{"id":988,"date":"2022-08-26T23:30:02","date_gmt":"2022-08-27T03:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/?p=988"},"modified":"2023-05-06T16:45:07","modified_gmt":"2023-05-06T20:45:07","slug":"the-joshua-bell-experiment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/?p=988","title":{"rendered":"The Joshua Bell Experiment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In 2007, classical violinist Joshua Bell went incognito to play an impromptu concert in L\u2019Enfant Plaza just outside a Washington Metro station.<\/p>\n<p><center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hnOPu0_YWhw\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Much has been made of the fact that \u2018no one stopped to listen to him play\u2019 and \u2018only a handful\u2019 even so much as paused to regard his renditions of pieces by Bach, Massenet, Schubert and others.\u00a0 Wasn\u2019t this the same world-renowned classical music composed by the greatest of classical composers?\u00a0 Wasn\u2019t this violin one of the most expensive musical instruments ever made? Wasn\u2019t the performer one of the world\u2019s greatest musicians who people line up to hear, often paying hundreds of dollars for the privilege?\u00a0 How could the public response be so cold and indifferent?<\/p>\n<p>Before digging into those questions, let\u2019s take a moment to clear up a few misconceptions identified by Gene Weingarten, the Washington Post reporter who setup this \u2018experiment\u2019 and who garnered a Pulitzer Prize for his efforts.\u00a0 First, the \u2018popular\u2019 account that many people have heard is likely apocryphal as Gene makes clear in his article <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/style\/wp\/2014\/10\/14\/gene-weingarten-setting-the-record-straight-on-the-joshua-bell-experiment\/\">Gene Weingarten: Setting the record straight on the Joshua Bell experiment<\/a><\/em>. \u00a0Several people did stop and listen.\u00a0 Second, and more important, the \u2018stunt\u2019, as Gene has called it, has exacted a toll on Joshua Bell in a way that neither of them anticipated.\u00a0 Being ignored was disconcerting (no pun intended) for the classical violinist, so much so that <a href=\"https:\/\/live.washingtonpost.com\/chatological-humor-20140930.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_2\">Weingarten describes Bell as being nervous prior to a repeat engagement<\/a>.\u00a0 Happily, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcwashington.com\/news\/local\/famed-violinist-plays-do-over-at-dc-train-station\/60791\/\">Bell\u2019s second go in 2014<\/a>, which was properly billed and announced, went far better.<\/p>\n<p>Nonetheless, the essential aspect of the story was correct \u2013 a thing (musical performance by Bell) is highly sought after in one context and highly ignored in another.\u00a0 This post is not intended to heap any additional discomfort on Bell nor is it to meant to criticize society as a whole and lament as to what is wrong.\u00a0 It is merely meant to look at ways of explaining that contextual difference.<\/p>\n<p>YouTuber Conor Neill offered an Aristotelian explanation for the contextual difference.<\/p>\n<p><center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/O2dEuMFR8kw\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/center><\/p>\n<p>While I am a big fan of Aristotle and I don\u2019t discount the psychology (the failure to connect with the pathos and ethos of the \u2018audience\u2019) that Neill explores, I think that he misses the point.\u00a0 And, while I am religious, I think all the sermons delivered by priests, preachers, and pundits on this experiment also miss the point.\u00a0 As do any other analyses that try to understand why and draw conclusions.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t important to determine whether one person passed by because he was late for work, while another failed to linger because, as a Metro passenger, he connects more with Rock music, and that a third only would have listened had he known that the musician was famous.\u00a0 These particulars are just that \u2013 particular reasons that each person had.<\/p>\n<p>Rather, the real lesson here is one of economics.\u00a0 Regardless of why these 1097 people basically ignored Bell\u2019s performance in L\u2019Enfant plaza they did ignore it.\u00a0 Clearly the performance did not have value to them.\u00a0 Much like those famous cautionary tales about gold being useless to a man dying of thirst in the desert the only lesson here is that value is in the eye of the beholder \u2013 that there is no true and objective worth that any of us can put on anything.\u00a0 It is this subjectivity that makes it possible for us to deal with each other in the economic sphere and come away after this interaction better off than when we started.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2007, classical violinist Joshua Bell went incognito to play an impromptu concert in L\u2019Enfant Plaza just outside a Washington Metro station. Much has been made of the fact that&#8230; <a class=\"read-more-button\" href=\"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/?p=988\">Read more &gt;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=988"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1169,"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988\/revisions\/1169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}