God 'n robots.

[Abominable Intelligence]

The only rhetoric here are pictures of armoured vehicles when I specifically referred to the Mona Lisa. Now you can pretend that you misunderstood, but it's clear that you're just trying to take the piss now that you've cottoned on that you got nothin'.

I trust that your participation in this thread is at an end, failing your ability to contribute further meaningful discussion. I remain open to being surprised however, so I'll repeat my question, with a healthy dose of specific clarity to compensate for your lack of comprehension.

Ready? Right. Here goes. I wish you luck.

Why is the Mona Lisa kept climate controlled and behind bulletproof glass, if, according to you, it has no qualities that distinguish it from other artworks?

Here, I drawded a Mona Lisa. Just for you, Hermit.



Its artistic sophistication is a close match for your staggering intellectual sophistication, so I think you should have no trouble.

Want to buy it from me for $1M? USD, hard currency. No returns.

That's a fockin bargain that is. You will agree that it is precisely unique (as is Da Vinci's version), and that it is qualitatively a peer of Da Vinci's work (as it follows from your earlier claim.)

You can make a cool $799M profit. Howzabout it?

Oh, of course, you might say that you don't have access to climate control (or bullet proof glass), to that I humbly suggest you print it out and stick it in your ear. The vacuum inside your thick skull (which in turn makes Chobham armour look like watered down knob cheese) is more than enough.

[Ozymandias]

To paraphrase AI's point, this is a problem of setting a scale. Physics nerd that I am, I feel compelled to point out that this is a problem (or feature) of many physics models. Usually one needs to put in a mass (or distance or similar) into your theory in order to 'set a scale'. Then other things are measured relative to that.

In God's case, if he is omnipotent and "all good" then his "goodness value" is infinity and there is nothing to "set the scale" of what good is to humanity. He has to make something that is imperfect (with goodness value less than infinity) in order to do that.

Obviously the religious viewpoint is that the fall sets that scale. Our disobedience towards God creates a finite "goodness value" and all things can be compared to that. Of course, this leads to the objection of where did that scale come from - which is a rephrasing of the old problem of where does evil come from. If God created everything he at least created the possibility of evil.

Interestingly, in fundamental physics, a theory that has no mass (or distance) scale is called a conformal theory. There is no sense of distance in the original implementation of the theory, and one would naively expect that there can then be no dynamics. Actually, this isn't true. There exists a mechanism called dimensional transmutation, where quantum fluctuations create a scale out of nothing! It seems like magic, but actually these are real working theories. In fact, if you set the quark masses to zero then Quantum Chromodynamics is conformal - it has no distance scale in it. But dimensional transmutation still causes quark confinement, bound states form and we have non-trivial dynamics after all.

So, I suspect that the no-goodness-scale problem may just be a problem of perspective.

[Jobar]

[quote=""Abominable Intelligence""]Haha. I just thought of something else that tickles me. Is God capable of blaspheming, being omnipotent?[/quote]


(View video on YouTube)

Val, you'll really like this one.

[Abominable Intelligence]

Blblblblblblblblblblbl!

[Hermit]

[quote=""Abominable Intelligence""]Why is the Mona Lisa kept climate controlled and behind bulletproof glass[/quote]
I thought you might have been able to work that one out for yourself by now, but since the penny still hasn't dropped" For the same reason Frankie and Donnie are kept behind bulletproof glass. People think the are precious. They might be right, but then again they might not. With Donnie I think they are wrong, so bulletproof glass is proof of nothing. Same with insurance. It just means people are prepared to pay hundreds of millions for linseed oil on canvas. Someone also paid $300 million for this:



and someone else paid €140 million for that:



How about $111 million for this?



Neither Bullet proof nor money are measures of brilliant art. There'd be fewer artists starving in their studios if they were.

[Abominable Intelligence]

You really really must be a german. So your wondrous revelation is that it's behind bullet proof glass to protect it?

