"}\n\nIf they did one of those Edge-dot-org questions of \u2018what is a scientific concept you think everyone should learn\u2019 but for aesthetics I would say ‘romantic irony.\u2019 Only there\u2019s never been a really good direct description of the concept \u2013 like, it\u2019s more or less the cognitive-affective state of being simultaneously inside and outside of a worldview, or inhabiting a worldview while at the same time sensing its contingency and specificity within the space of worldviews, but it\u2019s hard to get more clear than that without constructing a specific theory of romantic irony. The other part that\u2019s tricky is that while most everyone intensely literary has had rich experiences of romantic irony in art, the case that any one specific literary work creates romantic irony rather than (purely) negative or mocking irony is more or less impossible to make on other than 'I know it when I see it\u2019 grounds. I think 'romantic irony\u2019 names one of the most subtle and profound capacities that set apart a human subject from most animals and AIs categorically, so I would love to have a solidly reliable, widely accessible reference point for demonstration \u2013 like \u201cromantic irony\u2019 is the faculty that reading Eugene Onegin calls on,\u2019 but more accessible.\n\n