fail. People endup supporting policy ideas based on empirical premises that are narratively compelling but wrong. There are many examples, but blank slatism comes to mind. Beyond empirical beliefs, there are broader concepts like tradition, individualism, or nationalism which IMO lack justification for being inherently good, but people have mood-affiliated themselves into worldviews and ideologies built around them anyways because of their intense aesthetic appeal. Mixing up the two also makes for bad aesthetics. There are exceptions but I think most propaganda is bad art.
Even aside from the epistemic effects, I’m not sure cultivating an associated aesthetic style would make effective altruism more persuasive. Some ideas have more aesthetic potential than others. I think effective altruism does not have that much. (I think longtermism has a lot.) You said that effective altruism’s lack of a visual aesthetic makes you less interested in it, but a bad visual aesthetic is probably worse than none, no? High modernism’s core ideological commitments don’t seem insane on their face but someone could reasonably look at a Le Corbusier building and think whatever worldview shares a bed with that can’t be right.
In fact, it seems to me like many very successful social and intellectual movements lack a distinct visual aesthetic. Visual symbols and slogans and recurring subject matter, yes. But I can’t think of distinct visual styles for, e.g., liberalism, the Civil Rights Movement, the Enlightenment, law and economics, feminism, other stuff.
I’d say that the aesthetics of any movement will exist at some level, and if they’re unintentional, they are most likely to be fairly bad (or at least bland if not actively bad) and therefore not provide the benefits I outline.
High modernism is an interesting example — its architectural incarnation was deliberately avoiding highly-developed aesthetics (ornamentation etc.) and the resulting aesthetic is kind of a “default” that most people indeed find unappealing. That has clarified the moral worth of the ideology.
And while it’s true that the philosophical movements you name have less defined aesthetics than, say, religions and some political ideologies, I think they all have a degree of intentional aesthetics to them, more so than EA does.
Thanks for sharing. I’m hesitant about this post’s thesis because I think conflating the aesthetic with the political is the reason why so many efforts at improving things fail. People end up supporting policy ideas based on empirical premises that are narratively compelling but wrong. There are many examples, but blank slatism comes to mind. Beyond empirical beliefs, there are broader concepts like tradition, individualism, or nationalism which IMO lack justification for being inherently good, but people have mood-affiliated themselves into worldviews and ideologies built around them anyways because of their intense aesthetic appeal. Mixing up the two also makes for bad aesthetics. There are exceptions but I think most propaganda is bad art.
Even aside from the epistemic effects, I’m not sure cultivating an associated aesthetic style would make effective altruism more persuasive. Some ideas have more aesthetic potential than others. I think effective altruism does not have that much. (I think longtermism has a lot.) You said that effective altruism’s lack of a visual aesthetic makes you less interested in it, but a bad visual aesthetic is probably worse than none, no? High modernism’s core ideological commitments don’t seem insane on their face but someone could reasonably look at a Le Corbusier building and think whatever worldview shares a bed with that can’t be right.
In fact, it seems to me like many very successful social and intellectual movements lack a distinct visual aesthetic. Visual symbols and slogans and recurring subject matter, yes. But I can’t think of distinct visual styles for, e.g., liberalism, the Civil Rights Movement, the Enlightenment, law and economics, feminism, other stuff.
I’d say that the aesthetics of any movement will exist at some level, and if they’re unintentional, they are most likely to be fairly bad (or at least bland if not actively bad) and therefore not provide the benefits I outline.
High modernism is an interesting example — its architectural incarnation was deliberately avoiding highly-developed aesthetics (ornamentation etc.) and the resulting aesthetic is kind of a “default” that most people indeed find unappealing. That has clarified the moral worth of the ideology.
And while it’s true that the philosophical movements you name have less defined aesthetics than, say, religions and some political ideologies, I think they all have a degree of intentional aesthetics to them, more so than EA does.