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Taste Is All That's Left

notashelf.dev

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Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#251

Post by KurSix »

agentultra wrote: post #215
notashelf wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll risk sounding antagonistic and ask you this: if LLMs are not "good enough", why are they still around? Obviously "good enough" was a poor pick of words of words on my behalf---and I'll gladly own it---but they should be "good enough" for something if a significant amount of resources keep getting allocated to them. Yes on a very personal level you look at LLM-generated code and think to yourself "wow this is gar…

The market logic isn’t going to be defensible. The market is highly irrational and prone to be influenced by those with the most capital, not the, “invisible hand.” Cars are freaking everywhere not because they are the best solution of transportation but because people with vested interest in the sale of oil and cars made it so by buying politicians, starting political and marketing campaigns, and on for generations.…

"The market chose it" doesn't mean it was the best solution, just that it fit the incentives

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#252

Post by ulrikrasmussen »

altmanaltman wrote: post #239
ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An important feature of taste is also that it is highly variable between people, and because there is no system or proof of good taste, we cannot really say that one person's taste is objectively better than another's. This is what causes one person to build a large software system in a classical OOP language while another builds almost the same system in a typed functional language, each following their own internal…

> One thing I fear is going to happen when more and more people use LLM's for coding is that they will default to the "average taste" of the LLM, and we will stop getting new interesting ideas about how to build things. It is a possibility. But I also think we're underestimating the human need to create cool, unique things. Like yes most of the projects in this situation will have "average taste" but most of the proj…

I also don't think it will kill creativity in the space, although my phrasing might have suggested that, just that it might diminish it and make implementation styles more conformative.

On the other hand, we might trade that for creativity in other more high level designs where things like coding style is an unimportant detail for the experiment. For example, I have started playing around with microcontrollers because I can have the LLM generate the software while I focus on learning how to solder and think about how to modularize my hobby automation system. That's creativity and taste at a higher level which I didn't have access to before because I didn't want to invest my precious free time in learning the software ecosystem.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#253

Post by psychoslave »

Before God and as an honest man I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name; he has taste, and, furthermore, the most profound knowledge of composition.

Haydn to Leopold, 1785

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haydn_and_Mozart#The_%22Haydn%...

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#255

Post by nunez »

> The friction was not an obstacle to developing taste. The friction was _the curriculum._

Prescient.

I really have no idea how future software engineers will know how to write software in a world wherein software is written for them wholesale.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#256

Post by nunez »

notashelf wrote: post #146
boron1006 wrote: post #128

I don’t like the term taste, but the problem that I have is that LLMs don’t seem to work “good enough”. They seem to be able to solve the immediate problem, but stacking this on the scale of 3-4 devs over 6 months or so doesn’t seem to produce anything. One thing that I’m particularly frustrated with is the writing quality of LLMs. Like this is the thing that they should be able to do, but I would say almost everythi…

I'll risk sounding antagonistic and ask you this: if LLMs are not "good enough", why are they still around? Obviously "good enough" was a poor pick of words of words on my behalf---and I'll gladly own it---but they should be "good enough" for something if a significant amount of resources keep getting allocated to them. Yes on a very personal level you look at LLM-generated code and think to yourself "wow this is gar…

Because if you criticize the LLMs, you get headbutted into the Dante's Inferno that is the current job market

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#257

Post by anupamk »

strken wrote: post #238
anupamk wrote: post #224

I found this post a bit too verbose and incoherent. It does read like AI slop to me, but the bigger issue is that its core argument itself seems flawed. The author seems to be advocating for choosing to "carry the burden" of one's taste (or aesthetics, judgement, standards, etc) while bemoaning that the market may not sufficiently reward for doing so. IMHO, the core flaw is in mixing these two things 1) the market re…

I think there's a coherent argument lurking in there, but the author hasn't refined it enough. Here's my attempt. The industrial revolution seemed like the end of the artisan as an important man in his community, the death of good taste, and an apocalypse for professions like furniture makers. And yet, do you remember the Aeron chair, darling of the dotcom era startup? The Eames chair, that wood veneer conversation p…

> In an era of mass production, taste moves up the market, but it never quite goes away.

I agree with the points in your version, and the part above is the “meat and potatoes” for me.

I too am unsure about how much did the author intend to say something similar.

The main area where I disagree with the original post is this apparent fusing of subjective/personal taste driven value and market rewards driven value.

To summarize/clarify my view using the Aeron and Eames chair examples from your version

1. I agree that someone had to pursue their taste/vision for those products even when they could’ve “gotten away” with producing something mass produced and mediocre. And that pursuing their taste/vision likely became more feasible once the technology allowed them to focus on the “taste” while taking care of the boilerplate.

2. But, I will also add that the market actually saw value in Aeron and Eames chairs and rewarded their creators. It would’ve been incongruent for those creators to assert that their chairs were superior merely because they chose to pursue their taste/vision.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#259

Post by nunez »

esikich wrote: post #209
boron1006 wrote: post #128

I don’t like the term taste, but the problem that I have is that LLMs don’t seem to work “good enough”. They seem to be able to solve the immediate problem, but stacking this on the scale of 3-4 devs over 6 months or so doesn’t seem to produce anything. One thing that I’m particularly frustrated with is the writing quality of LLMs. Like this is the thing that they should be able to do, but I would say almost everythi…

This is just a problem of articulating what you want. Most people can't write for shit, I'm sorry. Because they maybe took one writing class in college. It's a skill in it's own. LLMs write better than anyone I've ever worked with and the reasons are obvious. If it rambles or is too "purple", that's on the person prompting it, because they can't write for shit to begin with.

I'd much rather see badly written text that someone invested time into instead of perfectly written and infinitely soulless AI slop

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#260

Post by thn-gap »

madrox wrote: post #142

We've been talking about taste for a year now as it relates to AI, so I'm going to counterpoint it: if competitors can reproduce your features, UX, and visual decisions within days, your taste is not really an advantage. How many apps implemented pull down to refresh once one person did it? How many people even remember (or care) whose taste spawned that UX pattern? [1] AI is not inaugurating an age of taste. It is s…

I found this post yesterday on this exact same topic. As someone who is interested in the space of creating visual things and its design choices, it's a bit disheartening to see the current situation, and brings you to the point of "why even try doing anything anymore" rather than just follow the copywagon.

I feel this will be a similar effect to the current slowdown of hiring of juniors: you're killing the pipeline of future seniors that lead development.

https://xcancel.com/shadcn/status/2085163855408214356

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