Is taste really the one thing LLMs can't take away or do we talk about taste because judging has become the cheapest move available? I think focusing too much on taste is how we lose focus on the two questions that actually matter: what do I actually care about, and why do I make things at all.
Taste Is All That's Left
381–390 of 573 posts
Re: Taste Is All That's Left
#382> Everyone can make anything. Almost no one can tell you what is worth making. That was always the harder skill. It is now the only one left.
But people can and do tell you what is worth making. Taste is largely set by class and power. The “skill” is having the right context (wealth, education, network) and then pattern matching on it.
Re: Taste Is All That's Left
#383Earlier 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…
Have you ever used enterprise software?
Seriously. Whatever slop is going to be an improvement for 99% of enterprise products. 99.9% of internal tools at large companies.
Re: Taste Is All That's Left
#384Earlier quoted context omitted.
> IMO the post-mortem is more a satirical response to the HN criticism They have edited it again to be slightly more emotional. It's why their "On Taste" closure doesn't actually pertain to Taste anymore. Of course, they wouldn't notice the mismatch - they didn't write it in the first place. They aren't being satirical. They're pissed they got called them out. Were they not, they'd not bother with edits.
Ok but who's pissed off bere? A human or a let-loose agent? Or a human that wrote the post with an LLM although they swear they didn't?
It's neither satirical, nor by an agent on the loose/in a loop. I read the comment section with good intentions, assuming good faith---and in their defense there is plenty---but the amount of misattribution is counterproductive. Nothing about the post-mortem section is "pissed off". I wrote it in complete serenity, like I am writing this comment to explain. There are three groups of commenters:
1. Skeptic, but engaging in good faith - thank you, much appreciated
2. Skeptic, not truly engaging with the post - that's fine, can't win 'em all
3. Completely disengaged with anything in writing. They're under the impression that I am criticizing their taste, and felt the need to "strike back" - what?
The post-mortem is a response to all three groups. I've explained the situation, apologized for what I agree I did wrong, and clarified my boundary. It's not worth pointing time and time again it was not LLM authored, and I do not have anything to add.
Re: Taste Is All That's Left
#385Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a writer with what may be an unpopular opinion. I have a college degree in creative writing; I do technical writing and programming for a living, and I used to publish technical articles on Linux, Python, Elixir, and other topics—complete with em dashes—long before AI was a thing. When confronting AI as a writer and deciding how I feel about it, I've landed on the conclusion that I've never accused mathematicians…
My points of disagreement are - At least to me, AI writing (especially from Claude) is actively painful to read. It's worse than the average person who has flawed English (or just sucks at writing) because of how verbose and stylistically repetitive it is. - AI writing is a strong probabilistic signal that what I'm reading is going to be crap in terms of the actual ideas and content too, even if it isn't the case 100…
When I use it for writing I usually have an idea or thesis to explore already. I typically write it out stream of consciousness. The core idea is mine.
I'm not using LLMs to think for me, instead just edit the writing so it has proper grammar and the run ons are reduced.
Even better for something that has data. You can pull PDFs with encoded tables and extract the data into consistent units to compare. You can have it write code to do it and cross check the outputs. You can do that in a minute. Would take hours without an LLM.
Re: Taste Is All That's Left
#386Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, because the writing is objectively bad in ways that LLMs excel in producing. Either they used an LLM or they have no taste and have used LLMs far too much elsewhere.
> No, because the writing is objectively bad in ways that LLMs excel in producing. Author does not dispute that. Yet they claim to not use AI. So your preferred belief is that they are lying, rather than a thing that looks AI written might have been actually written by a human and you are wrong thinking that it can't be true in this case.
Yes that’s right, I and many other readers think the author is probably lying when they say they didn’t use AI.
Re: Taste Is All That's Left
#387Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I just do not understand why people - even when actively denying LLM usage - use the fucking em dash. Because they are literate? Unlike the "em-dash means AI" illiterate crowd? I'm not going to change my writing because some idiots who never read a novel or heard about typography think only AI does that.
I just do not comprehend how that can be the hill people choose to die on. Like.. I get it. It's wrong. It feels wrong to give the AI nonsense just an inch and all. But in the grand scheme of things, it's just highly ineffective dogmatism that makes people unheard, miserable and just further increases struggle. Which people are free to do, in the same way that I am free to purposefully drop a massive hammer on my foo…
If you stop doing something right, because of fear, then the terrorists win.
Re: Taste Is All That's Left
#388Earlier quoted context omitted.
> and this post will go down as my not-the-proudest, however, I take your criticism to heart—although not personally—and strive to improve. I just do not understand why people - even when actively denying LLM usage - use the fucking em dash. I don't care if it is the "right" thing to use there. The character has been associated with slop. Why do you keep using it without even just acknowledging that you did. Just use…
> I just do not understand why people - even when actively denying LLM usage - use the fucking em dash. Because they are literate? Unlike the "em-dash means AI" illiterate crowd? I'm not going to change my writing because some idiots who never read a novel or heard about typography think only AI does that.
Typography is not related to literacy. If you’re going to insist on em-dashes at least choose the right word.
Re: Taste Is All That's Left
#389"Taste" and "personalization" are this month's AI talking points.
Re: Taste Is All That's Left
#390On the topic of taste, I think of this quote in Susan Sontag's "Notes On 'Camp'" often: “For taste governs every free — as opposed to rote — human response. Nothing is more decisive. There is taste in people, visual taste, taste in emotion — and there is taste in acts, taste in morality. Intelligence, as well, is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas. (One of the facts to be reckoned with is that taste tends to deve…
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…
Casey Muratori says they're both bad language choices as long as the software is slow.