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[Ares Land]

I was born in 1984 and still love '70s and '80s music. Metallica was -- and is -- very popular among my age group, though most of their hits were released when we were toddlers.

Same for me. But today's teenagers are yet another generation younger than me.

This reminds me of an earlier discussion -- basically I think there just isn't as much of a generational divide on music as there used to be; I don't think there's one as wide as the one between boomers and their parents.

[Travis B.]

I was born in 1984 and still love '70s and '80s music. Metallica was -- and is -- very popular among my age group, though most of their hits were released when we were toddlers.

Same exact thing here. When I was in middle and high school kids loved Metallica, even though most of Metallica's hits were made when we were little.

[Linguoboy]

I was born in 1984 and still love '70s and '80s music. Metallica was -- and is -- very popular among my age group, though most of their hits were released when we were toddlers.

Same for me. But today's teenagers are yet another generation younger than me.

This reminds me of an earlier discussion -- basically I think there just isn't as much of a generational divide on music as there used to be; I don't think there's one as wide as the one between boomers and their parents.

Well, they were the ones that created the divide in the first place. Before them, there really wasn't a notion of "youth culture" distinct from adult culture (and still isn't in countries that haven't been so influenced by the USA).

I wonder if they've also done some of the work of all closing the gap through their desire to be seen as "cool parents" by their kids (in reaction to how they viewed their own parents). Or possibly it's just the cultural singularity: When all music from all eras is easily available, it's much easier to ignore what's currently popular.

[zompist]

This reminds me of an earlier discussion -- basically I think there just isn't as much of a generational divide on music as there used to be; I don't think there's one as wide as the one between boomers and their parents.

Well, they were the ones that created the divide in the first place. Before them, there really wasn't a notion of "youth culture" distinct from adult culture (and still isn't in countries that haven't been so influenced by the USA).

I'm not sure about this. There's been a lot of new music revolutions in the US: ragtime, jazz, R&B, big band. I think pretty much all of them offended the older generation. I don't think my mother (born 1922) liked the same genres as her mother (1890s).

Then there's the revolution(s) in classical music. Nicolas Slonimsky published a wonderful, book, The Lexicon of Musical Invective, which collects critical reviews of music from Beethoven to the 1930s or so. It's hilarious. Just one sample, from 1825:

"We find Beethoven's Ninth Symphony to be precisely one hour and five minutes long, a fearful period indeed, which puts the muscles and lungs of the band, and the patience of audience to a severe trial... The last movement, a chorus, is heterogenous. What relation it bears to the symphony we could not make out; and here, as well as in other parts, the want of intelligible design is too apparent."

[TomHChappell]

I’m a boomer; and in the lore of popular culture the young people’s music was not at all appreciated by their parents’ generation, and reciprocally the jazz and zoot -suit music that the parents had enjoyed when they were young was, stereotypically, too boring to hear a whole song.

However:
When I was in the high school band, my mother liked the Beatles, and I liked swing.
So there was non-negligible crossover.
Later on, when rap became a thing, I liked only the very best rap (I mean very best in the opinions of their target audience).
Mediocre rap was “just noise” to me.

[Ares Land]

I remember there was more of a genre divide than a generational divide when I was a teenager.
There was the pop/rock/metal crowd and the rap/R'n'B crowd, and neither group could stand the others' music. Though a few artists had a way of appealing to everyone. Cypress Hill was very popular with metal fans; everyone liked Eminem. Everybody loved IAM (French rap -- you probably haven't heard of them.)

[WeepingElf]

I remember there was more of a genre divide than a generational divide when I was a teenager.
There was the pop/rock/metal crowd and the rap/R'n'B crowd, and neither group could stand the others' music. Though a few artists had a way of appealing to everyone. Cypress Hill was very popular with metal fans; everyone liked Eminem. Everybody loved IAM (French rap -- you probably haven't heard of them.)

Fair. I have once been told that those that were in their teens in the late '50s here in Germany were divided between "jazzers" and "rockers". And in the '90s, it was, it was between rock music and electronic music (Gitarre and Elektro in German youth parlance). Then, techno hedonism was crushed by the falling Twin Towers, and hip-hop took over...

[Raphael]

I suspect that there might have been a somewhat larger-than-usual generational divide about music between the last generations that grew up before music started to explore the new technological possibilities in music-making that appeared in the mid-to-late 20th century, and the first generations that grew up after that happened. But that's just speculation on my part.

