Is there such a thing as good taste?

I wonder how much of this is physiological and how much is mental. I can't help but think you'd need some sort of color blindness for taste to genuinely not notice any difference between scallion pancakes. But perhaps my friend was exaggerating.

My theory is that taste is one quality that separates the academics from the business people. Academia doesn't necessitate a lot of taste. If you have it, great. If you don't have it, no big deal. On the other hand, stuff such as product design, user interfaces, even software engineering, requires taste. You need to understand what makes a good piece of software or a good product. One could argue that Steve Jobs was a product supertaster. He was finely attuned to stuff that the average user (or the average HN reader) would not see. As PG notes, taste is being attuned to the collective unconsciousness, to a collective aesthetic. If you can tap into that, you can attract customers.

I came here to type this sentence almost word for word.

I think this divide is most easily seen in the realm of acting, with no better example than Nicholas Cage: high skill level, low taste, at least judging by the majority of projects he chooses. (The counterargument might be that he realizes he's making a lot of bad movies and just needs the paycheck – he's infamous for blowing his money in foolhardy ways – but I definitely think at least some part of the essence of Nicholas Cage comes from conflict between high skill vs low taste).

I was friends with a guy in college who was a masterful musician (toured professionally as an all-purpose backup musician for some mid-tier bands you have heard of) and I used to argue with him about one particular band whose music I disliked [^1], and he would say, "But do you know how hard it is to play those notes? Look!" and he would stretch his fingers all over the bass fret, and I'd say, yeah, but... finger gymnastics is not the same as good music.

Also back in college, when CDs were a thing and money was scarce, I used to debate with myself about whether it would be worthwhile to accept the faustian bargain of trading my own musical tastes to exactly match the contents of the record store's discount CD bin, which was filled with things like Richard Marx albums [^2], so I could buy ten albums for five dollars.

[^1]: I don't want to start a flame war but it's the 80's-era band with complex bass arrangements which I have noticed is popular with sysadmin folks

[^2]: No disrespect intended to people who dig Richard Marx, or to Richard Marx himself, but it sticks in my mind as the thing that was in the bin I was looking at when I had this thought.

Is taste simply recognition of skill? If that's the case, I think "taste" is commonly used too narrowly.

Is it "tasteful" to appreciate a heart surgeon's life-saving? Or a teacher's ability to help me learn? That sounds odd to me (though we should obviously appreciate it!).

I've always thought of taste as an ability to identify intrinsic value, especially when others might miss it ("it's just a picture, dude"). If it's skill alone, why is taste typically applied to aesthetic pursuits?