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A Kantian Critique of "Sorry" by Justin Bieber(decodingvibes.com)
108 points by altmanaltman 3 hours ago | 40 comments
mwillis 18 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

This 3 minute song creates a fleeting portrait of a man, not necessarily Bieber, who we cannot know. The song captures the mindset of a character who, one might infer, cynically knows what he’s trying to do. It’s possible he has no interest in a heartfelt, meaningful apology. In fact, this character - who lives only within the song and the liminal world it creates - may be operating exactly to his own moral preference. We don’t know enough to say more. It’s like asking if a singer of “happy birthday” truly wishes their subject to be happy.

In short, you Kant analyze pop music with confidence.

mc32 12 minutes ago | parent [-]

Of course one cannot in all sincerity know. Today, and even yesteryear, are composed to entertain others, not oneself. They are seldom personal or about the singer, with exceptions like the well known songs by Carly Simon and others. In any event songs today are often written by others, passed around till they find a “home.”

BubbleRings 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Funny. Take a simple pop song about apology and make an academic treatise on what a heartfelt apology looks like.

On the other end of the spectrum would be to summarize it in the shortest form with the simplest words, instead of with many and multi-syllable words. How about this (not mine, I’ve heard this in addiction recovery rooms, where apologies and amends are often discussed):

In the sentence “I’m sorry I did x, but you did y”, the word “but” means “disregard the above.”

Waterluvian an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I agree with the sentiment.

But,

Whenever I catch myself reaching for “but” I recognize it is because I need to feel heard. What I did was unacceptable. But I didn’t do it in a vacuum and I need my grievances to be recognized. My belief is that omitting the “but” phrase is an act of faith. You need to trust that the other party cares about your feelings and side of the issue, too. Accepting an apology is just as delicate an act as giving one.

“I’m sorry I hit you with the blue shell.”

“I appreciate you saying that. I know you were in last place and that must have felt awful. I don’t want that for you either.”

hmokiguess an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I find you can almost always replace “but” with “and” in situations like those and end up more heard by the other side.

I understand the urge to feel heard AND whenever we bring something that may contrast we risk the disagreement connotation that “but” carries to trigger the recipient’s defensive reaction (even if unconsciously)

Waterluvian 44 minutes ago | parent [-]

First rule of relationships: adhere to the first rule of improv!

repeekad an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

So, you don’t agree with the sentiment?.. /s

xrd 7 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Bieber was clearly trying to use the word "butt" here; it just does not come across in a vocal and was obviously transcribed incorrectly.

henrydark an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Song also proves Bieber is a dualist

"cause I'm missing more than just your body"

What else does she have that he misses?

tclancy 2 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

You're not clocking it?

andai an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Dank memes. She has dank memes on her phone.

cyanmagenta 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Justin Bieber is a utilitarian rather than Kantian. From a UChicago economics view, he is behaving rationally.

nmz an hour ago | parent [-]

If utilitarianisms only interest is the consequence of the action and whether it resulted in a positive outlook. the consequence that we care about is "your body" and if "sorry" is uttered in time, then we can receive the reward, If in the relationship you say sorry and there is an expectation of all actions being forgiven, then, this is the ultimate get out of jail free card. it is infinite because you can always use it, therefore although there is recognition of wrongdoing (at first), there is no need for a preventative measure to take place, because the recognition only looks at the consequence of reverting the status of "wronged" to "righted", not about the causes of the status "wronged" to have happened. This leads to an infinite loop of wrongful actions. What would happen if we constantly said "sorry" unnecessarily at a set interval, which we'll call the canadian way, there would always be our desired consequence and no wrongdoing to ever take place!

Without the recognition and admittance of wrongdoing, the wrong action itself will repeat forever in the relationship because its tolerable. making it an infinite get out of jail free card. If this was a system, fault tolerance would be at 100%, the error rate is probably the highest in any system that could exist, if it was code, then there wouldn't even be such a thing as bugfixes, the only recourse is "have you tried rebooting it?" method of recovery systems. Of course if the fault tolerance was not 100% then everything would be different.

wj an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That brought to mind this examination of Taylor Swift's Shake it Off:

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/taylor-swift-a-socratic-...

num42 39 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Good article! Off topic, It reminds me of this:

https://www.bensparks.co.uk/talk/the-sacred-geometry-of-chan...

stcg 41 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Fun read! I love the depth in seemingly superficial texts. Sometimes I similarly ponder claims or questions in advertisements.

shrubby an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

After spending most of today circling around maxims I appreciate the application.

Though I must state that the pic almost had me closing the tab before reading.

