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Comment by lubesGordi | Hacker News Reader

I don't know man. I'm writing a flashcard app, and I like it. It makes me happy and it works the way I want. Exactly how I want. BC I could never get into quizlet. Whatever. Maybe others will like it, maybe not, I don't care.

Taste is subjective. Having 1 million todo apps, great. Maybe someone I know will find one they like and tell me about it. Maybe I'll find one that doesn't suck. Maybe I'll just make my own.

One thing I won't do though, is complain about how there's now 1 million todo apps that aren't up to my standards. Everyone being able to make their own apps however they want is a beautiful thing.

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> Taste is subjective.

If I spend twenty years subsisting solely on a high sodium cup-of-noodle diet, get severely impaired under the influence of everclear while trying to use a straight edge razor for the first time, hang up a white canvas, and spin around like a whirling dervish yard sprinkler and then display this finished piece next to Jan van Eyck’s The Last Judgement - we’ve long since left the realm of pure subjectivity.

I'm being silly but I've always thought that the "taste is subjective" argument is not very compelling. Taste, if not entirely objective, at least can be measured in demographic thermoclines.

>I'm being silly but I've always thought that the "taste is subjective" argument is not very compelling. Taste, if not entirely objective, at least can be measured in demographic thermoclines.

Okay, but so what? "Taste is subjective" is meant to defend the existence of some thing. "Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it shouldn't exist (or shouldn't be the way it is)." Are you therefore saying the opposite? "Because most people don't like it, it shouldn't exist"?

It probably depends on who likes it and why.

That would honestly be an incredible performance art piece, like a distilled waste of a human life just to prove a point. Then even after all that you could ask the question "Is the art inferior, did it prove the point effectively.". I think there's a real argument to be made that it didn't, becuase just having the argument surfaces some very interesting points about worth.

Haha, you made me laugh. With my eating habits - I'm already halfway there to realizing my vision of becoming a hemoglobic Jackson Pollock.

I agree! Taste is downstream of such things as design principles which can be described in objective terms.

Taste is not synonymous with personal preferences, otherwise we wouldn't describe some taste as "bad taste" or "poor taste." Rather, to me, one's taste refers to one's power of discernment as to what is good.

We can enjoy cup-of-noodles without conflating our enjoyment as being good taste. I like a lot of things that are fairly trash.

Taste is downstream of something, but I very much doubt that it is design principles.

> We can enjoy cup-of-noodles without conflating our enjoyment as being good taste. I like a lot of things that are fairly trash.

Agreed. As someone who watches an embarrassingly large number of isekai, I'm not going to drink from a public water fountain and call it a pierian spring.

>I agree! Taste is downstream of such things as design principles which can be described in objective terms

It doesn't need to be able to be described in objective terms to be objective, or rather to matter.

That's awesome! I love that energy, it's the opposite of the energy I was trying to talk about in the post actually, you're not trying to tell me why your app is the best thing in the world and spamming it everywhere when it has nothing to offer me or other people, and having not considered other people.

Why don’t you tell them that they have no taste?

Seems to be what the essay implies.

Because right now they are actually being tasteful?

I suspect because it’s harder to defend your thesis to a person who is excited about what they made.

It’s super easy to talk about who has taste or not in the abstract. A lot harder to tell someone straight up they have no taste because of some idea you have.

Nope it's exactly what I said, by choosing not to put it out to all of us because its only for them, that is actually being tasteful. It's very simple.

Where by "spamming" you mean daring to post it to HN under a "Show HN" title.

Among other places sure, I pivoted off the Show HN strictly, but it's fair for you to raise this given your thread was inspiration.

Posting something to SHOW people without considering how people may want or need what you're showing is just bad etiquette anywhere frankly. If you're building for yourself that's great, maybe qualify it in your post because otherwise it's free game to judge poorly. Spam is inherently unwanted content, you don't get to decide what is wanted content the collective community does.

It's something many of us have learned building software for years that all the new people building are going to figure out for themselves. Just because you can build it doesn't mean anyone will care if you're trying to show it off and with the flood of new apps, it's fair game to discuss.

Edit: all of us -> many of us on the last paragraph

This is exactly the sentiment I detected in the previous thread, where a small group of people seem to have decided what the etiquette of daring to post a Show HN is. I'm not sure I remember being consulted on whether you should be keeping these gates for the rest of us. My reaction is the same as it was when people tried to argue Show HN was only for open-source software: says you.

I'm not gate keeping anything, to do that I would have to make specific statements beyond "consider other people when you post something"

Right and my point is you (or i) will never be consulted, it happens emergently through community dynamics. No one sat in a group and decided this, Show HN in particular has always been selective. Different things are interesting to different sub groups and they select for different things. Show HN is not homogenous. My argument is not to not post, it's to post knowing who you hope to reach and why it would matter to them, don't just post to post, that is a large part of taste to me.

