You Had No Taste Before AI • Hacker News Board

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#51

Post by kraftman » Thu, Sep 18, 2025, 1:01 PM UTC

rhetocj23 wrote: post #46

kraftman wrote: post #3

I think this really underpins the difference between the people that say AI is useless and those that say it's enhanced many aspects of their day to day lives.

Yes. The people who had low standards in the first place find it transformative. If you have high standards, its regurgitating info in an ill disciplined fashion. Because its input isn't really of the highest standard upon which the model is trained on.

It regurgitates info in a way that is very specific to what and how you requested it. If you ask it a question already having an estimate of how accurate its answers will be, you can get a lot of value from it.

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#52

Post by ricardo81 » Thu, Sep 18, 2025, 1:01 PM UTC

I wonder if unknown /s powers persuaded us to homogenise things which ultimately suited AI training for AI to be viable.

- search engine algorithms used be be the main place of information discovery. Before 200x it would involve not using javascript for any text you wanted to be readable by a bot

- "best viewed in x browser" which happened in the late 90s and early 00s. If a website looked crap, use the other browser.

- social graph metadata. Have a better image, title, description for people who see a snippet of your page on a social network

Nowadays everything is best viewed in Chrome/Safari, Firefox does have some issues.

Google owns the majority of the search market.

Facebook/Twitter/Linkedin at least in the Western world drive most social traffic.

I would guess the 'taste' of AI has been predetermined by these strong factors on the web.

An alternative could be a DMOZ like directory with cohorts voting on the value of things, maybe with the help of AI. It does seem like the web has been 'shaped' for the past 15 years or so.

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#53

Post by rhetocj23 » Thu, Sep 18, 2025, 1:01 PM UTC

akoboldfrying wrote: post #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 experienc…

Is it subjective to say that Apple had more taste in producing the Mac OS than Microsoft when they produced Windows XP?

Its not as subjective.

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#54

Post by hannasanarion » Thu, Sep 18, 2025, 1:02 PM UTC

philipp-gayret wrote: post #17

I very often hear from developers at clients I work with that code they (not me) generate with AI is not of enough "quality". So I ask them what quality means. So far, I only get the most basic feedback: it should be in X style, pass Y linter, have N% coverage, have documentation... At the same time, most, if not all manually written repositories do not pass the newfound quality metrics that must apply to AI code to…

> At the same time, most, if not all manually written repositories do not pass the newfound quality metrics that must apply to AI code to be quality.

That's because I trust the code that I write to have quality, because I wrote it, which means I understand it. I may choose not to test something because I am certain that nothing can go wrong with it.

When your repository is thousands of lines of code written by an AI with tendencies to forget critical components, duplicate work, make bonkers editing errors that shuffles everything around to all the wrong places, and invent packages out of thin air, you need a system of accountability.

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#55

Post by spacecadet » Thu, Sep 18, 2025, 1:02 PM UTC

fomo is not taste.

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#56

Post by boringg » Thu, Sep 18, 2025, 1:03 PM UTC

btbuildem wrote: post #4

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.

Pretty good comment. It's a spectrum right? So if you went all in on profits you are likely all in on tastelessness. If you profit a small amount your probably only shedding a bit of your taste.

However I would wager the argument many people have is that they view their professional life as not utilizing their taste and that is reserved for decisions in their private lives (for those who still keep the two relatively distinct). For those who have truly merged professional and personal and gone all in profit -- original point probably stands. Thats pretty tasteless!

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#57

Post by jmeaden » Thu, Sep 18, 2025, 1:03 PM UTC

This "taste" concept has overlap with conscientiousness, a trait that companies look for when hiring. But, it is hard to develop.

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#58

Post by allovertheworld » Thu, Sep 18, 2025, 1:03 PM UTC

AI still a mind virus, vibe coding hasn’t taught me anything. It just allowed me to ship microservices that I dont understand. In the past I would’ve had to learn it through tutorials and docs, and in the end I would be in a better place with my new found knowledge.

But with vibe coding, there is no knowledge transfer.

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#59

Post by rhetocj23 » Thu, Sep 18, 2025, 1:03 PM UTC

ricardo81 wrote: post #52

I wonder if unknown /s powers persuaded us to homogenise things which ultimately suited AI training for AI to be viable. - search engine algorithms used be be the main place of information discovery. Before 200x it would involve not using javascript for any text you wanted to be readable by a bot - "best viewed in x browser" which happened in the late 90s and early 00s. If a website looked crap, use the other browser…

Lol youre giving too much credit to certain people.

People have trouble thinking 2 years out, let alone 5, 10, 15, 20 years...

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#60

Post by criley2 » Thu, Sep 18, 2025, 1:04 PM UTC

A lot of people are picking apart the many problematic parts of this, but I'll choose to target "Regurgitating content from the trending influencer of the week."

This is fundamentally how humans work. Our civilization is far too large and complex for you to be a bona fide expert in everything. And even worse, the more time you spend dedicated to expertise in one thing, the less well rounded you are in the ~infinity other things.

So what do you do if you cannot have authentic "taste" in everything?

You trust people. You find "influencers" that seem to succeed and have knowledge and you trust their opinion.

In practice, the vast majority of everything we think and do are not because of our personal expertise, but because of our un-expert belief in other people who do these things. Taste isn't just a measure of your personal expertise, but a measure of your ability to find and listen to experts.

So to call this out as a negative is harmful. You need to assemble a group of influencers not just professionally, but in every part of your life, who themselves are experts and can lend you their taste so you can make decisions without the paralysis of needing personal expertise in all things. That, or you need infinite time to become an infinite expert.