Hysteria

For the Philippines, they figured out the true way to not have a official pandemic.

You can't have a pandemic if you just don't test people.

They're just picking up the slack now and recognizing the severity of the situation.

I prefer to think of Aesthetic as a less rational, more monkey-brain part of us. A lot of the things we find beautiful come from basic instincts of what is good/bad for our survival and reproduction. Healthy food, safe places, good partners, etc.

I would rationalize that finding suffering ugly is in a similar vein as finding skin boils ugly; they're indicators of diseases, unsafe land, unsafe conditions, bad things et al.

Going with the "people's suffering" take, perhaps wanting to act on immediate, in-your-eyes suffering is an aesthetic choice/preference, but making a (shut up and multiply) decision wouldn't be aesthetic, but fully rational? Our monkey-brains can't quite grasp the people's suffering continents away from us, or imagine the actual amount of people suffering, so wanting to act on that as a whole wouldn't touch on our direct aesthetics, but in conscious, controlled rational thoughts.

I'm still mulling over the importance of Aesthetics. Raemon's writing really set me on a path I should've explored much much earlier.

And since all good paths come with their fair share of coincidences, I found this essay to also mull over.

Perhaps we can think of Aesthetics as the grouping of desires and things we find beautiful(and thus we desire and work towards), in a spiritual/emotional/inner sense?

I just came here to write a shortform on aesthetics, but I might as well write some random thoughts here and reach you in particular.

I believe that "Aesthetics Maketh the Man". You can judge much about one's character simply by what they find beautiful or ugly, and you can judge their values and morals simply by how solid their aesthetics are.

Perhaps it is indeed easier or better to quantify "aesthetics" as the array of morals, values, sense of beauty and empirical metis that compromise a living being's personality. Things that are intrinsically part of how we interact with the world and society at large.

But to actually answer your question: I have given thought to aesthetics from a rational(?) POV that I hadn't bothered with before, and no, I haven't ever went into a "major disagreement" that went anywhere near "well". People can be very irrational towards things their own aesthetic sense considers "ugly", even (or specially) within the rationalist community.