> I'm not gate keeping anything,

Might be unintentional then, but the language in your post comes across as a textbook case of gatekeeping.

I honestly tried to not inject my own standards into this and tried to stick around dynamics as much as possible. I think you shouldn't post to post, but if you've considered your audience and thought about something outside of yourself as to why someone may like this, earnestly, and not just kidding yourself, you are acting in good faith imo.

Similarly, I should have done more in the post to steer people way from the perception I'm shitting on them for building for themselves, that's great I have plenty of personal projects running at home that are just for me, if I ever decided to share them out I'd work to make sure its ready and valuable for people to receive.

The way you're expressing it, it sounds like you simply believe your own standards are representative of what everyone else's are. I disagree, for whatever that's worth.

My standards aren't expressed in the post at all is what I try to keep getting across. I'm describing an objective fact of social dynamics.

"Things that don't consider their audience get ignored or are perceived poorly."

The only thing I stated was a simple thing which is almost immovable fact at this point, that someone posting should be considering that.

My opinions are actually a lot stronger than anything I've written here and if it was about them the post would have been radically different.

Always a helpful discussion strategy, just declare whatever you said to be an "objective" or "immovable" fact. I'm not sure there's much for either of us to gain by continuing. Anyways: now you know how I, and at least one other person I guess, read what you wrote.

> I'm not sure there's much for either of us to gain by continuing.

A feeling of self righteous indignation? (I joke)

Anyway, I appreciate your take, but yes I think we just take fully different sides. I really am having a hard time seeing it from your perspective, but I respect that we attempted to get through to each other. Cheers.

I think society could benefit from a little more gate keeping these days. IMO, we’ve swung way too far to the other direction. We all need a little friction and constraint.

Gate keeping isn’t inherently good, but I think Trump is essentially the right wing outcome of zero gate keeping.

Shaming, ridiculing. People that dare to create something you don't like. Maybe the right answer is if you don't like what people are sharing that they made.. YOU make something and share it and lead by example instead of complaining.

First I never did that.

Second, I've founded several companies, had customers, put out products to be judged by the market and raised capital. I'm more than qualified to put out an opinion here. Been there done that.

What’s wrong with just posting and then taking the feedback and improving? Why is taste or for that matter any arbitrarily decided “in thing” necessary for posting in show hn? Who is the arbitrator here?

Nothing, do that! It's not just about Show HN. If you're asking for feedback you're clearing a lot of the problem right there. These are not who I'm talking about. You cultivate some measure of taste right there actually, just by trying to learn about the people you are potentially building for. I am talking about people who post here, reddit, twitter, reddit again etc etc and never ask for feedback they assume their stuff is a gift to the rest of us.

I've done the same thing with a todo app.

I find that a convenient UI becomes the most important aspect of some applications (to-do list, alarm clocks etc). Getting it to be exactly the way I like it is a benefit by itself.

I've been thinking of making a note taking app for my phone as well. The 10 or so that I've used all have had issues that made me not like them for one reason or another. Eg 16k char limit per note, no searching inside a note, broken bullet lists, long startup time etc.

With millions of todo apps released daily, it boils down to marketing which have a taste component.

Taste is not subjective. It's intersubjective. Subjective experiences are totally located within a particular subject. For example, "I'm hungry. I'm tired. I'm sad."

Judgements of taste, on the other hand, implicate all other humans when they are made. They implicitly demand consensus in a way that is unlike any other subjective claims. This is the only possible explanation for why people will in one breath say, "it's a matter of taste, it's all subjective" and then argue about whether or not The Last Jedi is a good Star Wars movie for hours, if not days, on end. Because the truth is, we are constantly seeking consensus and we usually resort to "that's just your opinion man" when we give up and disengage. But we don't believe that, not really.

According to Kant, "a judgment of taste involves the consciousness that all interest is kept out of it, it must also involve a claim to being valid for everyone, but without having a universality based on concepts. In other words, a judgment of taste must involve a claim to subjective universality." Unfortunately, it's Kant we're talking about, so trying to understand what he meant by subjective universality is a huge headache. Still, his reasoning reflects the way people actually talk about taste better than anybody else I've read.

I think you can lead yourself astray imagining that there’s a big difference between subjectivity and intersubjectivity. One is just a college educated term for the other.

More importantly, I think that enough time has passed that we can critique poor old Kant on this matter. When he says the taste has no interest in something what he is really implicitly describing is that taste is the province of rich people. If one has to strive or worry or self promote or anything like that, with regard to an aesthetic decision, it is easy to mark as tasteless. In most cases, the people with access to the kinds of habits that allow them to act in matters of aesthetic without interest are rich.

The main reason people drive themselves in circles, talking about taste and subjectivity, and college-educated words for subjectivity is because we don’t want to admit that it is bound up in class and upbringing. That and not the passage of time is why it is so hard to understand Kant on this matter. He’s describing a fiction that we agreed upon so that we didn’t have to talk about the influence of money.

