Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

...art students have more sex than other majors, and it is a notoriously unrenumerative career, which starving artists purportedly put up with because they love their craft more than money. I suppose really good & dedicated artists are not that leisurely. Don’t have much to say about non-domineering & well traveled.

I live with a bunch artists. Very true. Zero lack of interest in commitment is some times substituted for promiscuity, which are related, but the the non-materialism is spot on. I suppose one could say artists are alternatively materialistic, in that they fetishize commodities like, say, some vintage synthesizer or a dusty old book on an obscure topic, but we all know what is meant by "non-materialistic." These people are alienated by popular culture, don't own televisions and would rather live without central heating to save some scratch.

As for traveling, not all can afford it, as their time preference some times prevents them from saving just enough to go road tripping...on acid (lol), but generally speaking yes I've noticed this.

Expand full comment
Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

This relates to a theory I've had that for some reason artistic types tend to be high in Neuroticism (or vice versa). Bryan Caplan has pointed out that neurotic people tend to be left-wing and anti-market and I've noticed that stereotypes about artists include that they're emotional, impulsive, and have a lot of mood swings (i.e. neurotic).

Some other evidence of this comes from the SF field, which is famous for having a strong libertarian tendency, rather than the leftism of most of the other arts. Most of the writers from the Golden Age were fairly emotionally stable people, and tended to write stories that glorified science and reason and were often distrustful of power. However, in the 60s a movement called the New Wave emerged when a large amount of "mainstream" and "experimental" artists emerged into the SF. These authors were much less emotionally stable and tended to be of the far left. The stable, libertarianish community of authors have since reasserted themselves in the field.

So does being neurotic make you more forager-like, or more artistic?

Expand full comment
13 more comments...

No posts