As a painter and hacker[1] myself, I understand the message, believe the answer to the headline is "yes, but you can't have it" and I (as surely too would you)

As a painter and hacker[1] myself, I understand the message, believe the answer to the headline is "yes, but you can't have it" and I (as surely too would you) understand the vast gulf between my artwork and Rembrandt's, or my code and Norvig's, or my swimming and Phelps', but I've got to say, using "better art" as a test of taste is the irreducible absurdity, and I'd hoped for better after his introduction purported to propose a proof. In principle of charity I'll assume that other speakers at the talk this essay was adapted from may have covered those other considerations, and that PG was attempting or invited to fill an experiential gap which in this extracted form left the piece without some necessary reification. In the conversational spaces that attempt to account for taste are the same human conflicts that set one true believer against another of a different religion. I think the proper reductio ad absurdum is the more trivial one. Taste some rotten meat-- and either spit it out and rinse with strong liquor, or endure (survive?) the GI infection, then tell someone else to eat it, and see what you feel about the subjectivity of taste afterwards. See how the person your recommended the rotten meat feels about it, if anything. Finer points of arguments for or against some artist or movement are unsubstantiable when there is, I think we can agree, such a thing as guts. [1] I originally found HN after reading PG's book "Hackers and Painters"[2] and realized his practice of implementing the techniques of Old Masters in the late-20th Century, was not at all the kind of work that drew me to visual art. [2] http://www.paulgraham.com/hackpaint.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hackpaint.html