I think a controversial or complicated question about appreciation is should the narrative around it matter. I watch old movies, partially because I prefer them, but partially because I think real depth of emotion and sustainable meaning and happiness is about having a rich narrative about the world you habit. I watch a movie and connect it to the history I read about what is happening at the time. What was happening in hollywood, who the actors are.

There can be important qualifications to this -> everyone's narrative is different. I think the gotcha around "people can't tell the difference between expensive and cheap wine" is double-sided. If you have the money, telling your self a story about wine that makes you appreciate it more probably enhances your life. If you don't have money - the opposite narrative is also worthwhile.

So, I'm not necessarily saying there aren't benefits to this, and this is the direction the world is going with like instagram reels and what not. But trying to boil the world down to which contextless dopamine trigger is most optimal. I'm not sure I think that leads to a happy life.

And in reverse - why not disclose how it's written? People are different, there are folks whose experience would be enhanced knowing it was written by AI.

I've spoken to a guy on reddit whos working on an AI written The Winds of Winter/Dream of Spring. He's shown me a few chapters and it genuinely feels like GRRM wrote it.

This highlights the true problem with society. We're only concerned with immediate impact and superficial enjoyability. But the true scope of enjoyability goes beyond this: it should also be about how the story eventually effects a person. Anne Frank's diary for instance: it's a gripping story but also it informs us about the reality of an actual person.

But even in fiction this is true: eventually one learns about the author and their life and this contributes a little also to the enjoyment of a work. But this isn't measured in these studies, which ignore everything that's important to being human.

An AI photograph similary can be enjoyed more than a real one based on its visual appeal, but the real one has the advantage of informing us about the experience of the photographer.

Modern algorithms and science always downplay the human sharing aspect and focus on a single dimension, to the detriment of us all.