Music: Bug or Feature?

[Alvin]

?

[Alvin]

Much as I enjoy it, I’d classify it as a bug. It’s mostly a distraction.

[steeldancer-x]

Good glitch

[Alvin]

I’ve been pondering again whether music is more of a bug than a feature in human culture. This may sound a bit off-kilter, but hear me out.

Music, like art, doesn’t seem to serve an explicitly functional or optimizable purpose in the way other systems in life do. It’s not something we can streamline or reduce down to a core efficiency. Instead, it thrives on detours, errors, and those strange little tangents that pop up during the creative process.

In fact, some of the most fascinating and evocative music comes from happy accidents, unexpected moments where the 'rules' break down, and something new emerges. In these moments, the creator isn’t fully in control; instead, the music seems to take on a life of its own, pushing the boundaries of what we thought we wanted to create. Think of how so many iconic sounds or movements in music history initially sounded ‘wrong.’

We wouldn't want to ‘fix’ this bug either, because music, in its essence, operates best when it's a little unpredictable, when it isn’t fully optimized.

[NTFMTS]

I feel like you need to qualify what you mean by bug more. Music is transformative and therapuetic, and deeply tied to language and communication. The oldest civilizations, on record at least, had music. The sum of its whole has a greater impact on many people.