Where do you think beauty comes from? In non-living, natural things it just exists. By chance alone and probably very slowly, the earth forms things we see as beautiful: gemstones, waterfalls, mountains, canyons, etc. Living things though, do not become beautiful by chance. They always have a "reason" for it, whether they're aware of it or not. Beauty exists in living beings as a survival tactic, not for its own sake or by chance. An angler fish's light exists to draw prey to it, a rafflesia's smell is disgusting to us, but is attractive to insects, and flowers are colorful because that makes them more noticeable to bees. In animal reproduction, beauty is like a facade. It exists because it successfully tricks and ensnares. Non-living things which humans make, like painted ladies, are different. The painted lady has no desires and they have nothing to gain from being beautiful. The painted lady is beautiful because their creator wanted them to be, not to get resources or protection. There's no underlying, self-serving manipulation to mare their beauty, so their beauty is more pure than a living being's.
>>33511 I think that's called "sublimation", when something goes beyond the mere natural reasons and reaches value for itself. So yeah, 2D>3D.
>>33513 Do you think we'll be able to make 3-d painted ladies?
For non-living things such as scenery, it's a really open question as to why we find some things pleasing but I'm guessing it has to do with how our senses evolved to find comfort in certain scenes over others. It's really similar to how in music theory we have all these heuristics in place and we can sort of reason it out by working off some basic principles such as logarithmic perception of pitch, but other than that we don't really have any good non-subjective reason other than the fact that it seems to work and be a shared experience.
>>33519 If our brains were structured a bit different, polytonic music would sound better to us, but as we are now, one key at a time is what we naturally perceive as pleasant for some reason.
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