[Travis B.]

I suspect that there might have been a somewhat larger-than-usual generational divide about music between the last generations that grew up before music started to explore the new technological possibilities in music-making that appeared in the mid-to-late 20th century, and the first generations that grew up after that happened. But that's just speculation on my part.

There are many people of my generation who enjoy classic rock (e.g. the success of Guitar Hero) even though most of it was made when we were little or not even born yet.

[Raphael]

There are many people of my generation who enjoy classic rock (e.g. the success of Guitar Hero) even though most of it was made when we were little or not even born yet.

Oh, I'd say that fits in well with my speculation: your generation grew up when the technological changes I talked about were mostly over; the generations that created classic rock grew up while those changes were already well underway. Neither generation had grown up before those changes.

[Travis B.]

Oh, I'd say that fits in well with my speculation: your generation grew up when the technological changes I talked about were mostly over; the generations that created classic rock grew up while those changes were already well underway. Neither generation had grown up before those changes.

To me the main technological changes in music I experienced was the changeover from LP's to CD's, then later the advent of the MP3 and the iPod, and even later the YouTube and Spotify. When I was little my family only had a record player, and then they eventually bought a CD player, but we still played many LP's as my parents had a large collection of them. Years later, we got iPods (my dad was a mail carrier and would listen to music as he delivered) and I would download MP3's while my parents would borrow CD's from the library and rip MP3's from them, which they would then load onto their iPods. These days, though, I listen to most of my music on either Spotify or YouTube.

[Raphael]

To me the main technological changes in music I experienced was the changeover from LP's to CD's, then later the advent of the MP3 and the iPod, and even later the YouTube and Spotify. When I was little my family only had a record player, and then they eventually bought a CD player, but we still played many LP's as my parents had a large collection of them. Years later, we got iPods (my dad was a mail carrier and would listen to music as he delivered) and I would download MP3's while my parents would borrow CD's from the library and rip MP3's from them, which they would then load onto their iPods. These days, though, I listen to most of my music on either Spotify or YouTube.

Those are all technological changes in the consumption and storage of music. I was more thinking of changes in the making of music - mainly, the rise of electric guitars, amplifiers in general, synthesizers, and other electronic stuff from that era. My idea was that people who grew up without electric guitars or anything similarly noisy might have found it difficult to enjoy the music enabled by the things I just listed. But after the introduction of those things, there don't seem to have been any equally seismic changes in music, making it easier for, say, 1990s or 2000s kids to enjoy 1970s or 1980s music.

(Oh, and for the record: I myself hate streaming music, and try get get all the music I want to listen to as mp3s or video files on my local devices. But I'm weird that way.)

[rotting bones]

It's perfectly rational to say "Even if death camps would solve some problem, we should not build death camps." And at the same time to say "Though such-and-such a rule is generally good, blindly following it causes too much misery."

I don't know if it's rational to say this. It's probably rational to say, "Death camps should not be built because they bring misery."

The worry about consequentialists is that the person eventually adds a disclaimer "...unless we really really need them for the greater good." This is hardly an abstract worry, that is in fact how people justified building death camps.

There is something to be said for a "no death camps ever, period" point of view. Some moral lines shouldn't be crossed.

But, eh, there's no magic moral algorithm. If you're an honest deontologist, you have to balance moral values. If you're an honest consequentialist, you have to balance differing outcomes. I feel I'd trust someone more who thinks about both, but even that is no guarantee.

"Rational" is different from "correct". Personally, I'm not sure deontological ethics makes sense at all. Without a tether to physical reality, the task of specifying which injunctions apply to which concrete circumstances is a potentially unbounded process. The formulation "X should be done all the TIME." is itself an obstacle when you're trying to respond to changing circumstances and contexts.

Regarding the consequentialist outcome of removing inconvenient individuals, murder is distinct from killing. Would you really argue that it's never legitimate to kill anyone, not even Hamas, the IDF or the Nazis as they are attacking you?

If you only want to avoid murder, there are many ways for consequentialist ethics to accommodate you.

Rawls argues something like: "Choose the action that raises the civil liberties of the least advantaged members of society."

Even utilitarians have rule utilitarianism: "Choose the laws that maximize total happiness." You could argue that the anxiety of possibly being picked to be murdered would decrease the happiness of a society.

