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Is there such a thing as good taste?

paulgraham.com

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Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#251

Post by evrydayhustling »

TimPC wrote: post #242
evrydayhustling wrote: post #172

What I heard: "I find it useful to distinguish products on a single axis of quality, and therefore to distinguish talent on a single axis of being able to produce it. I can't imagine living without doing this ranking, so that single axis must be an objective truth others should align with." For what it's worth, I agree with Paul about valuing art that demonstrates a type of technical mastery, and I like ranking thing…

I think a more favourable interpretation is “Taste is multidimensional and complex but to show it exists it is sufficient to show it exists for the simplest to prove dimension. Technical talent is that least subjective dimension. Argument follows.”

Appreciate this read. However, doesn't the result in this case end up being trivial? "No matter how complex the subject, I can find a part we all agree on." That's great, but it doesn't prove a meaningful notion of agreement about the whole, and I missed any argument that it could.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#252

Post by lhorie »

robofanatic wrote: post #183
guerrilla wrote: post #139

> If there's no such thing as good taste, then there's no such thing as good art. No problem. > So if you want to discard the concept of good taste, you also have to discard the concept of good art. And that means you have to discard the possibility of people being good at making it. This skips a step. It assumes without argument that production skill corresponds to subjective preferences. There are many people who a…

> > If there's no such thing as good taste, then there's no such thing as good art. Because if there is such a thing as good art, it's easy to tell which of two people has better taste. Show them a lot of works by artists they've never seen before and ask them to choose the best, and whoever chooses the better art has better taste. How does one determine "better art"?

Better-ness IMHO is a function of expectations. Playing Dream Theater as ambient music in your restaurant is arguably in "bad taste", despite the art itself being technically on virtuoso level, and often being considered "good art" outside of that context.

Liking pop music is often snobbishly seen as having "bad taste" in music, even in the face of it being wildly popular, and sometimes even actually interesting from a technical analysis perspective.

Acquired tastes are another example that goes against the idea of better-ness as an universal quality: Natto[0] mixed w/ a raw egg on rice is either a repulsive slimy mess or a delicious delicacy depending on who you ask.

IMHO, the argument that there is no "good taste" merely observes that "good" is not an absolute metric, or even on a linear scale. Yes, things can be objectively "better" than others (e.g. I'm sure Michelangelo is far more skilled at painting than PG), but it's a bit of leap to conflate that specific line of comparison with the fuzzy idea of "better-ness".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natt%C5%8D

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#253

Post by TimPC »

guerrilla wrote: post #239
TimPC wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It only assumes production skill is correlated it doesn’t require a perfect correspondence. I’d argue it is hard to have a meaningful concept of production skill that is either independent of or anticorrelated to taste. Yes production skill alone does not make the piece of art. But if it contributes in any way shape or form that’s enough to establish there is such thing as taste.

> It only assumes production skill is correlated it doesn’t require a perfect correspondence This is fair. As for the rest, I don't think you made your argument and I think a massive amount of emperical evidence contradicts that. Pop music, mass produced movies, memes, etc. It's all low effort shit and people love it more than anything else and avoid high-skilled art like the plague. We have a ton of statistics on th…

I’m not making an argument about what taste is or which tastes are correct. I’m merely interested in establishing taste exists and the “all works are equally good” school of thought is wrong. We could have a stronger argument separately about a stronger assertion at which point your pop music claims might be relevant but that isn’t the conversation I was attempting to have.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#254

Post by rojoca »

Ira Glass has a practical take on the idea of exposing good taste (e.g. trying to paint like Bellini): https://youtu.be/X2wLP0izeJE where he talks about how your good taste informs you that the work you are doing doesn’t yet match your ambition, and that this can be both motivating and discouraging

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#255

Post by newbamboo »

cwmoore wrote: post #229
newbamboo wrote: post #185

Great essay. Paul does here what others take much longer to do and I can’t help but grin when reading the comments here that take issue. Just mentioning the obvious triggers a lot of people. I used to be one of those people, but like Paul, experience and reflection allowed me to grow out of. The world makes more sense once you abandon the position that taste or beauty do not exist. The line “judging art is hard, espe…

I wonder whether you think this essay is "great" mostly because you agree with it? That one must judge art, to enjoy art, appears fundamentally exclusionary, itself to my tastes, and to use PG's word, "crass", but in yours, his, and most people's, more or less innocently so.

