Is there such a thing as good taste? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#331

Post by brahadeesh » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 7:48 PM UTC

"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."

Is anyone else finding this hard to accept? What if, for some mysterious reason, everyone chooses one particular artist? What if everyone knows good art from bad art, but there is no such thing as good taste precisely because everyone has the same taste?

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#332

Post by simiones » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 7:49 PM UTC

oopsyDoodl wrote: post #219

motohagiography wrote: post #103

Wrote professionally about taste in a previous life. It is related more closely than we expect to techne or competence from physical knowledge. When we think of poor taste, we tend to think of symbols that are separated from their function and meaning, where instead of representing that, "I do this thing," something gaudy says, "I have this thing!" That's what crassness is, and it comes down to our relative apprehens…

At the end there you highlight the issue that makes me think good taste is still hand wave-y subjectivity. Since you say early on good taste is the difference between “I have” and “I do” good taste can’t be anything we possess, so how can anyone “have” good taste. Round n round we go. This continues to highlight for me the shortcomings of human languages. Chomsky calls them random noise formalized and controlled by p…

> Since you say early on good taste is the difference between “I have” and “I do” good taste can’t be anything we possess, so how can anyone “have” good taste. Round n round we go.

There is no contradiction and no circularity here. You are mixing levels of meaning. The concept of possession in "I have lots of gold" is different from the concept in "I have good taste". One refers to property ("I own lots of gold"), while the other refers to an attribute ("I am well-tasting"). The fact that they happen to use the same word is mostly a coincidence, and in no way makes anything circular.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#333

Post by actually_a_dog » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 7:49 PM UTC

Yes, there is. And, I will say that people who operate a website and don't tell their users they've done something wrong before limiting their accounts, then provide only a cryptic error message that doesn't indicate what the infraction is, don't have it.

Specifically, if you're going to penalize people for doing something, tell them that you're doing it, rather than hide behind some cryptic, "technical difficulties"-sounding error message. Treat people like adults, and I suspect you'll have better results most of the time.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29037349

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29024602

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#334

Post by Nition » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 7:50 PM UTC

hardwaregeek wrote: post #326

Nition wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of it is how much other music you've listened to, and how much you know about music. For example I watched Shang-Chi the other day, which is basically pop music in film form. As someone who's watched a fair amount of films, it's easy to see how it follows all the usual generic story beats - it's good but formulaic and relatively predictable. But if it was the first film you'd ever seen it would be amazin…

There's nuances and an art to pop though. Take Ocean's Eleven. It's fundamentally a crowd pleaser movie with a star studded cast, a conventional genre and a happy ending. But it's executed perfectly. Soderbergh has a mastery of the form that shows even when he's making pop. You see this with The Beach Boys or The Beatles or even Ed Sheeran, where the music is superficially enjoyable but there's a depth to it nonethel…

Yeah, so the Beatles and The Beach Boys manage to take relatively complex music (chord choices etc) and have it still appeal on a fundamental level, which is much harder than just taking the easy route and following a formula. Often making complex music loses mass appeal (I'd put Jacob Collier in that category), making it less viable commercially than the simple formula approach.

My guess is that the serendipitous combination of high-level artistry + mass appeal + marketing dollars is simply much less common than the combo of "good at basic formula" + marketing dollars. Every now and then something really clever and different makes it into the top 40 just by sheer luck.

Seems like I was wrong above about the simple formula being the most powerful though doesn't it. Maybe a brand new formula can be even more powerful but is just that much harder to execute.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#335

Post by bajsejohannes » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 7:50 PM UTC

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…

I had this same objection. And in a reductio ad absurdum, it certainly is key that all the steps leading to the contradiction are indisputable.

> There are many people who are extremely skilled who produce things people hate

There's a dedicated subreddit for this, even using the word "taste": Awful Taste But Great Execution https://www.reddit.com/r/ATBGE/

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#336

Post by dec0dedab0de » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 7:55 PM UTC

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…

I used to think that people who said they can't taste the difference between things were just being assholes. Then I got covid, and I lost most of my sense of smell, and my taste was reduced to the basics. Pepsi, and a ripe pear tasted identical to me, other than texture. They were both sweet and kind of sour. It made me think that some of these people might just have trouble tasting, and they don't realize it. Though I still think most of them are being assholes.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#337

Post by simiones » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 7:57 PM UTC

JohnWhigham wrote: post #170

tartoran wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least ones that give you headaches could arguably be placed in the lower quality bucket? Or the ones that taste like vinnegar? But once the low hanging fruit is done with it becomes a subjective experience and the price becomes the differentiator.

And yet sommeliers can be regularly fooled in blind taste tests.

Yes, but only at the extreme details (distinguishing between very similar wines). There is no chance to confuse anyone between, say, a sweet white wine and a dry red wine (to take the other kind of extreme).

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#338

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 7:57 PM UTC

motohagiography wrote: post #103

Wrote professionally about taste in a previous life. It is related more closely than we expect to techne or competence from physical knowledge. When we think of poor taste, we tend to think of symbols that are separated from their function and meaning, where instead of representing that, "I do this thing," something gaudy says, "I have this thing!" That's what crassness is, and it comes down to our relative apprehens…

[deleted]

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#339

Post by BeFlatXIII » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 7:58 PM UTC

Nition wrote: post #316

anm89 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This always bothers me specifically about music. I don't claim to have some universal say on what is good and bad music, there is tons of music out there which I think is tasteful but I simply don't like. But like 10% of music let's say is absolute garbage, mostly top 40 stuff made from cosntructed bands with some models as front men, written by a team constructed by a label to create the most generically likeable mu…

I think part of it is how much other music you've listened to, and how much you know about music. For example I watched Shang-Chi the other day, which is basically pop music in film form. As someone who's watched a fair amount of films, it's easy to see how it follows all the usual generic story beats - it's good but formulaic and relatively predictable. But if it was the first film you'd ever seen it would be amazin…

Subverting expectations also has larger downsides. A competently-made movie that just isn't that good is simply a boring movie that looks pretty. A subversion that goes wrong subverts your expectation of watching a good movie with one of watching an incoherent movie.

Re: Is there such a thing as good taste?

#340

Post by BeFlatXIII » Mon, Nov 15, 2021, 8:02 PM UTC

tdrdt wrote: post #88

I think Christopher Alexander has a better answer to this question. He states that anything that is designed is good when love was put into it. People can taste this love. So it's more like: when love was put into it, it tastes good.

It's the background details that bring out the love. A paint-by-numbers movie can stick because of the visceral knowledge that the production team cared about what they were making, even when the story beats are highly formulaic. On a rewatch, it becomes apparent that there's more going on than the bog-standard storyline presented by the leads.