My understanding is that the definitive argument against utilitarianism is the utility monster argument: How much can everyone else's happiness be sacrificed to tiptoe around the most sensitive members of society?

[keenir]

I don't know if it's rational to say this. It's probably rational to say, "Death camps should not be built because they bring misery."

The worry about consequentialists is that the person eventually adds a disclaimer "...unless we really really need them for the greater good." This is hardly an abstract worry, that is in fact how people justified building death camps.

There is something to be said for a "no death camps ever, period" point of view. Some moral lines shouldn't be crossed.

But, eh, there's no magic moral algorithm. If you're an honest deontologist, you have to balance moral values. If you're an honest consequentialist, you have to balance differing outcomes. I feel I'd trust someone more who thinks about both, but even that is no guarantee.

Regarding the consequentialist outcome of removing inconvenient individuals, murder is distinct from killing. Would you really argue that it's never legitimate to kill anyone, not even Hamas, the IDF or the Nazis as they are attacking you?

So far as I can tell, Zompist never said that. So you're strawmanning in an attempt to win the argument by skirting Godwin.

I'm not sure philosophers give that a thumbs-up either.

My understanding is that the definitive argument against utilitarianism is the utility monster argument: How much can everyone else's happiness be sacrificed to tiptoe around the most sensitive members of society?

That would depend on why they are sensitive.

My own ancestors, for example, were notoriously gun-shy after they finally made it out of The Pale Of Settlement, following generations of pogroms.

[zompist]

But, eh, there's no magic moral algorithm. If you're an honest deontologist, you have to balance moral values. If you're an honest consequentialist, you have to balance differing outcomes. I feel I'd trust someone more who thinks about both, but even that is no guarantee.

"Rational" is different from "correct". Personally, I'm not sure deontological ethics makes sense at all. Without a tether to physical reality, the task of specifying which injunctions apply to which concrete circumstances is a potentially unbounded process. The formulation "X should be done all the TIME." is itself an obstacle when you're trying to respond to changing circumstances and contexts.

I just said I wasn't a deontologist, but still this is a straw man. Morality is about the world. I have no idea what a moral rule "without a tether to physical reality" could possibly mean.

Though if you want to "respond to changing circumstances and contexts", perhaps you're agreeing with me? I said you have to balance moral values and different outcomes; it's a never-ending process. No one-word philosophical label will answer everything effortlessly.

If you only want to avoid murder, there are many ways for consequentialist ethics to accommodate you.

Rawls argues something like: "Choose the action that raises the civil liberties of the least advantaged members of society."

Even utilitarians have rule utilitarianism: "Choose the laws that maximize total happiness." You could argue that the anxiety of possibly being picked to be murdered would decrease the happiness of a society.

Is this superior to, or for that matter very different from, saying that murder is wrong?

Utilitarian ethics strikes me as an effort to pretend that moral judgments aren't moral judgments. It sounds more sciencey to talk about "decreasing the happiness of a society", but that's just hiding the moral judgment that happiness is good.

I think you really like systems and put your trust in them. I can see the appeal but I also find it's a common thing for people to get over-enamored of their systems and paper over their problems, including the problem that even perfect systems are operated by imperfect humans.

[rotting bones]

Regarding my criticism of deontology, I didn't accuse anyone of anything. I'm only arguing that deontology is nonsensical.

As to why I think it's nonsensical, what you have to understand about deontology is that it doesn't care about consequences at all. According to Kant, acting with the expectation of predetermined outcomes is "pathological". This is what I mean when I say that it's untethered from reality. When you have a moral system based on words instead of things, the concept of injunctions "applying" to situations becomes complicated: Are qualified injunctions applications or separate injunctions? As I mentioned before:

There is an ambiguity about when deontological claims are applicable because of the relativity in the concepts of sameness and difference:

Deontologists don't have preferred outcomes. According to them, they always behave in the only way they can rationally justify everyone always behaving. So for example, if an axe murderer came to their door and asked for the whereabouts of their children, they wouldn't lie because they can't rationally justify the sentence, "Everyone ought to lie all the time."
Personally, I think this is dubious because it doesn't acknowledge relativities in the concepts of sameness and difference. Is the sentence, "Everyone ought to lie to axe murderers asking for your children's whereabouts all the time." a "different" sentence, or a less "general" version of the same one? People have suggested that a deontologist ought to slam the door in the axe murderer's face instead of lying. But how? Can deontologists rationally justify the sentence, "Everyone ought to slam doors in people's faces all the time?"

