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No Skill. No Taste

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Re: No Skill. No Taste

#21

Post by embedding-shape »

altmanaltman wrote: post #9

Kind of meaningless if you let "taste" be a vaguely-defined term. Like, what do you mean by "taste"? How is it a differentiator? Does Apple have taste? Is the reason one open source app is better than the other because the devs of the first one have more "taste"? Seems like a philosophical article, but rather than exploring it deeply, it kind of just abandons it at the "hey man, everyone can create apps, so you bette…

"Others like it" could be one definition. "I like it" can be another. Personally, it kind of differs depending on what I'm doing, what exactly it means.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#22

Post by cjonas »

embedding-shape wrote: post #3
cjonas wrote: post #2

There's been a lot of discussion around in the future how "taste" will be the only differentiation / moat (recently watched a good video about the gen-ai music industry), as everything will be trivially easy to recreate. But your vision and how well you execution it... and the nuance involved in getting every minor detail correct is much harder (and something the LLM is exactly average at). I recently experienced thi…

> Personally, it feels like taste only buys you time and taste is easy to copy. Why is it easy to copy? I too have written a tiny essay on this topic ( https://emsh.cat/good-taste/ ) but I don't see how "taste" is easy to copy, at least I haven't been convinced by any of the arguments people chucked at me so far.

Because it's easier to clone someone else's "good taste" by just mimic'ing their formula / ripping of their exact implementation of a feature/ui. The gap between "first to get it right" and "everyone else catches up" could become non-existent in software. You'd need to continuously innovate (I think to some degree, this has always been the case, but it's the tempo that has changing).

> Why is it easy to copy? I think music trends would be one historical example of this? With software it's a bit more concrete (I'll just make my app function EXACTLY like yours does) and there is less protection from the law, unless you manage to weasel your way into a patent.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#23

Post by ryandrake »

BoredPositron wrote: post #14
altmanaltman wrote: post #9

Kind of meaningless if you let "taste" be a vaguely-defined term. Like, what do you mean by "taste"? How is it a differentiator? Does Apple have taste? Is the reason one open source app is better than the other because the devs of the first one have more "taste"? Seems like a philosophical article, but rather than exploring it deeply, it kind of just abandons it at the "hey man, everyone can create apps, so you bette…

Taste is not something you can define as factotum it changes over time, over location and culture.

It's kind of useless if it can't be defined. Let's say I'm a software developer, and my product is criticized for "lacking taste." What can I possibly do to correct this, if we can't even agree on a definition? Let alone agree on what actions can be taken to "add taste" to the product.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#24

Post by mlapeter »

ForHackernews wrote: post #17
mlapeter wrote: post #12

Not sure if you'd consider this a counterpoint or just proving your point, but in the sea of AI slop there's also a real chance for people to create things that they couldn't before - my 7 year old is now able to nerd out and create games using claude even though he's just barely learned to read: https://www.kidhubb.com/play/meteor-dodge-solarscout64 It's not the prettiest but he's able to iterate on it and basically…

But will he learn to read?

It's actually helping him learn to read quite a bit - after voice transcription, he reads the post and edits any errors by tapping on the word and changing it. He's been on the cusp of reading on his own and it's the first thing that motivates him enough to do it naturally.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#25

Post by Bjartr »

mlapeter wrote: post #12

Not sure if you'd consider this a counterpoint or just proving your point, but in the sea of AI slop there's also a real chance for people to create things that they couldn't before - my 7 year old is now able to nerd out and create games using claude even though he's just barely learned to read: https://www.kidhubb.com/play/meteor-dodge-solarscout64 It's not the prettiest but he's able to iterate on it and basically…

This is such an awesome example. That it's good enough at getting a gun game to put a smile on my face is icing on the cake. I've played lots of simple flash games in my day and this seven year old's vision made real by an AI is better than a decent number of those.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#26

Post by gopalv »

altmanaltman wrote: post #9

Kind of meaningless if you let "taste" be a vaguely-defined term. Like, what do you mean by "taste"? How is it a differentiator? Does Apple have taste? Is the reason one open source app is better than the other because the devs of the first one have more "taste"? Seems like a philosophical article, but rather than exploring it deeply, it kind of just abandons it at the "hey man, everyone can create apps, so you bette…

> Like, what do you mean by "taste"?

Imagine the scene from Ratatouille, where Remy explains "taste" and the brother finds it impossible to understand what it is ("Food is food").

The dad goes from being annoyed that Remy is a picky eater instead decides to put him to work as a taster. Gives him the job of approving forage that comes into the family & protect others from being poisoned.

The reason we say "taste" is because that's the closest parallel.

When it is even more vague, I call it a "code smell".

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#27

Post by embedding-shape »

cjonas wrote: post #22
embedding-shape wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally, it feels like taste only buys you time and taste is easy to copy. Why is it easy to copy? I too have written a tiny essay on this topic ( https://emsh.cat/good-taste/ ) but I don't see how "taste" is easy to copy, at least I haven't been convinced by any of the arguments people chucked at me so far.

Because it's easier to clone someone else's "good taste" by just mimic'ing their formula / ripping of their exact implementation of a feature/ui. The gap between "first to get it right" and "everyone else catches up" could become non-existent in software. You'd need to continuously innovate (I think to some degree, this has always been the case, but it's the tempo that has changing). > Why is it easy to copy? I think…

> Because it's easier to clone someone else's "good taste" by just mimic'ing their formula / ripping of their exact implementation of a feature/ui.

But then you've only copied one of their choices made by their good taste, not actually copied their taste. If a new situation arises, you won't be able to make the same choice as they would. Basically, it doesn't generalize.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#29

Post by Bjartr »

mlapeter wrote: post #12

Not sure if you'd consider this a counterpoint or just proving your point, but in the sea of AI slop there's also a real chance for people to create things that they couldn't before - my 7 year old is now able to nerd out and create games using claude even though he's just barely learned to read: https://www.kidhubb.com/play/meteor-dodge-solarscout64 It's not the prettiest but he's able to iterate on it and basically…

This is such an awesome example. That it's good enough at getting a gun game to put a smile on my face is icing on the cake. I've played lots of simple flash games in my day and this seven year old's vision made real by an AI is better than a decent number of those.

Which isn't diminishing the authors of that prior work either, those same individuals with these new tools would have been able to do more too.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#30

Post by ianbutler »

ryandrake wrote: post #23
BoredPositron wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taste is not something you can define as factotum it changes over time, over location and culture.

It's kind of useless if it can't be defined. Let's say I'm a software developer, and my product is criticized for "lacking taste." What can I possibly do to correct this, if we can't even agree on a definition? Let alone agree on what actions can be taken to "add taste" to the product.

I'd argue its not definable globally, but within whatever niches you're a part of it probably is. The reason I didn't try to define it when I wrote this is because the question stands good taste "to whom".

So like you definitely probably can get pointers from people in your specific niche and if you've been in that niche long enough you've probably developed some level of taste and feeling for what people in that group like and need.

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