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You Had No Taste Before AI

matthewsanabria.dev

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Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#131

Post by rightbyte »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #22
btbuildem wrote: post #4

Having taste is one thing, having the standards to hold yourself to a certain level of quality, that's another thing altogether. Generating profits is about the most tasteless thing one could do, yet it underpins all of our professional efforts. The paradox is baked in, and some of us do our best to navigate it.

> Generating profits is about the most tasteless thing one could do, yet it underpins all of our professional efforts. Absolutely not. Profit simply means other people find it valuable enough to compensate you to use whatever you’ve made. Art is rarely profitable for its own sake, but that doesn’t mean everything that is profitable is intrinsically devoid of taste.

> Profit simply means other people find it valuable enough to compensate you to use whatever you’ve made.

In the spherical cow in vacuum market maybe. In practice there is rent seeking, profiteering, corruption, nepotism, etc ...

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#133

Post by dingaling »

bluGill wrote: post #82
banannaise wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rephrased: Any artistic direction done in the interest of creating or increasing profits is overwhelmingly likely to be tasteless. I don't think that's particularly controversial. Profitability doesn't imply tastelessness, but profit motive certainly does.

I would argue that if you can't make a profit you have shown you are tasteless. If other people don't enjoy it enough to pay you, that says a lot about how out of step you are.

Profit is surplus revenue, which means money that people paid you but which you didn't spend on improving your product, paying your staff better etc.

That's why making profit is sometimes seen as greedy, because it's money that could have been reinvested in the product.

Amazon in its early expansion phase never made a profit, because every cent was reinvested. And they didn't need to pay a cent of tax for that reason.

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#134

Post by yoyohello13 »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #22
btbuildem wrote: post #4

Having taste is one thing, having the standards to hold yourself to a certain level of quality, that's another thing altogether. Generating profits is about the most tasteless thing one could do, yet it underpins all of our professional efforts. The paradox is baked in, and some of us do our best to navigate it.

> Generating profits is about the most tasteless thing one could do, yet it underpins all of our professional efforts. Absolutely not. Profit simply means other people find it valuable enough to compensate you to use whatever you’ve made. Art is rarely profitable for its own sake, but that doesn’t mean everything that is profitable is intrinsically devoid of taste.

A lot of open source developer don't get paid for their work, but their stuff is often used by everyone. There has to be a 'will to make it profitable'.

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#135

Post by yoyohello13 »

sdsd wrote: post #87
StilesCrisis wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe by the textbook definition, sure. Not a single user finds advertising valuable, and yet it’s the focal point of profit maximization nowadays. Welcome to late-stage capitalism.

>Welcome to late-stage capitalism That phrase has always seemed a bit wishful to me, like when Christians describe our era as the end times or when crypto people say "it's still early days".

Yeah I think there is probably plenty more pain to come. I mean, we don't even have corporate controlled governments yet. Although that seems to be coming real soon.

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#136

Post by pxc »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #20

As someone who works with a lot of creatives, I've noticed people tend to get really defensive and self-righteous anytime "taste" comes up, on both sides - the haute designer-types vs. the scrappy I-can-do-it types. So I won't be surprised if this post is controversial. But it's insightful. Having poor taste (or more charitably, having no taste) can be covered up or ignored by the ability to choose from a pre-curated…

Most software I find to provide a smooth, gratifying UX has been carefully designed, but not by a designer.

The Fish and Elvish shells have designs involving lots of small, tasteful choices that add up. `fd` refines the traditional Unix `find` CLI in a ton of ways that reflect "good taste" and at the same time brings it more in line with the conventional long and short options of most GNU CLI utilities, including reducing dependence on ordering/positions of arguments.

On the other hand, apart from a few odd GUI disasters, it seems every piece of software I've used that has a UI I hate has had one or more designers behind it.

Is there even a "haute couture" school of design for interfaces other than GUIs? Are there designers who design for the experiences of people who are visually impaired short of totally blind? It seems to me that virtually no trained designers care about what actually makes computing experiences useful or pleasant for me, let alone beautiful. (And they often devote an inordinate amount of energy to things I'd say don't matter at all.)

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#137

Post by CGMthrowaway »

b112 wrote: post #92
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #20

As someone who works with a lot of creatives, I've noticed people tend to get really defensive and self-righteous anytime "taste" comes up, on both sides - the haute designer-types vs. the scrappy I-can-do-it types. So I won't be surprised if this post is controversial. But it's insightful. Having poor taste (or more charitably, having no taste) can be covered up or ignored by the ability to choose from a pre-curated…

Like it or not, tastes change. Both the personal and society's tastes. If you look back through the past, you can see some horrid design choices. Thus, some designs we think as awesome right now, will be seen as horrid to our descendants. So if that's true, what if taste is social? And if it's social, then... well, all people have is peer pressure taste. And your words show the truth in this, to a degree. Pre-curated…

I don't disagree. Taste is dynamic. One distinction I'm making is that there are tastemakers and tastetakers. And they are not the same.

The dynamism can come in different ways as well. For example, the tastemaker can change their mind. Or, gen pop can change who they look up to as arbiters of taste.

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#138

Post by non_aligned »

nothrabannosir wrote: post #130
b112 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like it or not, tastes change. Both the personal and society's tastes. If you look back through the past, you can see some horrid design choices. Thus, some designs we think as awesome right now, will be seen as horrid to our descendants. So if that's true, what if taste is social? And if it's social, then... well, all people have is peer pressure taste. And your words show the truth in this, to a degree. Pre-curated…

Some tastes change but not _all_ tastes change. This is a common misconception in conversations about taste: “some of it is subjective therefore it must all be 100% subjective and meaningless”. Yet when this comes round to something you’re good at (music, painting, literature, cooking, sport, …) you immediately recognize that there are in fact timeless elements. Universal truths, which are characterized as subjective…

Isn't that just a lot of words to say "my taste is objective / rooted in reason, other people's tastes are a crapshoot"?

Can you prescribe some specific test to tell objective design aesthetics from the "groupthink" ones? If not, then what are you saying, other than "I know when I see it, but not everyone does"?

Sure, there are things we do in a particular way because of manufacturability or utility considerations, and that stays pretty stable in the long haul. We put windows in homes in specific places and make them rectangular. But that's not taste, that's practicality. Everything else changes dramatically from one decade to another.

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#139

Post by krapp »

saubeidl wrote: post #99
bluGill wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that if you can't make a profit you have shown you are tasteless. If other people don't enjoy it enough to pay you, that says a lot about how out of step you are.

A true artist is ahead of the tastes of the common rabble.

The vast majority of artists, many of the best, are common rabble.
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