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Defining quality is easy enough that I always had a hard time fully buying into Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

• Tomminn 9y ago
  I think the definition implicitly described in that book is "Quality is the ability to satisfy the innately messy human value function". Which I think is a pretty okay definition. Though it's a better definition for beauty.
• abritinthebay 9y ago
  If it's that easy - please provide a definition? Because quality is often subjective, I'll be shocked if you can provide a generalized definition.
  • khedoros1 9y ago
    Perception of quality is subjective. An objective measurement of quality would be how well something fits a set of requirements. Something fitting that definition of "quality" could still be perceived as low-quality, of course, but I think that's a different question.
    • troymc 9y ago
      That's _not_ what the book concluded. One of Phaedrus' realizations was that quality is neither subjective (depending on the judge) nor objective (an objective fact, like the mass of a book in kilograms).
      • khedoros1 9y ago
        I never said that it was. I've never read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The previous comment asked for a definition of quality. I provided one that made sense to me. > One of Phaedrus' realizations was that quality is neither subjective (depending on the judge) nor objective (an objective fact, like the mass of a book in kilograms). Sounds like a contradiction in terms, like a binary value that's neither true nor false. Unless the conclusion was that quality is a composite of some objective properties and some subjective ones.
    • abritinthebay 9y ago
      That would be a subjective definition not an objective one. How “well” something fits is absolutely subjective. It’s a judgement call with no objective measure.
      • khedoros1 9y ago
        I think that you read my comment in a way that I didn't intend. "How well" would probably be better phrased as "whether", because "how well" implies a non-binary state. I was picturing a requirements list of numerical ranges, which a specific unit of a product must satisfy. "How well" is what came to mind when I pictured a unit that nearly exceeded the limits of its requirements, compared to a unit that sat perfectly in the middle of the range of every requirement. I never pictured any kind of "judgement call", and I'd hoped that would be clear, in the context that I'd set, talking about objective measurements of quality.
• zachrose 9y ago
  It's been a while since I read it, but my takeaway was that there's a kind of tension or dilemma between classical quality and subjective quality. The example from early on is about how Pirsig sees a beer can as a perfect shim for motorcycle handlebars because it meets the specifications of what's needed for the job (classical quality) while his friend isn't sure because it doesn't feel right to put a beer can into a BMW motorcycle (subjective quality). The book's resolution of this dilemma is kind of hazy to me (something about cleaving a marble in half while reaching the top of a mountain?) but I think it's about how these are individually insufficient ways to define quality and you need both. I suppose the software version of this is like: passing tests don't imply that anybody is going to want the thing you've made.