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You Had No Taste Before AI

matthewsanabria.dev

21–30 of 201 posts

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#22

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.

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#24
Well that’s true especially with generative art, mashups are generally without regard to taste or aesthetics.

On the other hand deliberately tasteless art is a thing, it’s a bit in the eye of the beholder.

It’s true that many musicians cater to people who don’t really like music, they want to hear a good story with a beat. And that’s fine.

To have taste is to have developed a point of view, it’s not a mystical gift, it’s something you can develop over time. And not everyone needs that.

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#26

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.

This needs some justification. Profits are what you get when you can do something for less than you charge for it, and be competitive. To not be good enough to make profit you need to be able to force money out of people e.g. with taxes.

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#27
AI just lets us do the same things but faster

if you had bad taste, your taste is just badder faster

i think this is why so far there hasnt been any real moment of innovation from AI

because its not doing anything new. same crap as before just faster

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#28

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.

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.

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#29
The whole concept of "taste" being important bothers me, frankly. It's often implied that it's some objective thing, when it's really purely subjective. I accept that it's important socially to present as someone "with good taste", but I genuinely feel any effort in this direction is really just a huge waste of time.

Why not just enjoy the things you enjoy? And if the things you enjoy drift over time as you experience more and notice more patterns then fine, but this does not mean the new enjoyable thing is in any objective sense better then the old.

Finally, I'm completely fine with a website that looks "exactly like every other website".

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#30

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.

Hang on, it depends on the intent.

Should an entity strive to be profitable? of course. How else will it be self sustaining?

The problem arises when entities maximize for profit with no non-financial values that underpin their decision making.

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