Here's another venting out, somewhere near Categorical Imperative https://kohlbergs7.org/epm/

KPGv2 an hour ago | parent [-]

> After spending most of today circling around Maxims

a sentence i have't heard since middle school at the local corner store with my bros hesitant about buying a lad mag

kundi 44 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Good. We can move to Bruno Mars now

m-hodges 28 minutes ago | parent [-]

An Aristotelian Critique of “The Lazy Song”

xena 23 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is AI generated.

droidjj 17 minutes ago | parent [-]

Is it? I couldn’t tell and I’m pretty sensitive to machine generated text.

Also, the author claims:

> No AI was used to generate the text for this article. The cover image and the voiceover in the audio version of the article is AI-generated. The cover image is made using Google Gemini’s latest image model while the voiceover uses OpenAI’s tts models.

odo1242 15 minutes ago | parent [-]

I would like, personally, if the image was a stock photo. It being AI feels in poor taste.

therealjason 31 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Aside from the other links in comments, any where to read more of this? I need more.

b--l 40 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I need to stop using this website.

aeve890 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>No AI was used to generate the text for this article

Damn. Please never stop writing

andai an hour ago | parent [-]

The slop art gave me the wrong impression. I did enjoy the read even thinking it was AI though.

neogodless an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I'm sorry we're getting so off topic here but...

I suppose it helps to focus on the core of someone's strength, and the core of the content they are sharing.

You could be a great engineer and a great blogger, but have no skill in making graphics. If you made the artistic choice to add AI-generated art to an excellent engineering blog post, I would forgive it -- assuming it wasn't detracting in some important way.

Overall, the human skill of editing - particularly excluding that which is not additive - does remain key though.

I will say in this case, I don't know the pop song well enough to know if the AI-generated image is super relevant, or just random.

EDIT: I'm guessing it's "Kant"[0] in the image, listening to modern music. Ah... at first I thought it was like, George Washington.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant

aeve890 30 minutes ago | parent [-]

You're absolutely right! jk. I hate this situation of "everything is slop until proven otherwise" and the author doesn't have to be good at writing and drawing just to share their thoughts. But generally you don't expect a Michelin star level meal after having a turd sandwich entrée. It's just a natural pavlovian response at this point to see slop and expect slop. Totally unfair, I agree, but really hard to get rid of it.

andrewflnr 10 minutes ago | parent [-]

It's not even unfair. It's just a heuristic that occasionally gives incorrect results. We and the author would have both been better off skipping the illustration.

The real problem is that "serious content creators" believe (as far as I can tell anyway) that they must have a cover image to make the article appealing or set the mood or whatever. They might even be right as far as the actually reader is concerned, but either way this is the real disease, and it's decades older than LLMs.

stronglikedan 33 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's not an art piece, it's a writing piece. The illustration is just there for support, not the central focus or even the topic of the article. The author is obviously a decent writer, but I don't see how they should be expected to pay an artist for a simple illustration when this article has nothing to do with said illustration. Life isn't black and white, and you'd do yourself a favor by noticing the shades of gray.

odo1242 13 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

They don’t have to pay an artist for the illustration, just use a stock photo (lots of which exist). Or leave it blank (nobody needed an illustration). Having an AI image for filler seems to be in poor taste.

leni536 21 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

I don't think the illustration adds anything, it could simply be left out. I did enjoy the writing.

aeve890 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah me too. While reading I keep thinking "ok this might be ai generated but it's not slop. Good job funny man". I owe the author an apology.

pipeline_peak 26 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Neil Hagerty (Royal Trux, Pussy Galore) Talks Justin Bieber’s Purpose

https://talkhouse.com/neil-hagerty-royal-trux-pussy-galore-t...

m-hodges 44 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I would thoroughly enjoy an entire podcast of this genre.

...

A Cartesian Critique of "Fireflies" by Owl City

...

A Humean Critique of "I Gotta Feeling" by The Black Eyed Peas

hmokiguess 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Great, now do Apologize by Timbaland from the lenses of Schopenhauer

jambalaya8 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I was going to say for "What Goes Around Comes Around" by Timberlake, or maybe "F--- it, I don't want you back" by Eamonn, myself. Schopenhauer though. Great minds.

jubilanti an hour ago | parent [-]

Yeah yeah Schopenhauer, but Nietzsche's eternal recurrance is just sitting there!

ignoramous 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> from the lenses of Schopenhauer

Ha! Analysing (deconstructing?) poems was part of primary schooling in middle eastern traditions wherein Philosophy & Cosmology were considered to be the highest form of Knowledge (informed by Avicenna's ideas on pedagogy & education): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/399623059_Islamic_E...