Really? That's your answer?



Well shit... I'm fucking blown away by this most excellent tuition.

Let's play a substitution game then.

Why is the Mona Lisa being protected if, according to you, it has no qualitative merits when compared with other works? Why are people prepared to pay hunnerds of millions of dollars for Da Vinci's Mona Lisa but not my squiggle? They're qualitatively equal after all.

Idiot.

[Hermit]

[quote=""Abominable Intelligence""]Why is the Mona Lisa being protected if, according to you, it has no qualitative merits when compared with other works?[/quote]
Repeating*:
[quote=""Hermit""]People think the are precious. They might be right, but then again they might not. With Donnie I think they are wrong, so bulletproof glass is proof of nothing. Same with insurance.[/quote]

[quote=""Abominable Intelligence""]Why are people prepared to pay hunnerds of millions of dollars for Da Vinci's Mona Lisa but not my squiggle?[/quote]Maybe they just don't appreciate your brilliance as an artist. Your time might come after you've kicked the bucket. Alternatively, you could do a Warhol to hurry recognition along.

* Don't worry. I'm quite used to doing this for you now.

[ruby sparks]

Two things, val m'pal.

First, the big one, about god. It's a daft question, imho. He probably doesn't exist, therefore speculative questions about him are arguably pointless. Sorry.

Second, the Mona Lisa. A secondary issue as regards your main question, I know, but the only one that I can try to offer an answer to.

There are many possible reasons why it is famous and valuable. Chief candidate among these is the reputation of the artist. If we had a genuine Leonardo da Vinci turd, or wankstain, it would probably sell for quite a lot, even if the dna could not be extracted intact.

Second, infamy (and celebrity by association). It was stolen (as a prank, it was thought, by the artist Pablo Picasso) in 1911 and there was a media fuss about that (and the police questioning of Picasso and his alleged accomplice Guillaume Apollinaire as suspects which followed, even though it turned out they were not the thieves). But, at that time, before the theft, it was so relatively unappreciated that its disappearance was not noticed by the The Louvre staff. Only 28 hours later did a visitor point it out. Furthermore, it had previously languished, unapplauded, between 1507 (when painted) and the 1860's.

Sidenote: 3 days after the robbery court case (thief jailed) WW1 broke out, so the story disappeared from the newspapers.

Third (and arguably quite a way behind), it was artistically quite novel for its time, because of the three-quarter pose, new paint application technique (arguably unsuccessful and resulting in the actual colours being dull, even though reproduction images are often enhanced to compensate for this), imaginary background landscape, smile, etc.

So, nowadays, it's mainly valuable because of what someone would pay to have it. Think Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian or both at the same time.

That's not to say it's a bad painting. Personally, I don't see anything compelling about it, though I like the smile, which seems to me to say to the male viewer, 'no matter how fab you think you are, you can't have babies, can you?'. But this supposed annihilating riposte to the Male Gaze is just my personal interpretation and might justifiably be a topic to be raised in therapy.

The frisson of not knowing who the subject was has also added some intrigue, but only after it became really famous.

It was smaller than I thought it was going to be before I saw it in the gallery. It's 77 cm × 53 cm (30 in × 21 in). To me, the scrum of gaping visitors was more fascinating to watch than the painting itself. My guess would be that a majority of them (they were mostly Japanese tourists on the day I was there) were thinking 'I don't get it' but disinclined to say it out loud.

ps I thought your effort was an interesting and brave attempt at a post-Derridaean deconstruction of the underlying themes in the painting and because of that I'll give you £2.50 for it.

[ruby sparks]

Or, God wouldn't need a comparative value scale, because he's god. Don't try to understand, puny hooman.

As for the robots, yes if they could all produce the same stuff, it probably wouldn't be seen as valuable art. See also: fart gas.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

You're all wrong. The reason it's valued is because of science. Now go back to sleep! If I have to come back up here someone's getting a beating.