Maybe he only listen to anime soundtracks and was embarrassed to tell you

Or Kpop

This is me. I can't understand why people want to listen to music in their cars when quiet is so much more pleasurable. Though, I also can't understand why people want to listen to music at all. It has no emotional response for me. I'm so glad to know I'm not the only one since it seems like everyone else likes music for some reason.

I feel sorry that you don't gain the joy and pleasure that I get from music, but on the other hand I'm guessing you also don't suffer from the utter distaste and even hatred of boring, repetitious pop music that you get exposed to when out in public.

It has its perks :)

I'd argue enjoying the absence of music doesn't qualify as musical anhedonia. "Enjoyment" is a valent measure so "negative enjoyment" is still enjoyment, but negatively impacted. If the absence of music is pleasurable, then you are perceiving and responding to the sound. Otherwise you could argue there exists "silence anhedonia", "cake anhedonia", or that everyone has passive "breathing anhedonia".

I'd need to read through the article, but the Wikipedia link sounds they are conflating "enjoying" and "responding to". Instead, I'm assuming musical anhedonia is referring more to "apathy of sound".

I disagree. For an example I would say that roadworks or traffic or other people’s conversations do not really elicit an emotional response however many people would likely prefer quiet.

I think it is unreasonable to assume that if someone were to say “well I prefer quiet, I guess,” they mean that they have some great emotional response to being in the quiet making them love it. It would be more reasonable to assume that they are basically indifferent and would rather not have the distraction/noise.

> It would be more reasonable to assume that they are basically indifferent and would rather not have the distraction/noise.

We are actually agreeing; however I'm saying that this is a preference. Wikipedia refers to anhedonia as an inability to have pleasure about something. However, valence [1] as a measurement identifies affect dimensions as a polar system - (to quote Wikipedia) "Stress is negative valence and opposite of this is pleasure or happiness." My claim is that "pleasure" can be positive or negative - in that music would cause happiness or stress. Adding genre only furthers my statement that you could claim someone is "R&B anhedonia", "death metal anhedonia", or "classical anhedonia" if anhedonia only refers to positive affects. I, however, am saying anhedonia should be for the positive and negative degrees of an affect.

"No sound" is still sound - its the difference between null and zero. My original post says I'd say anhedonia is more linked to "null", while preferring no sound is more linked to "zero". Holding a positive or negative preference is a measurable attribute and therefore not what I would claim anhedonia; however, being purely apathetic (void) of preference would.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valence_(psychology)

I disagree. I don’t enjoy or listen to music, but it’s still sound. And I like many people I dislike loud sounds, a subset of which is loud music.

I may not fall into this group. But, I suspect these people still have emotional responses to sounds loud enough to be causing dammage.

So, if I neither like, nor dislike music, but simply don't care whether it exists or not, then that is anhedonia?

Medically diagnosed apathy was the term I was thinking of while driving

Musical apathy? This really only applies to music. I derive great pleasure from other artistic works, just not anything auditory. On a perhaps related note, I can recall almost 100% of what I read, but I can recall only about 10% of what I hear, no matter how closely I am paying attention. Someone can tell me something, but it won't make sense. But if I read the exact same words I will have complete comprehension and recall.

I enjoy music but I realizes that the ROI of listening to music is on uplifting my mood. I rather listen to a podcast or NPR now cause I get something to ponder on or form an opinion about on my commute. I rather listen to music socially with people in the car though.

From the field of neuroscience, we know that music affects the brain like a drug of sorts. I believe Steven Pinker said in a book of his that music releases a "cocktail of neurotransmitters."

That's understandable, but he specifically asked what kind of music his coworker likes. If you asked someone what their favorite movie is and they brought up a completely different activity they enjoy to pass the time, like programming, you'd find their response more than odd, no?

My reply to what music do I like is usually... "it depends on my mood". I like many genres so I start listing some of them or ask the other person what they like and steer the conversation in music we have in common.

Listening to silence is different from listening to music? They're both categories of "things you'd want to hear."

