14 ms·

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

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 better scallion pancakes and a friend remarked that he didn't think there was any difference, that indeed all scallion pancakes were exactly alike to him. Or another friend couldn't tell the difference between orange juice from concentrate and not from concentrate. I wonder how much of this is physiological and how much is mental. I can't help but think you'd need some sort of color blindness for taste to genuinely not notice any difference between scallion pancakes. But perhaps my friend was exaggerating. 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. On the other hand, stuff such as product design, user interfaces, even software engineering, requires taste. You need to understand what makes a good piece of software or a good product. One could argue that Steve Jobs was a product supertaster. He was finely attuned to stuff that the average user (or the average HN reader) would not see. As PG notes, taste is being attuned to the collective unconsciousness, to a collective aesthetic. If you can tap into that, you can attract customers.

ksec 5y ago
I have a term for it, "Pepla". People who cant taste the difference between Pepsi and Coca Cola. I used to joke about this 10+ years ago. Until there are lots of YouTube video showing people really cant tell the difference. I find this funny on HN because up to ~2017/18 the mainstream HN view was all these so called "taste" were people being mentally manipulated by advertising. There is no such thing as "taste", as PG's Dad said. And then gradually, somehow, HN changed. We have this [1] >> Having taste makes you require more dollars to get the same level of satisfaction I have carefully avoided trying excessively high quality things because once I've experienced something truly luxury then it becomes an ongoing expense to keep up that level of experience. The irritating part is that before I was perfectly happy in my ignorance of something better being available out there, but aftewards I feel like I'm "ruined" because I'm constantly disappointed and frustrated if I can't keep up the level of quality. There are lots of people who couldn't tell the difference between 120hz screen and 60hz screen. High PPI and low PPI. Prime and Choice Ribeye. French Butter and Margarine. I mean lots of nerds only compare "spec", and fail to recognise there are lots of things beyond spec and numbers. >One could argue that Steve Jobs was a product supertaster. And that is why he was the low paying Beta tester and a yardstick of quality. And that was the reason why he was hard to work with. Most people simply dont have his "taste", at least not anywhere near the bar of Steve. And that is why we now have UI design decision devalued into A/B testing. Having an objective measure to prove something. In reality, without people demanding excellence, quality will quickly drift to the average of the team's taste. The results of design by committees.
anm89 5y ago
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 music possible, edited to the point where it doesn't matter that the models are bad singers. This music seems to account for about 90% of global music consumption as far as I can tell. I've been traveling around the world for many years and it get's depressing when you are in some remote jungle somewhere that feels like your finally off the beaten path and you get to some little shack restaurant / bar and they have One Direction on the radio. You can't fucking escape it. I've had times where I was on 3 continents on 3 months and you here the exact same garbage music regardless of location. It's crazy how ubiquitous it is. And there is so much good music out there. If anything we are in a golden age in terms of volume of quality independent music being produced. And yet a vast majority of people seem to have no problem listening to the bottom of the barrel junk for a majority of the music they listen to.
- cwmoore 5y ago
  What you call "garbage" others might label "recycling" ;)
- jl6 5y ago
  Part of the answer is that such people aren’t actually listening to the music. They are getting something else out of it, like using it as background noise, or just as a beat to dance to, or as in-group signaling, or maybe access to the culture associated with the music, or perhaps they are self-medicating with it, or maybe they are ogling the performer, or perhaps it reminds them of something positive that happened when they first heard it. None of these uses require the music to be “good”. Actively listening to music is a somewhat rare activity.
  - anm89 5y ago
    I don't really buy this. Take modern American pop country. People LOVE that music and it is some of the worst of the lot. And again I have nothing against the genre. I listen to non pop country. But people are specifically attracted to the worst of it and they seem to very actively like it.
jl6 5y ago
The skill of distinguishment seems like something that could be learned with practice, or by having better observing tools (e.g. better eyesight, or more taste buds). This is the part that you could, in principle, program a robot to do. Judging which of two thing is better (aesthetic taste) feels like something quite different.
jacobolus 5y ago
> friend remarked that he didn't think there was any difference, that indeed all scallion pancakes were exactly alike to him. This is entirely plausible. If you are used to eating some food regularly over the course of decades, you will be able to discriminate between good vs. mediocre versions. If you have only eaten a food a few times, the most relevant comparisons will be with other types of food, and you won’t necessarily notice the difference between two separate experiences of it. When compared to pizza, tacos, or bagels, all scallion pancakes are pretty similar. For instance, a person who drinks red wine every day will be able to tell you the difference between varietals, regions, distinguish $100 vs. $7 bottles, maybe notice good vs. bad years from some vineyard; someone who has only rarely had red wine might think that they all taste about the same.
- hardwaregeek 5y ago
  True, although this friend is asian american and likely grew up eating scallion pancakes on at least a few occasions. He seemed almost proud of his lack of taste which really surprised me.
  - zzbzq 5y ago
    Perhaps your friend was signaling a taste you couldn't perceive. For example, I generally look down upon scallion pancakes as a category. Consider an American food analogue. Do I distinguish good and bad grilled cheese? How can I when its identity is that of a basic, unhealthy, cheap, low-class food? If you add more exotic ingredients, it becomes distant from its quintessential identity, so it becomes "good" grilled cheese in inverse proportion to it being, actually, grilled cheese. Contrariwise, if you enhance it by further indulging in the fats, oils, salts, etc., can we say this is "better" when it has also become even more base, even more low class? It becomes better as it becomes worse. I find myself wanting to say something similar to your friend. All the grilled cheese are the same to me. I can plainly see one is different than another, but they are all objects of derision, and they only rise above that derision insofar as they stop being grilled cheese.
    - hardwaregeek 5y ago
GoblinSlayer 5y ago
No way, Jobs created phoneposters.
FourthProtocol 5y ago
I would extend that to include behavior. Getting spannered at a frat party is hardly in good taste, whereas a glass too many at afternoon tea is, assuming you're able to limit the effects to a giggle. Similarly taking a bite of food, then a sip of a drink, and then chewing with a semi -open mouth is in extreme bad taste. We aren't just the art we wear or aquire. Our tastes position us in a social heireachy.
- JoeAltmaier 5y ago
  Agreed. That immediately can be followed up with: taste depends entirely upon the particular social hierarchy? There are a lot of them, and we each participate in more than one. School, church, family, job and on and on.
gsjbjt 5y ago
> 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.
- hardwaregeek 5y ago
  This is where an ancient Greek professor butts in and says that you need good taste in ancient Greek, but it's those damn ancient Aramaic professors who don't need good taste. I'm just kidding. I agree that it's not fair to make such an overarching statement about academics. I guess I was trying to express that I've noticed there's a difference between academic intelligence and taste, and my HN instincts told me that blaming academics would appeal to the crowd :P. More seriously, I think there's certainly a sense of taste in academia, but it's a very particular, very niche taste, as you've described. Someone who is tapped into the taste of the crowd will not be adept at understanding the taste of the few and vice versa.
dec0dedab0de 5y ago
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.

