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Is there such a thing as good taste?

paulgraham.com

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Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#341

Post by dec0dedab0de »

anm89 wrote: post #209
hardwaregeek wrote: post #191

It amazes me when people seem to lack taste. I'm not even saying the ability to rank items in a way that agrees to some general standard. I'm saying the ability to notice that there is even a difference. I'll talk about taste in the literal sense but this extends to everything. I remember being at a Chinese restaurant with some friends where we were eating scallion pancakes. I said, boastfully, that my family makes b…

This always bothers me specifically about music. I don't claim to have some universal say on what is good and bad music, there is tons of music out there which I think is tasteful but I simply don't like. But like 10% of music let's say is absolute garbage, mostly top 40 stuff made from cosntructed bands with some models as front men, written by a team constructed by a label to create the most generically likeable mu…

I like to explain my taste in music, by saying it's like taking a shower. At first it's hot, but then you get used to it, and you make it a bit hotter, and a bit hotter. If it were that hot in the beginning I never would have got in, but this is where I am now.

Though in a broader sense, with any creative endeavor the more people that like something, the worse it is.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#342

Post by guerrilla »

circlefavshape wrote: post #329
guerrilla wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It only assumes production skill is correlated it doesn’t require a perfect correspondence This is fair. As for the rest, I don't think you made your argument and I think a massive amount of emperical evidence contradicts that. Pop music, mass produced movies, memes, etc. It's all low effort shit and people love it more than anything else and avoid high-skilled art like the plague. We have a ton of statistics on th…

> Pop music ... it's all low effort shit What? You clearly know very little about how pop music is produced. If you think the stuff people like Lady Gaga and Dua Lipa (and their teams of writers and producers) put out is low-effort then you're just another clueless snob

For every two of those, there are thousands of counterexamples.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#343

Post by AnimalMuppet »

beaconstudios wrote: post #121
dwmbt wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'm not a philosophy nut or anything, but consider looking into empiricism versus rationalism and looking at Paul's writing, or conversations about the objectivity/subjectivity of aesthetics through that lens. Paul lives up to his rational roots here.

PG's essay is awful - I was looking for something with more merit. PG is a logical positivist, which is just a philosophical position - it isn't inherently rational, especially outside the hard sciences.

Even within the hard sciences, logical positivism isn't inherently rational. It's an epistemological position that is self-inconsistent, and applying it within the sciences does not make it any less self-inconsistent.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#344

Post by motohagiography »

oopsyDoodl wrote: post #219
motohagiography wrote: post #103

Wrote professionally about taste in a previous life. It is related more closely than we expect to techne or competence from physical knowledge. When we think of poor taste, we tend to think of symbols that are separated from their function and meaning, where instead of representing that, "I do this thing," something gaudy says, "I have this thing!" That's what crassness is, and it comes down to our relative apprehens…

At the end there you highlight the issue that makes me think good taste is still hand wave-y subjectivity. Since you say early on good taste is the difference between “I have” and “I do” good taste can’t be anything we possess, so how can anyone “have” good taste. Round n round we go. This continues to highlight for me the shortcomings of human languages. Chomsky calls them random noise formalized and controlled by p…

I'd say taste can be more like musical talent. Someone can play well or poorly, and if they are good, we say they "have" talent, even though what we mean is we've observed them "doing" the music, and it is the effect of competence.

The metonymy itself clouds the concept as well. You can have an ear for music or an eye for design, a nose for a story or a conflict, a tact with others, but taste for...everything? My framing implies one would have a taste for power, even if it bends the lexical rule.

Everyone can have "good taste," by becoming competent at the things they do, and therefore have knowledge of which signals are meaingful and powerful in their domain, and which are not. They will not be equally reliable, as some people will have more experience, talent, or commitment.

The next big question is what power is, as in where is it located or come from, what are its sufficient and necessary conditions, is it real, and if it is what else must be real, and if it isn't, what else can't be, must something be conscious to be subject to it, and is power over unconscious objects or being/things real if they don't experience it, is political power anything other than stored potential energy in the form of violence, etc. I don't have answers, and I think the po-mo's were quite into that (Foucalt, Marcuse I think?). I'm sure someone here knows this stuff for real.

