Is there such a thing as good taste? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#151

Post by grkvlt » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 4:10 PM UTC

tdrdt wrote: post #88

I think Christopher Alexander has a better answer to this question. He states that anything that is designed is good when love was put into it. People can taste this love. So it's more like: when love was put into it, it tastes good.

this is a little trite and definitely isn't universal, let alone well defined (as to what 'love' means in this context) so doesn't really help anyone trying to understand more about what makes good taste (or good design, in your instance) - i think there can be plenty examples of good design and good taste that come from hate, or from indifference; all sorts of emotions and rationales...

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#152

Post by Meekro » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 4:12 PM UTC

So PG thinks that someone has good taste if prefer "better" art and bad taste if they prefer "worse" art. He knows some art can be better than other art because when he started painting, his art wasn't very good. Then he kept practicing and produced better art. Therefore, one piece can definitely be better than another.

But if we're looking at two pieces we've never seen before and trying to determine which is better, are there any approaches besides just surveying a bunch of people about which one they prefer?

PG makes an analogy to vaccines, but we measure vaccine quality objectively based on how many people it can help. To simplify a bit, if vaccine A works on 1% of people and vaccine B works on 99% of people, we say vaccine B is better. It wouldn't matter if some "expert" looked at both vaccines while swirling his wine and said in a pompous tone that "vaccine A is clearly more refined no matter what the masses may think."

So how is art any different? Isn't the "better" art determined by what more people like, in which case the top-grossing blockbuster films represent the best art of our generation? If so, then "good taste" is the ability to look at two unreleased movies and correctly predict which will make more money-- a valuable skill, no doubt!

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#153

Post by GoblinSlayer » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 4:16 PM UTC

rp1 wrote: post #107

jccalhoun wrote: post #84

As others have mentioned, Bourdieu would like a word with him https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinction_(book) Graham seems to be conflating skill with taste. The artists he mentions are skilled at art and he states that he is not. Distinguishing between skilled and unskilled work may be "good taste" but what is considered good art is more than just skill.

What other considerations are there other than skill? Isn’t everything a skill? Graham lists a few other extraneous concerns that people judge art by. He asserts these are unrelated to the art itself, like which museum the art is hanging in. I agree with Graham’s premise. My theory is that people don’t believe good taste exists because most people have bad taste and that’s too big of a pill to swallow. Would you rath…

I'd say many people have not much interest in art in the first place. It's not a matter of taste, but whether art is a thing at all.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#154

Post by criddell » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 4:18 PM UTC

retube wrote: post #8

I don't agree with his argument. I'd argue that it's perfectly possible for something that took huge skill and execution brilliance to create to be ugly / tasteless / vulgar, indeed completely tasteless.

Maybe it comes down to Graham's definition of art?

I've always cast a very wide net and thought of art as anything that intentionally provokes a response.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#155

Post by dahak27 » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 4:18 PM UTC

Probably a heretical thing to say here but I feel like PG has increasingly fallen into the trap where because he's been smart and insightful in some areas he's gradually convinced himself he's smart and insightful everywhere. IMO the more he veers away from writing on e.g. coding and startups the more he comes across like a very over-confident man who thinks he's figured it all out

It's quite noticeable on Twitter too where he seems to increasingly have very confident diagnoses on everything from geopolitics to culture war nonsense to genetic engineering.

Funnily enough a friend said something lately about SlateStarCodex (or ACX now) - I wonder if getting that much positive feedback on your musings just inevitably starts convincing you everything you think must be just as insightful

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#156

Post by SilasX » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 4:18 PM UTC

andi999 wrote: post #91

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #49

Go to guy on this is Bourdieu. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Bourdieu#Theory_of_capi... PG may say that his father pushed him in a different direction. But I suspect - like me - PG grew up with the cultural direction of the BBC and its mission to "inform, educate, and entertain." So if you were a bright curious kid your parents wouldn't necessarily be the ultimate authorities on culture and taste. There were o…

Next thing you want to tell me is that wine doesn't really taste good? (the high quality wine of course)

It doesn't. Not to me, anyway. I've never liked wine. It just takes like stingy grape juice.

No, not even the "good" kind.

I can accept that there might be objective criteria for judging wine, and certain standards for judging but that doesn't translate into wine being "genuinely good tasting" in some broad sense.

Universal experiences might not be so universal.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-e...

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#157

Post by msla » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 4:20 PM UTC

slibhb wrote: post #118

I had the opposite conversation with my father. I claimed "there's no accounting for taste" and my father said "that's not true, you can claim Shakespeare isn't good but you're wrong". For judgements of taste, no one is better than Kant. I recommend this essay: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aesthetic-judgment/ In Kantian aesthetics, judgements of taste are subjective (because they differ between people) but are…

> I claimed "there's no accounting for taste" and my father said "that's not true, you can claim Shakespeare isn't good but you're wrong".

So Tolstoy was wrong?

https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/lear/english/e_ltf

> Tolstoy begins by saying that throughout life Shakespeare has aroused in him ‘an irresistible repulsion and tedium’. Conscious that the opinion of the civilized world is against him, he has made one attempt after another on Shakespeare's works, reading and re-reading them in Russian, English and German; but ‘I invariably underwent the same feelings; repulsion, weariness and bewilderment’.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#158

Post by nepeckman » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 4:21 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #149

nepeckman wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm almost positive most kids would pick a Lisa Frank piece over the Mona Lisa. Are you trying to make the point that bright colors, rainbows, and unicorns are the highest form of art?

To be fair, Mona Lisa as general go to example of bestest painting is on itself a proof that taste is socially constructed.

I agree with you, and view my comment as complementing yours by refuting the parent, rather than making a value judgement on Lisa Frank's work. Apologies if I missed the mark there!

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#159

Post by i_love_limes » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 4:24 PM UTC

tartoran wrote: post #145

sombremesa wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who determines that the wine is high quality? You’ve already established taste there, regardless of the wine’s taste.

At least ones that give you headaches could arguably be placed in the lower quality bucket? Or the ones that taste like vinnegar? But once the low hanging fruit is done with it becomes a subjective experience and the price becomes the differentiator.

I think by your definition, the best wine is grape juice, which is never vinegary and never gives you a headache.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#160

Post by rp1 » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 4:26 PM UTC

nickelpro wrote: post #131

rp1 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re taking too narrow a definition of skill. True, drawing a straight line is a skill, but the vision to draw a particular line in an innovative way is also a skill.

And what counts as visionary and what counts as nonsense is entirely subjective. We can judge how straight a line is objectively, but we can't judge "vision" objectively, and thus "taste" is inherently subjective. That Graham wrote an entire essay rubbing up against this point without once encountering any literature that explains this (seminally Bourdieu, but there are many others) is surprising.

But subjectiveness applies to everything. For instance, whether or not something is moral is subjective, and yet there is a collective notion of morality.