Culpability

“wait am I responsible for the pareto depth thing”
“Yes.” t. Jollybard
essay theme: https://soundcloud.com/jollybard/gigantopithecus

The self is the landlord of the mind

Beliefs should pay rent in anticipated experience.
Everyone knows this by now, we’ve already turned out the pockets of the laziest and most impoverished ideas,
the freeloaders in this informational class struggle have been evicted long ago.
If we’re the land barons of our own minds, why stop at just a little power?
Taking this idea further, preferences should pay rent just as much as beliefs.
But what can a preference ‘pay’?

The Fat Baker Principle

There are different competing constructions for the ‘fat baker’. Naturally, I prefer mine.
One could go:“Never trust a thin baker.”
Another: “it’s way easier to become good at something if you actually enjoy what you make”
“lmao”
“lole!”
Finally: “how can you say you even like bread if you can’t make a decent loafa?”

To put it another way, preferences should pay rent in changed behavior.
If you really like manga, maybe you should have internalized a model that can split out good manga from bad.
If you really, really, really like manga, maybe you should have internalized a model that’s most of the way to synthesizing new manga.

Conclusions

This is not only a virtue-deontology ethics
(“you should make things yourself if you like them enough to fling critique”)
but a rudimentary system of personality-level course correction against flights of fancy.

If you find yourself liking something, do you find yourself wanting to curate examples of work, find other creatives, sketch out the bones of your own work?
Do you find yourself “liking” parasocial relationships of engagement and consumption with content-creators, luminaries, or “communities” instead?
If you can only like your likes at arms length, mediated through others and not your own hands, you might not like them as much as you think you do.