If you are sitting in a meeting with someone who has obviously tuned out and is typing into their laptop, consider the possibility this is what they're thinking about, and I find it makes them more likeable.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#345

Post by lotsofpulp »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #309
zzbzq wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps your friend was signaling a taste you couldn't perceive. For example, I generally look down upon scallion pancakes as a category. Consider an American food analogue. Do I distinguish good and bad grilled cheese? How can I when its identity is that of a basic, unhealthy, cheap, low-class food? If you add more exotic ingredients, it becomes distant from its quintessential identity, so it becomes "good" grilled…

> How can I when its identity is that of a basic, unhealthy, cheap, low-class food That's an assertion, not a self-evident fact. And one that I (and I am certain, many other people) would dispute.

Skimming through some recipes I searched, it seems it is mostly all purpose flour and a ton of oil to make it flaky. It seems to be in the "unhealthy" camp assuming carbs and sat fats are unhealthy.

Also in the cheap camp considering the ingredients are cheap and making it does not seem too time or equipment intensive.

I find working with dough to always be complicated, but the recipe itself seems simple enough, so it might qualify as basic too, relative to other recipes.

Low class is ill defined, but assuming it means it is popular with poorer people due to the lower cost of its ingredients and preparation, then it might also be true.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#346

Post by slmjkdbtl »

No. There's no objective "good art", only popular art. When we say something is "good" we're saying it's popular, either in mass or in a certain community. I think this is the cleanest explanation with the minimal assumptions and favored by stuff like Occam's razor, because defining "good" requires way too many controversial criteria, and you might have to go through that for every medium, which is infinite amount.

However, that's just my theory / ideal. I still occasionally feel my taste is superior to others, which I'm not proud of. You can say it's another argument (a sociological / weak one), that the sense of superiority in taste is not helpful.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#347

Post by zzbzq »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #295
zzbzq wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps your friend was signaling a taste you couldn't perceive. For example, I generally look down upon scallion pancakes as a category. Consider an American food analogue. Do I distinguish good and bad grilled cheese? How can I when its identity is that of a basic, unhealthy, cheap, low-class food? If you add more exotic ingredients, it becomes distant from its quintessential identity, so it becomes "good" grilled…

Uhh I can't really understand this argument frankly. You're making a value judgement of grilled cheese as a commodity food but still, if someone put a grilled cheese in front of you that used plain white bread and one that used sourdough, you'd notice the difference, right? Sure you could argue that the sourdough grilled cheese is not a real grilled cheese but in doing so, you are inherently distinguishing the two it…

The argument is that I can distinguish them, but not rank them, because I distinguish them with respect to their essential character. Grilled cheese's essential character is something I view with derision, and its rank increases only by shedding that essential character. Grilled cheese with sourdough bread, or with veggies and barbecued meat, would rank as "better food" precisely because they rank as "worse grilled cheese."

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#348

Post by ativzzz »

mrcolin000 wrote: post #128
motohagiography wrote: post #103

Wrote professionally about taste in a previous life. It is related more closely than we expect to techne or competence from physical knowledge. When we think of poor taste, we tend to think of symbols that are separated from their function and meaning, where instead of representing that, "I do this thing," something gaudy says, "I have this thing!" That's what crassness is, and it comes down to our relative apprehens…

Great comment... I would also like to ask for a book recommendation. Thanks!

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance talks about this topic in depth.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#349

Post by BeFlatXIII »

soco wrote: post #52
Levitz wrote: post #43

I think that this, sadly, boils down to semantics. It does seem to me that by his reasoning good taste exists since good art exists, problem being that what is considered good art and what people like change with time, present a piece of modern art to Michelangelo and chances are he would consider it some sort of insulting joke. Good taste then is not something objective, but depends on context and the importance of…

Let my give you my primitive explanation to this, maybe it helps a bit. Art is actually more than than the drawing itself, art always comes with a story. When the technique is so great that you can get a good hang of the story just by looking at it, you have the Sixtine chapel. Probably you won't get everything the master wanted to say at a first view, but it's already a lot. On most modern art though, you have zero…

My rule of thumb is "the longer the artist's statement, the worse the art". If more effort went into storytelling than producing the artistic artefact, I'm not interested in that pretentious puffery. Make art of concentric green circle because you enjoy the effects they bring through your eyes. No need to write an essay.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#350

Post by beaconstudios »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #343
beaconstudios wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PG's essay is awful - I was looking for something with more merit. PG is a logical positivist, which is just a philosophical position - it isn't inherently rational, especially outside the hard sciences.

Even within the hard sciences, logical positivism isn't inherently rational. It's an epistemological position that is self-inconsistent, and applying it within the sciences does not make it any less self-inconsistent.

I agree, I'm a social constructivist. I was just pointing out that logical positivism is only even viable within hard sciences so applying it to art is beyond nonsensical.
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