ksec 5y ago

I have a term for it, "Pepla". People who cant taste the difference between Pepsi and Coca Cola. I used to joke about this 10+ years ago. Until there are lots of YouTube video showing people really cant tell the difference. I find this funny on HN because up to ~2017/18 the mainstream HN view was all these so called "taste" were people being mentally manipulated by advertising. There is no such thing as "taste", as PG's Dad said. And then gradually, somehow, HN changed. We have this [1] >> Having taste makes you require more dollars to get the same level of satisfaction I have carefully avoided trying excessively high quality things because once I've experienced something truly luxury then it becomes an ongoing expense to keep up that level of experience. The irritating part is that before I was perfectly happy in my ignorance of something better being available out there, but aftewards I feel like I'm "ruined" because I'm constantly disappointed and frustrated if I can't keep up the level of quality. There are lots of people who couldn't tell the difference between 120hz screen and 60hz screen. High PPI and low PPI. Prime and Choice Ribeye. French Butter and Margarine. I mean lots of nerds only compare "spec", and fail to recognise there are lots of things beyond spec and numbers. >One could argue that Steve Jobs was a product supertaster. And that is why he was the low paying Beta tester and a yardstick of quality. And that was the reason why he was hard to work with. Most people simply dont have his "taste", at least not anywhere near the bar of Steve. And that is why we now have UI design decision devalued into A/B testing. Having an objective measure to prove something. In reality, without people demanding excellence, quality will quickly drift to the average of the team's taste. The results of design by committees.