Because deontology is purely language-based and unmoored from physical reality, it's unclear whether the injunction "Don't build death camps" actually contradicts the injunction "Go ahead and build death camps that say 'Arbeit macht frei' over the gate!"

Regarding systems, I hope you realize that Kant intended deontology to be an absolute moral system superseding utilitarianism.

I would argue that even people who don't say so often have expectations about what could happen if they were to act a certain way. These expectations form an unvoiced basis for why they do things.

[zompist]

Regarding my criticism of deontology, I didn't accuse anyone of anything. I'm only arguing that deontology is nonsensical.

As to why I think it's nonsensical, what you have to understand about deontology is that it doesn't care about consequences at all. According to Kant, acting with the expectation of predetermined outcomes is "pathological". This is what I mean when I say that it's untethered from reality. When you have a moral system based on words instead of things, the concept of injunctions "applying" to situations becomes complicated: Are qualified injunctions applications or separate injunctions?

Most of this is circular. When I ask why you think deontology is "Without a tether to physical reality", you respond that it's "based on words instead of things." This is freshman-dorm logic. Moral strictures make no sense unless they're about the world; e.g. "do not murder" is about murder and other human beings and the world we live in.

Kant has been dead for 200 years, and I have no interest in defending him. This SEP article is more up to date and not tied to one camp.

FWIW even moral systems that claim divine truth also appeal to consequences. The Tanakh, for instance, specifically promises prosperity as well as God's favor to the virtuous. Confucianism maintains that a virtuous ruler makes the whole kingdom virtuous. (I'm not defending those systems either, only pointing out that they were not bothered by this tension.)

[Raphael]

Combined meteorological/linguistic question, inspired by the current weather where I live: to which extent can the world be divided into places where the phrase "the calm before the storm" makes sense, and places where it doesn't?

In the cool/temperate parts of Europe, such as Britain or Germany, one feature of the local climate is that, during the Northern Hemisphere summer, there's often a sunny period when it's fairly hot by local standards, and that lasts for a few days or a week or longer, and then it ends with a massive thunderstorm. You notice a period of sunshine with hot and calm air, and if you're a local, you don't need the weather forecast to tell you that there'll probably be a thunderstorm soon. I guess that's probably what gave rise to metaphorical expressions like "Die Ruhe vor dem Sturm" in German or "The calm before the storm" in English.

(Historical note: this also explains what some people in the Germany of 1914 meant when they welcomed the beginning of World War 1 because they thought it would be a "cleansing thunderstorm" ("Reinigendes Gewitter").)

But there are other parts of the world where it's common to have weeks or even months of sunny weather with not a trace of rain. Even if we ignore outright deserts for a moment, there are still places with lengthy local dry seasons, where sometimes small children get surprised by the first rain at the start of the local rainy season, because they don't remember the previous rainy season and therefore don't have the mental concept of water falling from the sky.

So, what I'm asking is: are there parts of the world where phrases like "The calm before the storm" don't really make sense to the locals, because they don't refer to anything in their life experience?

[Torco]

it's never made any sense to me, tbh. santiago has a pretty standard mediterranean climate, much like barcelona I guess. we get rains, in the winter, precious few of them, and when it does rain the city always collapses, the power always goes out somewhere, some neighbourhood or other gets flooded etcetera, very third world. the other day we got our first ever hundred-and-something kilometer winds... is that a storm? there was no thunder or lightning. I can't remember if it was calm before, but it was... weird. like the air felt... restless? I felt restless going outside, anyway. still, I've never heard the expression used outside of a movie.

[Raphael]

it's never made any sense to me, tbh. santiago has a pretty standard mediterranean climate, much like barcelona I guess. we get rains, in the winter, precious few of them, and when it does rain the city always collapses, the power always goes out somewhere, some neighbourhood or other gets flooded etcetera, very third world. the other day we got our first ever hundred-and-something kilometer winds... is that a storm? there was no thunder or lightning. I can't remember if it was calm before, but it was... weird. like the air felt... restless? I felt restless going outside, anyway. still, I've never heard the expression used outside of a movie.

Thank you, that's the kind of information I was looking for!