This is a special post for quick takes by A Ray. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.
I think there's two common stories for comparing intersubjective experiences:
"Mismatch": Alice loves a book, and found it deeply transformative. Beth, who otherwise has very similar tastes and preferences to Alice, reads the book and finds it boring and unmoving.
"Match": Charlie loves a piece of music. Daniel, who shares a lot of Charlie's taste in music, listens to it and also loves it.
One way I can think of unpacking this is that there is in terms of distributions:
"Mean" - the shared intersubjective experiences, which we see in the "Match" case
"Variability" - the difference in intersubjective experiences, which we see in the "Mismatch" case
Another way of unpacking this is due to factors within the piece or within the subject
"Intrinsic" - factors that are within the subject, things like past experiences and memories and even what you had for breakfast
"Extrinsic" - factors that are within the piece itself, and shared by all observers
And one more ingredient I want to point at is question substitution. In this case I think the effect is more like "felt sense query substitution" or "received answer substitution" since it doesn't have an explicit question.
When asked about a piece (of art, music, etc) people will respond with how they felt -- which includes both intrinsic and extrinsic factors.
Anyways what I want is better social tools for separating out these, in ways that let people share their interest and excitement in things.
I think that these mismatches/misfirings (like the LW post that set this off) and the reactions to them cause a chilling effect, where the LW/rationality community is not sharing as much art because of this
I want to be in a community that's got a bunch of people sharing art they love and cherish
I think great art is underrepresented in LW and want to change that.