“I wonder whether you think this essay is "great" mostly because you agree with it?”

An odd question but yes I think it’s great, as I explained in post, mostly because I agree with it. Not sure if you’re asking a real question or making a rhetorical point about thinking people are crass for believing in taste, in beauty.

Assuming it is a real question, part of the reason I think it’s a great essay, as I allude to be in my post, is the brevity and succinctness of it. Paul is sort of known for that— being able to put forth provocative ideas in a concise and compelling way.

I’m sincerely sorry, saddened in a way, that you find art crass. You are not alone. It’s threatening to many people I’ve observed. For me, it’s one of the most important of human achievements, and worthy of celebration and contemplation. To fully appreciate it implies comparing artists and artwork and thinking deeply about what makes some art better, special. No human is excluded from this most human of activities, except for those who exclude themselves. I would urge you, don’t be one of those. Engage with art critically, and enjoy the many rewards it brings. The question of aesthetics has captivated the greatest thinkers for very good reasons. It is to be fully human, to appreciate life. Don’t deny yourself that.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#256

Post by lvs »

There is such a thing as bad philosophy. By example, it's philosophy produced by narcissists thoroughly unaware and uninterested in any aspect of the canon of philosophy that predates them.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#257

Post by trwhite »

dvh1990 wrote: post #4

This question is what Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is all about - that quality is objective. I know PG is familiar with that book, which is why I find it odd that there's no mention of it in this essay.

I was just about to comment this. It seems as though PG is saying taste (much like quality) is a perceptual experience[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirsig%27s_Metaphysics_of_Qual...

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#258

Post by cwmoore »

wcarron wrote: post #246
cwmoore wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder whether you think this essay is "great" mostly because you agree with it? That one must judge art, to enjoy art, appears fundamentally exclusionary, itself to my tastes, and to use PG's word, "crass", but in yours, his, and most people's, more or less innocently so.

Not OP but > That one must judge art, to enjoy art, appears fundamentally exclusionary, Well, yes. You must make a judgement in order to have a reaction. In order to have a positive reaction to something (enjoy) it, somewhere along the line, you must have decided if had positive attributes. If it had bad attributes, you would not enjoy it. But a decision/judement/evaluation IS made.

With respect, to me that stance seems both incomplete and absolute, and falsifiable in about nine ways, so surely, while you are entitled to hold that opinion and are not alone in that judgement, you are both wrong. But so am I.

EDIT: another comment may help explain why I find "judgement" so completely orthogonal to this topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29229946

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#259

Post by gsjbjt »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #191

It amazes me when people seem to lack taste. I'm not even saying the ability to rank items in a way that agrees to some general standard. I'm saying the ability to notice that there is even a difference. I'll talk about taste in the literal sense but this extends to everything. I remember being at a Chinese restaurant with some friends where we were eating scallion pancakes. I said, boastfully, that my family makes b…

> My theory is that taste is one quality that separates the academics from the business people. Academia doesn't necessitate a lot of taste. If you have it, great. If you don't have it, no big deal.

This might be true for academics in ancient Greek literature, but certainly isn't true for academics in CS nowadays. If you don't have good taste in research problems that are {important for downstream industry applications, scientifically interesting, tractable}, you won't get anything done, and you won't get published. If anything, the pressure for academics to develop good taste is stronger than for people designing product. You can have a product that provides just one utility that users desperately need and have terrible taste for all the other axes that make a product "good," and do just fine. Academic papers get judged (in peer review / traction after publication) purely against the taste and aesthetics of other people in your community.

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