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Taste Is All That's Left

notashelf.dev

431–440 of 574 posts

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#431

For those keeping track, this is now (at least) the third wholly or partially AI-generated article on the theme of "taste" as enduring source of human comparative advantage to hit the HN front page. Previously: Taste in the age of AI and LLMs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47677241 You Had No Taste Before AI - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45288551

The author has updated the bottom of the post to clarify that it was not AI-generated. https://notashelf.dev/posts/taste-is-all-thats-left#post-mor...

Pangram says "100% AI-generated". I trust Pangram more than I trust this author's word.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#432
"De gustibus non est disputandum" ("In matters of taste, there can be no disputes")

One thing I'm excited for is the expanded ability to modify and create my own interfaces and software so I don't have to be subjected to the bad taste of others. An example of this is something like Chrome reading mode that removes all the stupid decoration from what I'm trying to read.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#433
If taste that's all that's left you've kinda really got nothing. Taste is an anti-moat, it's sort of a measure of how well you, as a literal receptor, agree with a pile of people out there on something. Like sure its something you can sort of develop but it costs you nothing to use, and if you're not creating something off-manifold you're just smearing stuff around that's already on it. Horrendous kind of take on "taste" that's taken hold of everyone. Kinda like if a music artist stopped making music to make spotify playlists. Sure they could maybe make _good_ playlists, but if they are sitting there crowing "taste is all thats left!" it's.. what is that? It just sounds like either a deluded giving up or just a very direct admission of giving up.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#434
post #352
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 can see a possible future where taste is automated. If you can effortlessly make 1000s of iterations then you can test it on real people 1000s of times. The ones that do better you keep. Another possible future is that taste is not automated but its not part of the designer's job (if designers still exist). Instead some AI will generate 1000 of iterations and people will be employed to evaluate 100s of software UI…

That’s interesting there was creativity experiment results proving that could be true.

https://austinkleon.com/2020/12/10/quantity-leads-to-quality...

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author has updated the bottom of the post to clarify that it was not AI-generated. https://notashelf.dev/posts/taste-is-all-thats-left#post-mor...

Pangram says "100% AI-generated". I trust Pangram more than I trust this author's word.

Paul Graham mentioned Pangram the other day.

I went to the site and pasted something into the text box. The next step was to sign up.

I don't trust Pangram.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author has updated the bottom of the post to clarify that it was not AI-generated. https://notashelf.dev/posts/taste-is-all-thats-left#post-mor...

Pangram says "100% AI-generated". I trust Pangram more than I trust this author's word.

Well, that is a shame, in my opinion. I trust humans significantly more, and I hope that never changes.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author has updated the bottom of the post to clarify that it was not AI-generated. https://notashelf.dev/posts/taste-is-all-thats-left#post-mor...

Pangram says "100% AI-generated". I trust Pangram more than I trust this author's word.

That's idiotic, frankly.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#438
post #21

This post is awful! Annoyingly written and zero insight. Most posts about this taste concept are bad (and there have been so many), but this is below average.

You've read many of them? Then you'd be the best to review even more of them! I'm ready for a raw and truthful review of my very own edition of the "taste" blog post, posted mere ~6 months ago, on the same topic: https://emsh.cat/en/good-taste/

Ha! I have a heterodox view on the taste thing, which is that it’s mostly cope: the models apply something like taste in nearly everything they do, and these taste posts will disappear as that becomes more obvious. However, besides the substantive disagreement, I think your post is fine since it appears to be your actual point of view, written down by hand. It’s not particularly novel or insightful (most of these takes are basically “there are still some things the models can’t do” — no shit!) but it’s measured and reasonable. Fine.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're here, because even "bad" code has uses. We can have quantity over quality. We can generate throw-away programs (where the lack of maintainability doesn't matter). We can solve some problems by brute force (keep trying until tests pass). For people who can't program, even bad code can do more than no code. If this is an acceptable definition of software engineering productivity, where "quantity over quality"…

There's a quote I forgot that says: "There is a Quality to Quantity". I think it was from a Chinese person, as they took manufacturing of cheap things, low quality stuff, but managed to scale it to mass quantities. I agree with that, it may not be reliable, full featured, well designed, ergonomic, etc. But quantity enables things and thus is a quality in itself. It allows use-cases that benefit from accessible cheap…

Often attributed to Stalin in reference to the mass production focus of the Soviet war machine. https://quotees.co.uk/war/joseph-stalin-quantity-has-a-quali... When you treat scale as a design criteria, you get a different product

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#440
post #74

Taste good, taste hard to cultivate, taste easy to fake and hard to prove. There, TLDR. We still have a metric for good taste, and it is $. Solve a problem that people care about? They give you $. Solve problem no one care about? No $. It is not perfect, but I challenge you to find a better metric that is as effective and simple.

That could be true for novel problems from Deep Tech industries and not everybody can solve those.

If you are doing another app, the product experience and marketing will probably win. Many companies with better products lost, beaten to death example is Betamax

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