If you asked someone what their favorite kind of pizza is and they responded with "chocolate milkshake", you wouldn't be at a loss for words? They're both categories of food.

I think you're missing the point. To me music isn't qualitatively different to any other sound sequence, or lack of sound. "Silence" is something you can listen to, just as much as "running water", "conversational din", or "Beethoven's 5th". Yet because it is structured in the form of certain integer ratio harmonics, 95% of the population treats it as something categorically different. Objectively, that is what's weird here.

If you abstract enough, everything is just the movements of particles; and yet, you can distinguish and categorize certain kinds of such movements, and music is no exception. It's no weirder than any of the categorizations you no doubt assume every day.

If for you, there's no value in that categorization, that's fine, of course.

Correct! Speech, for example, is a category of sound that we've ascribed meaning to by learned convention. It's a purposeful categorical construction. The sounds of the jungle is another -- it's probably good to know it's a tiger when you hear a tiger :)

I say music is "weird" because it doesn't fit into either of these categories of useful natural or constructed forms. People didn't first make music in order to feel good, but because that music made them feel good. They already had an instinctual response. It's more like those odd visual illusions that are due to the freaky things our brains do to correct for visual blind spots in our eyes: a species-specific thing largely without intrinsic survival value. Audio hallucinatory masterbation, essentially.

(Some things probably are evolutionarily driven. Percussion sounds a lot like a moving herd of animals being hunted. Makes sense this would dump adrenaline into your system to make you run faster and harder. But being moved to tears by a violin concerto or lost in ecstasy at a rock concert is categorically something else.)

Anyway, to the point which started this sub-thread if someone asked me "what music do you like?" I'd interpret that question as "what kinds of things do you like to listen to?" since in my experience that's what most people mean by the question. And indeed, I have noise cancelling headphones I don't even bother plugging into my computer because "silence" is what I prefer to listen to when working, thinking, etc. If you get shocked by the answer.. that's the fault of you and your own assumptions. You asked; I answered: I prefer to NOT listen to music, thank you very much.

And turn the radio down, while you're at it.

It's more like saying, "What kind of pizza do is your favorite?" and they respond, "No pizza." which is perhaps not quite the same as saying "I don't like pizza at all."

Maybe he meant smooth jazz, classical, adult contemporary, downtempo type stuff that is quiet music but isn't any genre. People who aren't big into music don't learn all the genre names.

It's possible for someone to enjoy music at times, but not have an instant recollection of the music they like when prompted. A lot of my memory is kind of path dependent - it takes other things to prompt it, not just a simple query.

I know I have listened to a lot of enjoyable music and yet I go for long periods of time not seeking it, not thinking about it, and probably unable to list off things I used to listen to.

For instance, years ago, I was buying any CD with some sort of concerto grosso. These days I am listening to mostly streaming electronic music from the early 2000s. For a while I was listening to FM radio, but not enjoying it much.

I also at times have had a visual imagination connected to music and at other times not.

Anyway, anhedonia/apathy may not be total or one-dimensional, is my point.

It reminds me about John Cage's 4'33''

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3

- https://youtu.be/JTEFKFiXSx4

An anecdote: when my semiotics professor talked about this composition for the first time, I was recording the lecture, and when colleagues asked for a copy, I sent them only the pauses between the sentences. When art meets sarcasm, it spreads really fast.

I hate when people ask me that! Haha! I like some music, sure, but by and large it doesn't come into my life. I don't go to concerts (don't see the point and when I have, have not enjoyed them anywhere near as much as others who came with me), I don't have spotify, I couldn't tell you the last time I listened to an album, in the car I prefer talk radio to be on.

I wouldn't say I'm fully unable to appreciate music. But... I dunno, I can get by without.

I'm in between. I do get enjoyment from music, but don't listen to it except when driving, which I didn't do for the six years before last week. I don't actively seek it out or wear headphones for walking/working/exercising.

I think his response was low effort as much as the question. Might have been expecting a different conversation and defaulted to the lowest common denominator.