| ▲ | nothrabannosir 2 days ago | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Some tastes change but not _all_ tastes change. This is a common misconception in conversations about taste: “some of it is subjective therefore it must all be 100% subjective and meaningless”. Yet when this comes round to something you’re good at (music, painting, literature, cooking, sport, …) you immediately recognize that there are in fact timeless elements. Universal truths, which are characterized as subjective only by those who cannot see it. Elements of taste are subjective. Not all of it. You recognize this yourself in your own area of skill. Everyone has one area where suddenly they agree not every opinion has equal merit, and can articulate why. But move out of that subject and into one of their blind spots, and we’re right back to “that’s just taste, taste is subjective, taste changes over time.” Subjectivity is the refuge of the tasteless, who can afford to let others do our thinking for us. GP was right on point in that regard. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | raincole 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
> Yet when this comes round to something you’re good at (music, painting, literature, cooking, sport, …) you immediately recognize that there are in fact timeless elements The gap between practitioners and bystanders is wide. There was a "AI art or human art" quiz posted on HN [0]. I got > 90% right while the median score was 60%. I thought I was good at telling AI-generated content and was proud of myself. Last week I listened to music on a random channel Youtube pushed to me for hours without realizing they're all AI-generated. In turns out it's not that I have a human's soul or something. It's just that I practiced digital painting before but not music production. [0]: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/how-did-you-do-on-the-ai-ar... | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | non_aligned 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Isn't that just a lot of words to say "my taste is objective / rooted in reason, other people's tastes are a crapshoot"? Can you prescribe some specific test to tell objective design aesthetics from the "groupthink" ones? If not, then what are you saying, other than "I know when I see it, but not everyone does"? Sure, there are things we do in a particular way because of manufacturability or utility considerations, and that stays pretty stable in the long haul. We put windows in homes in specific places and make them rectangular. But that's not taste, that's practicality. Everything else changes dramatically from one decade to another. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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