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Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste
211–220 of 396 posts
Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste
#212Decades ago, an old friend told me "I became a coffee expert, I learned everything there is to learn about beans, the ways to prepare them, the chemistry that goes into it, and now I can only enjoy a cup of coffee prepared by the most expensive machines from the most expensive beans. The shit part is that I enjoy it just as much as I enjoyed my shitty supermarket coffee back when I didn't know anything about coffee."…
I never enjoyed shitty coffee. I never enjoyed shitty chocolate or chocolate flavored things like cakes. Until I was 30-something I thought I just didn't like coffee or chocolate. Then one day I had actually proper coffee, and I discovered that good coffee isn't just some imperceptably theoretically better version of regular coffee that snobs are basically just faking being sophisticated for show. They are two entire…
Interesting.
That chocolate - can you name a product, or give us a link? I think I know what you mean, but one can never be sure.
Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste
#213Decades ago, an old friend told me "I became a coffee expert, I learned everything there is to learn about beans, the ways to prepare them, the chemistry that goes into it, and now I can only enjoy a cup of coffee prepared by the most expensive machines from the most expensive beans. The shit part is that I enjoy it just as much as I enjoyed my shitty supermarket coffee back when I didn't know anything about coffee."…
Yeah, that's a horrible way to enjoy life. By your reasoning, you should subsist on protein blocks and watch paint dry for entertainment. By lowering the bar to the absolute lowest threshold, you'll classify everything as enjoyable. The pareto principle holds strong. Just put 20% of the effort in and you reap 80% of the results.
I agree.
Practicing photography on a smartphone is terrible compared to a dedicated device; in both ergonomics (hard to get a good grip, unprecise shutter actuation due to the touchscreen, and sometime unreliable software) and quality (granted, I like to actually print my picture instead of looking at them on a tiny screen; but still the difference is noticeable).
But that doesn't doesn't necessarily mean you need a camera system that cost as much as a small car; you can get plenty joy with an entry-level mirrorless (which would be in the pareto 20% price range).
Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste
#214I moved away from tinkering, ever since I had to juggle family, job, chores, and social contacts.
I don't want to spend the little free time I have fixing broken configs. Instead of rolling my own self-build NAS / home server like I used to, I just have a Synology now. I moved back to Windows after I fcked my graphics driver on linux and didn't have enough time to fix it in a day or two.
Still, I love the tinkering spirit, and it still is a part of me, but it's not very pragmatic to implement in my life nowadays.
Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste
#215Decades ago, an old friend told me "I became a coffee expert, I learned everything there is to learn about beans, the ways to prepare them, the chemistry that goes into it, and now I can only enjoy a cup of coffee prepared by the most expensive machines from the most expensive beans. The shit part is that I enjoy it just as much as I enjoyed my shitty supermarket coffee back when I didn't know anything about coffee."…
I think there's an unfinished journey whenever I hear such a story. Like someone who learns just enough about music that they "feel like" Bach is better than Taylor Swift, but then never move to the other side to use their newly acquired competence to understand what's nice about Taylor Swift's music as well.
E.g. a great designer will be able to design houses in very different styles, because they can understand what gives each of those styles its own specific beauty.
There's a lot to say about this, but I think your coffee friend never passed the snob-like point, which is a point I think most people reach when they learn just enough about something and that makes them feel superior. But if you keep going, then you start to understand what makes Italian coffee great as well, for example.
Wrt to coffee, I speak from experience, after going through very expensive equipment, I have learned to enjoy very different styles of roasts, coffees, etc. I still have preferences, I'm just far less judgmental.
Applies to most of my hobbies, I've seen this trajectory very often.
Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste
#216Tinkering is the ultimate satisfaction of a hacker. When you love perfecting your tools, shaping your terminal, your Emacs, your Neovim, or whatever tool you use, exactly the way you want it. You spend hours doing it and feel enormous satisfaction from every small improvement.
That is exactly what a Japanese swordsmith, a chef, or a craftsman does. Perfecting their work, finding joy in refinement, and taking pride in the process itself.
I used to see tinkering as a form of procrastination. But not anymore. What does that even mean? That we should be doing something else, and devalue this activity? What if this very activity, and the results it produces, bring me deep satisfaction? In that case, it is not procrastination. It is the perfection of the art.
Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
At some point I think there's almost an inverse relationship with how much time you spend researching a product and how much you enjoy it. I fell in to this hole with gaming monitors. At the top end, no product has it all, no product is without flaws. So then you start getting frustrated that you can't find one that has the right HDMI version, freesync, 240hz, 4k, USB-C with decent power delivery, etc. And what you b…
Ah, but it can give you such fun projects. Go, hunt down your headphones’ frequency response, cancel it out in PulseEffects (if that’s what it is called this release…), then adjust to the Harman Curve…
Excellent idea, hunting for the best headphones only cost me like two hundred hours of my life, couple hundreds of dollars, and rewarded me with a mild tinnitus as well.
Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste
#218Decades ago, an old friend told me "I became a coffee expert, I learned everything there is to learn about beans, the ways to prepare them, the chemistry that goes into it, and now I can only enjoy a cup of coffee prepared by the most expensive machines from the most expensive beans. The shit part is that I enjoy it just as much as I enjoyed my shitty supermarket coffee back when I didn't know anything about coffee."…
I never enjoyed shitty coffee. I never enjoyed shitty chocolate or chocolate flavored things like cakes. Until I was 30-something I thought I just didn't like coffee or chocolate. Then one day I had actually proper coffee, and I discovered that good coffee isn't just some imperceptably theoretically better version of regular coffee that snobs are basically just faking being sophisticated for show. They are two entire…
I used to think i didn't like people — Until i met some people I liked.
I think it's a bit different from developing taste, what you describe. It's more about finding out who you are. I would say once you know your baseline for what makes chocolate/coffee/etc enjoyable, then taste is about experiencing the nuances within that spectrum. Some people also have a greater tolerance for things that aren't really tasty due to coming up in a culture where things generally taste plain or bad (netherlands and UK come to mind).
Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste
#219> ...there are two kinds of people, those who do things only if it helps them achieve a goal, and those who do things just because. The ideal, of course, is to be a mix of both.
This is related to what Robert Pirsig in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance calls the romantic (subjective, "artistic") and the classical (objective, "scientific") understanding. He, too, points that the ideal is to enjoy both. Not because there are both useful and have their place and time, but because this is a false dichotomy to begin with and, ideally, one should refrain from defining the splitting and abandon both concepts (after all, the Zen in the title is there for a reason).
Re: Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste
#220Decades ago, an old friend told me "I became a coffee expert, I learned everything there is to learn about beans, the ways to prepare them, the chemistry that goes into it, and now I can only enjoy a cup of coffee prepared by the most expensive machines from the most expensive beans. The shit part is that I enjoy it just as much as I enjoyed my shitty supermarket coffee back when I didn't know anything about coffee."…
I'll offer a counter-anecdote and suggest this advice isn't necessarily ironclad. I've used the same pair of $20 headphones for decades (replacing them with the same model when they die), or else laptop/TV speakers. A couple of years ago I got $200 headphones included with a new phone purchase. The $200 headphones were amazing. I got to listen to all of my favorite music with a new perspective. But I still use the $2…
I think you point to the real problem: It's often not about taste or enjoyment but about using expensive things as a crutch for your feeble ego. Neatly expressed by the term "nouveau riche"