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You Had No Taste Before AI

matthewsanabria.dev

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Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#161

Post by tauroid »

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.

Saying "out of step" rather than "out of touch" seems like a bit of a Freudian slip.

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#164

Post by rhetocj23 »

tsunamifury wrote: post #153
rightbyte wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ...

Late stage yes. But design has created the most valuable and profitable products and companies in the world. Apple Ferrari Google Porsche Smaller companies like Yeti or Braun Etc etc Once they use design to achieve dominance yes they do the rent seeking you are talking about.

Monopoly profits are the allure of innovation. Its the same reason those life-saving medicines get developed (patents).

Why is this a bad thing? Personally Id rather have an Apple monopoly than MSFT for instance. I really love using my Apple products. I never enjoyed using a single MSFT product.

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#165

Post by rhetocj23 »

banannaise wrote: post #37
mattgreenrocks wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

Kinda. But also not true.

When music production was tightly controlled, the competition among labels produced some really, really great songs. Timeless type stuff.

I dont hear anything of that quality anymore.

Tradeoffs. They exist.

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#166

Post by nlitened »

dingaling wrote: post #133
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.

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…

Profit is “how much your whole is more valuable than the sum of parts it consists of”. If your taste is what makes it valuable, then more profits reflect more taste.

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#167

Post by rhetocj23 »

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".

I dont really get that phrase. I always view people who use it as intellectually lazy.

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#168

Post by interroboink »

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…

I haven't read the article, so just speaking generally...

(and not meaning to contradict you, just thinking aloud)

I think there's some overlap between "taste" and "thinking for yourself" — though they are not the same thing.

Lots of people don't want to think for themselves in every teeny aspect of life, so choosing from a menu of "good enough" options is reasonable. It doesn't mean they lack taste, just that they lack the energy/interest/etc in that moment for that activity.

Another aspect: plenty of people will know whether they like something when they see it, but they won't be able to describe what they want beforehand. So, they have taste (ability to choose a good one), but not an ability to enunciate it, or conjure it out of thin air.

Also, the "taste" terminology is often intertwined with "style", and I think that's unnecessarily limiting. An "engineer's taste" might help them decide between gadgets and gizmos, based on their merits, even if they're both ugly.

To your last example, I think modern Lodge cast iron frying pans are mediocre. Not because of ugliness/prettiness, but because the sharp ridge/seam on the handle from the casting process is not ground down. It makes it uncomfortable to hold. Also, the cooking surface is left rough. Compare it to an old Griswold — miles apart, according to my tastes. They're both handsome enough to look at, though.

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#169

Post by nradov »

NateEag wrote: post #160
bluGill wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money isn't all that matters but it is one of the few objective signs we have.

Money is subjective. Like countries, it exists only in people's minds. Its value comes from agreement by a large number of humans that it is valuable. A stack of Benjamins would be nigh-valueless to people from 9th-century China.

Not at all. The actual value of money comes from violence. This is objective, not subjective. If you have a certain amount of taxable income in the USA (or subject to US legal jurisdiction) then you're required to pay tax in US dollars: the IRS won't accept Euros or gold or anything else. If you fail to pay then eventually IRS employees will seize dollars from your financial accounts, or seize other assets and sell them for dollars. And if you try to physically stop them then they'll arrest you, or even shoot you.

And to be clear, I don't think this is a bad thing. It's necessary to keep civilization working.

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#170

Post by tavavex »

bluGill wrote: post #108
muststopmyths wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

aren't you then equating taste with popularity ? not sure if that's a popular opinion. In which case it would be tasteless.

There is no objective measure of taste. Popularity says that at least a lot of other people agree there is taste here.

Popularity says that a lot of other people agree there is value there. While I'm not informed enough to say what 'taste' means exactly, the common understanding that seems to be present in this comment section is that it's not a direct proxy for goodness, usefulness etc, like what you imply. I think most would agree that there are tasteful things that aren't also mass-marketable immediately useful goods or services.
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