anm89 5y ago

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 music possible, edited to the point where it doesn't matter that the models are bad singers. This music seems to account for about 90% of global music consumption as far as I can tell. I've been traveling around the world for many years and it get's depressing when you are in some remote jungle somewhere that feels like your finally off the beaten path and you get to some little shack restaurant / bar and they have One Direction on the radio. You can't fucking escape it. I've had times where I was on 3 continents on 3 months and you here the exact same garbage music regardless of location. It's crazy how ubiquitous it is. And there is so much good music out there. If anything we are in a golden age in terms of volume of quality independent music being produced. And yet a vast majority of people seem to have no problem listening to the bottom of the barrel junk for a majority of the music they listen to.

cwmoore 5y ago
What you call "garbage" others might label "recycling" ;)
jl6 5y ago
Part of the answer is that such people aren’t actually listening to the music. They are getting something else out of it, like using it as background noise, or just as a beat to dance to, or as in-group signaling, or maybe access to the culture associated with the music, or perhaps they are self-medicating with it, or maybe they are ogling the performer, or perhaps it reminds them of something positive that happened when they first heard it. None of these uses require the music to be “good”. Actively listening to music is a somewhat rare activity.
- anm89 5y ago
  I don't really buy this. Take modern American pop country. People LOVE that music and it is some of the worst of the lot. And again I have nothing against the genre. I listen to non pop country. But people are specifically attracted to the worst of it and they seem to very actively like it.

jl6 5y ago

The skill of distinguishment seems like something that could be learned with practice, or by having better observing tools (e.g. better eyesight, or more taste buds). This is the part that you could, in principle, program a robot to do. Judging which of two thing is better (aesthetic taste) feels like something quite different.

jacobolus 5y ago

> friend remarked that he didn't think there was any difference, that indeed all scallion pancakes were exactly alike to him. This is entirely plausible. If you are used to eating some food regularly over the course of decades, you will be able to discriminate between good vs. mediocre versions. If you have only eaten a food a few times, the most relevant comparisons will be with other types of food, and you won’t necessarily notice the difference between two separate experiences of it. When compared to pizza, tacos, or bagels, all scallion pancakes are pretty similar. For instance, a person who drinks red wine every day will be able to tell you the difference between varietals, regions, distinguish $100 vs. $7 bottles, maybe notice good vs. bad years from some vineyard; someone who has only rarely had red wine might think that they all taste about the same.

hardwaregeek 5y ago
True, although this friend is asian american and likely grew up eating scallion pancakes on at least a few occasions. He seemed almost proud of his lack of taste which really surprised me.
- zzbzq 5y ago
  Perhaps your friend was signaling a taste you couldn't perceive. For example, I generally look down upon scallion pancakes as a category. Consider an American food analogue. Do I distinguish good and bad grilled cheese? How can I when its identity is that of a basic, unhealthy, cheap, low-class food? If you add more exotic ingredients, it becomes distant from its quintessential identity, so it becomes "good" grilled cheese in inverse proportion to it being, actually, grilled cheese. Contrariwise, if you enhance it by further indulging in the fats, oils, salts, etc., can we say this is "better" when it has also become even more base, even more low class? It becomes better as it becomes worse. I find myself wanting to say something similar to your friend. All the grilled cheese are the same to me. I can plainly see one is different than another, but they are all objects of derision, and they only rise above that derision insofar as they stop being grilled cheese.
  - hardwaregeek 5y ago

GoblinSlayer 5y ago

No way, Jobs created phoneposters.

FourthProtocol 5y ago

I would extend that to include behavior. Getting spannered at a frat party is hardly in good taste, whereas a glass too many at afternoon tea is, assuming you're able to limit the effects to a giggle. Similarly taking a bite of food, then a sip of a drink, and then chewing with a semi -open mouth is in extreme bad taste. We aren't just the art we wear or aquire. Our tastes position us in a social heireachy.

JoeAltmaier 5y ago
Agreed. That immediately can be followed up with: taste depends entirely upon the particular social hierarchy? There are a lot of them, and we each participate in more than one. School, church, family, job and on and on.

gsjbjt 5y ago

> 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.

hardwaregeek 5y ago
This is where an ancient Greek professor butts in and says that you need good taste in ancient Greek, but it's those damn ancient Aramaic professors who don't need good taste. I'm just kidding. I agree that it's not fair to make such an overarching statement about academics. I guess I was trying to express that I've noticed there's a difference between academic intelligence and taste, and my HN instincts told me that blaming academics would appeal to the crowd :P. More seriously, I think there's certainly a sense of taste in academia, but it's a very particular, very niche taste, as you've described. Someone who is tapped into the taste of the crowd will not be adept at understanding the taste of the few and vice versa.

dec0dedab0de 5y ago

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.