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We like music because our brains crave pattern recognition.
(sh.itjust.works)
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this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2025
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I think this is getting it backwards. Here I’ll go (warning, evopsych style speculation follows):
Our brains are great pattern recognizers because it makes us better at learning music (and other structured forms such as poetry). Music is older than all the civilizations on earth. We learn music because it’s an incredibly powerful aid to memorization. Memorization and oral recitation is the oldest form of cultural transmission we have.
Culture is the secret of our success as a species. It’s the original problem solver that gave us so many tools and techniques to survive on every continent on the planet (except Antarctica of course). Culture is the reason we learned to prepare so many foods which would have been poisonous otherwise (such as cassava).
Imo it's very unlikely that we grew to like music that already existed rather than growing to like audio patterns and then noticing we can make music.
Almost nothing in evolution happened sequentially. We almost certainly didn’t start creating music before our brains were equipped for it. Instead these things would’ve evolved in tandem. Each one driving the other, in a virtuous cycle.