Is pop music inherently stupid?

[aciddose]

This does not mean one cannot enjoy Nicki Minaj even with an IQ of 130. Okay, I might be wrong here

Nothing a lot of alcohol or other substances couldn't help with.

[jancivil]

[incubus]

Arguing IQ test here/this thread is pretty funny. Nobody is "smarter than others" who argues constantly. Sure, that means I'm included but the fools who think they are somehow smarter are.......fools.

One thing that should be pointed out is the traditional idea of IQ is usually a result of problem solving. There are plenty of people that can design aircraft that are a disaster in relationships/cash/etc. Again, it's all about "boxes" and side taking. "So and so went to Harvard, they are smart" (even though they can't balance a checkbook, keep their hands off minors, take drugs) It's not universal black/white.

IQ rarely relates to common sense in the study department.

Anyways, I'm the man in the box, buried in my shit.

[jancivil]

Is there a study that proves that fans of Lil Wayne are any less intelligent than fans of Beethoven?
Seriously.

Actually, yes. (Besides the surprising fact that you never actually prove anything with any empirical study but find evidence that supports your hypothesis):
Rentfrow, Peter J.; Gosling, Samuel D. (2003). The do re mi's of everyday life: The structure and personality correlates of music preferences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 84(6), 1236-1256

They employed a tested model that features four broad categories of music-preference. One category is "Upbeat & Conventional" which includes such genres as Pop and Country. A second category is "Reflective & Complex", i.e. Jazz and Classical. I quote some relevant results:

"The external correlates of the Upbeat and Conventional dimen-
sion reveal positive correlations with Extraversion, Agreeableness,
Conscientiousness, conservatism, self-perceived physical attrac-
tiveness, and athleticism and negative correlations with Openness
to New Experiences, social dominance orientation, liberalism, and
verbal ability. " [p. 1249]

"[...] the Reflective and
Complex dimension was positively related to Openness to New
Experiences, self-perceived intelligence, verbal (but not analytic)
ability, and political liberalism and negatively related to social
dominance orientation and athleticism. These correlations, along
with item-level analyses of the BFI, suggest that individuals who
enjoy listening to reflective and complex music tend to be inven-
tive, have active imaginations, value aesthetic experiences, con-
sider themselves to be intelligent, tolerant of others, and reject
conservative ideals." [p. 1248]

I think it's quite interesting (and fun) to compare verbal cognitive ability, which is highly related to broader definitions of intelligence, of the "Complex" group (r= .18) with the respective scores of the "Conventional" group (t= -.18); same for Openness (r=.44 vs. r=-.14).
To put it bluntly, if you are dim-witted, you probably prefer Pop or if you do enjoy Country you are more likely a redneck Complex subjects consider themselves to be more intelligent. Apparently, these subjects are correct. There is some convincing evidence

So is there supposed to be no overlap, like the highly intelligent ones do not perceive themselves as physically attractive and can't be jocks? This is not very good in my estimation. "Complex subjects consider themselves to be more intelligent" - than whom, exactly? There are some real dullards that consider themselves more intelligent than people who demonstrate significantly higher intelligence (given the 'verbal cognitive' skill as a metric). Ever hear of the Dunning-Kruger Effect? The overconfident one that thinks they did better on the test than people that actually did do well has a flip side, the person that thinks they are not as competitive than they might be. That struck me in both stereotypes presented there, the type's self-assessment. (The comparison with others tends to be more accurate the more one is socialized, I think.) There are individuals that are not good with language (perhaps the mechanical reasoning is superior) that listen to classical music. There are brilliant 'rednecks'.

That said, I'm inclined to agree with the open/liberal/not positively impressed by social dominance vs the pro-authoritarian mentality part of it. (There are a couple of studies on this, the fearful reactionary has been shown to have a larger amygdala.) But finding 'agreeableness' and 'conscientiousness' in the former stereotype is odd, I think this is a little too reductive. "conscientious" I supposed is taken to represent punctuality and sticking to routine. People that do develop mastery have been conscientious almost by definition, though.

[Hank the Knife]

"Well, puzzling is a visuospatial task that requires at least your frontal and parietal lobes to be intact, because you need to plan how to lay down pieces in a meaningful way."
A meaningful way? It can't see what is so meaningful about ordinary puzzling. On the contrary.
For instance: a lot of people like to play chess, it's like an unsolved puzzle, but they have no clue what the concept of chess may be. Otherwise they'd have found the best variation in chess already, not?
Don't tell me chess doesn't come down to noughts and crosses. Because logically chess does confirm to the concept of noughts and crosses. Whether one likes it or not. Still the endeavourments of people who play chess did not prove to be meaningful for society in any way yet. Go figure.

[aciddose]

Playing a game like chess requires analysis of the potential outcomes for every possible move, then selection of a move based upon an assessment of probabilities.

There are many parts to this. Optimization problems, analysis...

Think about the algorithms and systems that have been designed to solve chess.

Have you ever used anything resulting from modern machine learning? You almost certainly have even if you haven't recognized it.

That is all in some part thanks to chess and the skills required to win at it.

[klavierr]

This entire topic reads like a bunch of 15 year olds who just discovered indie music and online iq tests. Arguing about it is interesting but you go in circles for forever, and it starts to devolve into an intelligence pissing contest over human biology and neuroscience.

Don't get me wrong, this thread is pretty civil. But I'm kind of disappointed that it exists at all. That there are many people in this thread who are trying to talk about music, an art form, as if it is an objective thing that is rated on a scale of "intricate = good"... all it is is opinions. You can't dress up opinions as facts.

[jancivil]

I pretty much agree. Above I said that stupid can be brilliant (for instance I think the moronic beat of My Sharona is kind of genius) and smart isn't always what it cracks itself up to be (in some music). So all of these definitions such as in that paper present unnecessary dichotomy, and stereotypes. Stereotypes tend to contain a germ of truth, but the notion of a mimsy nerd intelligentsia = classical music appreciation is not necessarily going to hold. I've known some folks that aren't all that bright in it, no doubt. I had a brilliant friend at school who was hot, he knew it, and he was a star athlete in two sports, additionally.

[nineofkings]

This entire topic reads like a bunch of 15 year olds who just discovered indie music and online iq tests.

"Music expresses that which cannot be put into words... " but sometimes you just need to put it into words.

[Hank the Knife]

@jancivil
So you call one the use of only one chord in a song moronic?

[jancivil]

No, and I said exactly nothing about chords at all. And I really like My Sharona. Why would you read in some crap like this into my remarks? You seem to prefer to misread and miss people's points entirely.

[Hank the Knife]

Well, therefore I asķed a question: why you call Sharona moronic? Basically its -repeating- riff is based on one chord. Stronger: My Sharona is an essential example of a one chord riff: the whole riff is strongly depending on a G5 chord. So I was curious

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fn36l_z3WY

[Numanoid]

Pop music is as stupid or genius as this thread, it is all in the eye of the beholder, and in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king

[Numanoid]

Pop music is about catching the imagination of the average punter at a given point in time.

The Knack managed that with My Sharona

Carl Douglas managed that with Kung Fu Fighting

[Hank the Knife]

Oh KFF.. my favourite
The bass.. it's the bass lol

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jhUkGIsKvn0