People fear irony because it destabilizes meaning and poses the threat of nihilism. But nihilism is nothing to fear so long as you wear Mylar glasses when staring right at it. 5 minutes of nihilism per day lowers the risks of fascism by 17% and boosts vitamin D levels
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Elsewhere, I've argued (well, tweeted) that meaning is memorability. To complete the argument, the perception of beauty is registration of meaningfulness, which is integration into memory. Which creates a conservative bias.
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Meaning is memorability.
Dunno why it took me so long to see this.
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And in another thread, I argued for why aesthetics is an entry drug into conservatism specifically (broadly understood as any ideology with a long history, including for eg old-labor)
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aesthetics seems to be the entry drug of conservatism everywhere in the world 
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Aesthetics are related, but not equivalent to, emotions ("awareness of emotional coherence" perhaps?) and I think my position on aesthetics is similar to the stoic position on emotions in general -- they're something to be consciously self-regulated.
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Ie, if you're not interrogating and regulating your aesthetic responses pretty critically, you create the same kinds of problems you get from not interrogating and regulating emotions. Various sorts of hijacking, overconfidence, unfounded gut feelings of deep certainty etc.
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Except, more so. Unregulated aesthetic responses are more dangerous because they are not generally extreme or acutely stressful. Most people don't feel out of control, but like they're simply being tasteful and appreciative. It doesn't feel like emotional discomposure.
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I'm kinda meh on emotional stoicism. It's an overrated thing imo, but this sort of aesthetico-stoicism is under-rated. A big part of it is regulating disgust responses, stress from contemplating disorder and chaos, etc.
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The proper term for this is conscious tastelessness.
Conscious tastelessness is to aesthetics what Spockian emotional self-regulation is to emotions.
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I've always been consciously tasteless for the lulz and to annoy aesthetes, but at some point a few years ago, I started noticing that the consequences ran deeper than just fun trolling, so I started adding some considered intellectual justifications underneath...
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Replying to
Like with the capability to emotionally self-regulate, there is dose-dependence.
A little bit of targeted tastelessness brings great capability to appreciate other’s taste.
A fixation on having no taste can create a personality that has no flavor to others.
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