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A comment on Heretical Things Statistics Tell Us About Fiction. Parent comment

Re:Heretical Things Statistics Tell Us About Fiction by whatshisface on Sunday July 30, 2017 @12:57PM (#14886792)
I've always wanted to conduct an experiment where we put some higshcoolers who wanted to major in art history in isolation (except for sterilized food and some math textbooks slipped under the door) and had them reconstruct the periods and choose important artists from scratch.

How much of the canon would turn out the same?

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Re:Heretical Things Statistics Tell Us About Fiction by gwern on Sunday July 30, 2017 @02:12PM (#14887103)
You'll be amused to know that similar experiments have been run for music:

2006: "Experimental Study of Inequality and Unpredictability in an Artificial Cultural Market" http://www.princeton.edu/~mjs3/salganik_dodds_watts06_full.p...

Salganik & Watts 2009 "Web-Based Experiments for the Study of Collective Social Dynamics in Cultural Markets" http://www.princeton.edu/~mjs3/salganik_watts09.pdf

2008: "Leading the Herd Astray: An Experimental Study of Self-fulfilling Prophecies in an Artificial Cultural Market" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3785310/

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Re:Heretical Things Statistics Tell Us About Fiction by bbctol on Sunday July 30, 2017 @01:22PM (#14886897)
Similar to the plot of "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Menard,_Author_of_the_Q...

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Re:Heretical Things Statistics Tell Us About Fiction by ivanbakel on Sunday July 30, 2017 @09:03PM (#14888838)
I wouldn't agree. Menard is about authorship of a rewritten identical work - the GP was talking about people selecting works to potentially produce a different canon, and there's no question of an author.
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Re:Heretical Things Statistics Tell Us About Fiction by bbctol on Monday July 31, 2017 @09:34AM (#14891775)
Right... but it's similar.
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Re:Heretical Things Statistics Tell Us About Fiction by kartan on Sunday July 30, 2017 @01:38PM (#14886971)
At "How the Mona Lisa became so overrated" from Vox, you can see a unique circusntance that made the picture legendary beyond its initial merit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2wy7Fp2fqw

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Re:Heretical Things Statistics Tell Us About Fiction by cafard on Monday July 31, 2017 @11:00AM (#14892598)
Well maybe, but see http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2398/2398-h/2398-h.htm#leonar... from 1873.
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Re:Heretical Things Statistics Tell Us About Fiction by bradleyjg on Sunday July 30, 2017 @01:47PM (#14887001)
Reminds me a little of the thousander maths in Stephenson's Anathem.
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Re:Heretical Things Statistics Tell Us About Fiction by fredley on Sunday July 30, 2017 @05:05PM (#14887817)
Reminds me of the Auditors in Pratchett's Thief of Time.
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