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No Skill. No Taste

blog.kinglycrow.com

151–160 of 222 posts

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#151

What I hated most about the NFT culture was being approached by people who wanted me to make NFTs out of my photographs and visual art. At the time I was very much craving feedback and validation but I wanted honest validation, I knew some of what I was making was really good and some of what I was making was crap -- I wanted validation from people who could tell the difference, not from people for whom it was all th…

Don't mind the NFT culture, they were just some termites in search of monetizing their grift. I didn't bite but I heard of countless stories where artists were either scammed or had time wasted on this. I hope you found your audience and were able to get the validation you were craving for.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taste is not subjective. It's intersubjective. Subjective experiences are totally located within a particular subject. For example, "I'm hungry. I'm tired. I'm sad." Judgements of taste, on the other hand, implicate all other humans when they are made. They implicitly demand consensus in a way that is unlike any other subjective claims. This is the only possible explanation for why people will in one breath say, "it'…

I think you can lead yourself astray imagining that there’s a big difference between subjectivity and intersubjectivity. One is just a college educated term for the other. More importantly, I think that enough time has passed that we can critique poor old Kant on this matter. When he says the taste has no interest in something what he is really implicitly describing is that taste is the province of rich people. If on…

> In most cases, the people with access to the kinds of habits that allow them to act in matters of aesthetic without interest are rich.

This isn't true at all. There's a whole world of artisans and fine artists that range from middle class to broke, and they wouldn't be in that financial situation if they felt like compromising their point of view for money.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taste is not subjective. It's intersubjective. Subjective experiences are totally located within a particular subject. For example, "I'm hungry. I'm tired. I'm sad." Judgements of taste, on the other hand, implicate all other humans when they are made. They implicitly demand consensus in a way that is unlike any other subjective claims. This is the only possible explanation for why people will in one breath say, "it'…

I think you can lead yourself astray imagining that there’s a big difference between subjectivity and intersubjectivity. One is just a college educated term for the other. More importantly, I think that enough time has passed that we can critique poor old Kant on this matter. When he says the taste has no interest in something what he is really implicitly describing is that taste is the province of rich people. If on…

I think your analysis is interesting but I would argue it has more to do with status than money.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not gate keeping anything, Might be unintentional then, but the language in your post comes across as a textbook case of gatekeeping.

I honestly tried to not inject my own standards into this and tried to stick around dynamics as much as possible. I think you shouldn't post to post, but if you've considered your audience and thought about something outside of yourself as to why someone may like this, earnestly, and not just kidding yourself, you are acting in good faith imo. Similarly, I should have done more in the post to steer people way from th…

The way you're expressing it, it sounds like you simply believe your own standards are representative of what everyone else's are. I disagree, for whatever that's worth.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#155
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what were they actually saying? They just used the phrase "college-educated" and several synonyms as an insult to put themself forward as just some working class Joe who has no time for rich people and their hoity toity high and mighty philosphizing. If I was to be charitable, I guess maybe their argument was that Kant only believed in subjective universality because he was rich, but that doesn't make any sense.…

that's not what they said at all though, sorry but the only one doing knee jerk reactions here seems to be you

Idk I've read a lot of Selridge's comments up and down the whole post now and it really seems like any idea of taste to them defaults to classism and then they misapply that framework here, which is realistically one of the fairest arenas.

If someone likes what you make it doesn't matter where you come from.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#156

I don't know man. I'm writing a flashcard app, and I like it. It makes me happy and it works the way I want. Exactly how I want. BC I could never get into quizlet. Whatever. Maybe others will like it, maybe not, I don't care. Taste is subjective. Having 1 million todo apps, great. Maybe someone I know will find one they like and tell me about it. Maybe I'll find one that doesn't suck. Maybe I'll just make my own. One…

Taste is not subjective. It's intersubjective. Subjective experiences are totally located within a particular subject. For example, "I'm hungry. I'm tired. I'm sad." Judgements of taste, on the other hand, implicate all other humans when they are made. They implicitly demand consensus in a way that is unlike any other subjective claims. This is the only possible explanation for why people will in one breath say, "it'…

> we are constantly seeking consensus

I disagree, it seems to me that most people are seeking validation. In that sense, we don't want some global consensus, but a consensus within a specifically chosen group that proves our membership.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#157

I don't know man. I'm writing a flashcard app, and I like it. It makes me happy and it works the way I want. Exactly how I want. BC I could never get into quizlet. Whatever. Maybe others will like it, maybe not, I don't care. Taste is subjective. Having 1 million todo apps, great. Maybe someone I know will find one they like and tell me about it. Maybe I'll find one that doesn't suck. Maybe I'll just make my own. One…

> Taste is subjective.

I would like to offer a counterexample: iPhone, when it first came out anyways. Tasteful design is rather so obvious that when you see it you'd say yes, this is what anyone would expect from a "phone". That doesn't seem to be so subjective.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#158

I don't know man. I'm writing a flashcard app, and I like it. It makes me happy and it works the way I want. Exactly how I want. BC I could never get into quizlet. Whatever. Maybe others will like it, maybe not, I don't care. Taste is subjective. Having 1 million todo apps, great. Maybe someone I know will find one they like and tell me about it. Maybe I'll find one that doesn't suck. Maybe I'll just make my own. One…

> One thing I won't do though, is complain about how there's now 1 million todo apps that aren't up to my standards.

HN is generally considered a filter in industry, or a place to launch and make a hot start. The author is making their comments from the context of Show HN, where we expect some self-filtering, for quality and appropriateness.

What we see in Show HN the last few weeks is slop, submissions where the time from first commit to posting on HN is less than an hour. I've been posting some selections to Bluesky. The fastest I've seen so far is 25m [1]

I fully agree with everything you said and everything the author said. The two are not mutually exclusive.

[1] https://bsky.app/profile/verdverm.com/post/3mf2hygnbkc2o

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Okay but what does it mean in the context of coding or software? Like if someone claims good taste is the differentiator fod good and bad in software, they should have some basic objective ways to measure it right? If its just vibes we're going with then everyone has subjective taste and everyone's app is good. Overall I still think its meaningless/lazy to talk about vague terms as guiding principles or key different…

Have you ever been tasked to maintain a badly coded legacy app? Have you ever read some snippet that is so clear you don’t have anything to edit? Those are the opposite points of things. It’s not objective because the computer doesn’t care anyway.

It’s like a well written prose vs a drunk’s rambling. They could describe the same scene, but one is much pleasurable to listen to. Or strolling through a well-tended garden vs walking in a landfill.

So it’s subjective, but you know instinctively what you prefer to work with.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#160

I don't know man. I'm writing a flashcard app, and I like it. It makes me happy and it works the way I want. Exactly how I want. BC I could never get into quizlet. Whatever. Maybe others will like it, maybe not, I don't care. Taste is subjective. Having 1 million todo apps, great. Maybe someone I know will find one they like and tell me about it. Maybe I'll find one that doesn't suck. Maybe I'll just make my own. One…

Software is for the end user, not for critics and opinionists, they are welcome to create software too.

There are so many problems that people have that have never been important enough to get solutions, that now can.

It's less about taste and more about experience and outcomes now.

The way we built software in the past, including the processes, ceremonies

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