Kevin Simler

re common strategies for visual beauty, I think there's two main forces at work: 1. clean lines and smooth surfaces are strong signs of "can maintain homeostasis even under adverse conditions", which makes them useful as costly signal (plumage) or hard to counterfeit (flowers)

2. any kind of order can be proof of work, so why these patterns specifically? I suspect they need to be cheap to verify (so as to not impose unnecessary cost on cooperators) and the hardware most animals have for that is neural networks

That was awesome!

Re our appreciation of the dandelion: we are likely to encounter it in an environment with moist ground, some sunlight, and moderate temperatures, all attributes which are also conductive to human flourishing. "build your house near dandelions" is a non-terrible heuristic.

Abstracting the dandelion to something symmetric (treating repetition as a special case of symmetry) and fragile it points to an environment which is stable in dimensions also relevant to humans.

> Why are desserts, relative to main courses, more often a vehicle for beauty? Easy: because a much larger proportion of dessert, by volume and labor, is manmade. Basically because we can. But of course even the main course will strive for creative presentation.

I suppose that captures most of it! I’m still left wondering why we never (rarely?) use e.g. mashed potatoes as decorative frosting.

.."things that are desired only because everyone else desires them (or is thought to desire them), rather than for their intrinsic qualities. (See for example much of contemporary art and architecture.)" Nice backhand

haha that actually came from @everytstudies when he gave me notes on my draft... it was too good not to use :)