* Your friend seems to be discussing the Pythagorean pure interval tuning system where, indeed, going up is different from going down --
* In my own empirical work, I've found that pure intervals are not preferred compared to slightly dissonant intervals (in 3 tone sawtooth chords). You can try it yourself -- perfect consonance sounds much worse! Understanding this conflict with mathematical intervals is part of trying to "solve" harmony
* I agree we should remain disinterested in our models, such that we are driven to improve them and not espouse them as reality.
* Yet, I think it is a mistake if we aren't inspired by simple models -- or at least take their hypotheses seriously enough to test empirically
* For instance, is cognitive dissonance involving actual dissonance of some kind? The brain is incredibly rhythmic and even has octaves in the coupling between brainwave bands. It would seem to be natural to test these theories that Plato laid out thousands of years ago -- for instance, that musical rhythm entrains neural rhythms through resonance effects. Maybe that sounds silly, but I'd argue that we are foolish to avoid gathering empirical evidence for these ideas!
* Similarly, harmony had a major effect on astronomy. It actually still does, at the level of the cosmic microwave background radiation, where the presence of perfect harmonic peaks in the signal were the conclusive proof that the universe is "flat"
* Using the concept of sympathetic resonance has been extremely generative in psychology (see Adam Smith's first book) as has harmony in economics. Expecting what is pervasive in physics to apply to these domains doesn't mean it should apply in exactly the same manner -- just that one should expect analogous effects -- at least to the extent that one is looking for explanatory theories to test! We are so far from understanding these domains that, if we don't at least consider these natural and ancient theories (because they seem silly), we are doing ourselves a disservice. Let us be inspired by the past and test, test, test!
* Your friend seems to be discussing the Pythagorean pure interval tuning system where, indeed, going up is different from going down --
* In my own empirical work, I've found that pure intervals are not preferred compared to slightly dissonant intervals (in 3 tone sawtooth chords). You can try it yourself -- perfect consonance sounds much worse! Understanding this conflict with mathematical intervals is part of trying to "solve" harmony
* I agree we should remain disinterested in our models, such that we are driven to improve them and not espouse them as reality.
* Yet, I think it is a mistake if we aren't inspired by simple models -- or at least take their hypotheses seriously enough to test empirically
* For instance, is cognitive dissonance involving actual dissonance of some kind? The brain is incredibly rhythmic and even has octaves in the coupling between brainwave bands. It would seem to be natural to test these theories that Plato laid out thousands of years ago -- for instance, that musical rhythm entrains neural rhythms through resonance effects. Maybe that sounds silly, but I'd argue that we are foolish to avoid gathering empirical evidence for these ideas!
* Similarly, harmony had a major effect on astronomy. It actually still does, at the level of the cosmic microwave background radiation, where the presence of perfect harmonic peaks in the signal were the conclusive proof that the universe is "flat"
* Using the concept of sympathetic resonance has been extremely generative in psychology (see Adam Smith's first book) as has harmony in economics. Expecting what is pervasive in physics to apply to these domains doesn't mean it should apply in exactly the same manner -- just that one should expect analogous effects -- at least to the extent that one is looking for explanatory theories to test! We are so far from understanding these domains that, if we don't at least consider these natural and ancient theories (because they seem silly), we are doing ourselves a disservice. Let us be inspired by the past and test, test, test!