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IDK, I understood them perfectly well.

But what were they actually saying? They just used the phrase "college-educated" and several synonyms as an insult to put themself forward as just some working class Joe who has no time for rich people and their hoity toity high and mighty philosphizing.

If I was to be charitable, I guess maybe their argument was that Kant only believed in subjective universality because he was rich, but that doesn't make any sense. Both Kant and Hume grew up middle class, and ended up in academia, and had very different conclusions about what "taste" is.

It's just a knee jerk reaction to dead white men philosophers and anyone who is interested in them as a bunch of elitists. That's not an argument, that's some kind of misplaced class resentment masquerading as an argument.

that's not what they said at all though, sorry but the only one doing knee jerk reactions here seems to be you

Ok, so what were they saying?

Idk I've read a lot of Selridge's comments up and down the whole post now and it really seems like any idea of taste to them defaults to classism and then they misapply that framework here, which is realistically one of the fairest arenas.

If someone likes what you make it doesn't matter where you come from.

It doesn’t default to class, people just pretend class doesn’t apply at all.

Taste is often advanced as this subjective yet ultimately discriminating notion which refuses to be pinned down. Insistent but ineffable. This idea that you and I know what good software is due to having paid dues and they don’t, and the truth will out, is a common one!

My argument isn’t that it’s class. It’s that this framework of describing taste is PURPOSE BUILT to ignore questions like status, access, and money in favor of standing in judgment.

I hear you, but I at least try to disarm that notion. I even have a footnote talking about how taste is entirely group dependent and measured by reception so while I think your point is more broadly applicable I feel it has less to do with what I was writing about which is broadly in the technical realm I feel pretty meritorious.

Yeah, that’s the concern.

We are in the middle of an earthquake. The 90s was like this, but it’s bigger. Radical changes in what it means to build software are happening right now. That will without a hair of a doubt result in equally radical changes in what constitutes good and bad work.

Maybe, just maybe, the thing that seems really durable (taste) is already getting put into a blender that’s still running.

Lmao. I love Kant. He’s great. I love dead white guys. One I’ve been banging on about in this thread is Bourdieu, who wrote a whole book on taste in France, Distinction. Here Bourdieu has the matter rightly and Kant doesn’t. Sometimes that happens. When you read a lot of dead white guys you find lots of them said very wise shit and also stuff that’s harder to find the wisdom in.

Here I don’t know what the trouble is. I’m sorry for calling your phrasing the equivalent of “hafalutin” (a word Marx has used more than twice—he’s dead and white), but what do you expect having come in to cloud the waters with 2 extra syllables to little end?

I know that I'm both pretentious and inarticulate. It's a rough combo. But I resented the idea that what I was saying was inauthentic. I legitimately love Kant, even though reading him is like trying to hammer nails through my skull.

He's quite good sometimes. But we don't always need to reach for that kind of writing if we struggle. If you want something from that era which is written by a young man who is trying to set the world on fire, you should try: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preliminary_Discourse_to_the_E...

This dude, Diderot, is gonna make a new encyclopedia of the world with his friends which breaks the monopoly on printed and well-regarded learning that was held by the traditional humanities. He wanted articles about the trades, about objects and engineered things, and he was PISSED OFF that he had to fight for it.

Is this guy's idea of how to organize knowledge "right"? Probably not. Will it light your brain on fire and make you grumpy or nosy or suspicious about categories of knowledge that persist still? YEAH.

Whoa, personal attacks are not ok here so please don't post like this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> In most cases, the people with access to the kinds of habits that allow them to act in matters of aesthetic without interest are rich.

This isn't true at all. There's a whole world of artisans and fine artists that range from middle class to broke, and they wouldn't be in that financial situation if they felt like compromising their point of view for money.

I think your analysis is interesting but I would argue it has more to do with status than money.

They are both intertwined, often strategically. Bourdieu’s book Distinction is all about how (and when in life) status and money can buy taste.

Just skimming the Wikipedia article [1] and it is appears Bourdieu's argument is bit more nuanced than status and money. It is a bit laden with Marxist jargon, but at least the abstract seems to place the heavy burden on "cultural capital" which is a more precise term than what I chose (status) but close enough to my meaning.

Whether or not economic capital is actually transferrable to cultural capital seems to be another debate, but as the old saying goes "money can't buy taste". In fact, a newly rich lower class person marrying a contemporarily poor higher class person seems more likely.

As the abstract states: "Because persons are taught their cultural tastes in childhood, a person's taste in culture is internalized to their personality, and identify his or her origin in a given social class, which might or might not impede upward social mobility." Money can't rebuild the personality that is internalized in youth, but marriage might give your kids a shot.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinction_(book)

edit: also to add, the relationship between these is the underlying theme of The Great Gatsby.

Oh it's a bit laden for you? Was the plot summary on wikipedia taxing?

c'mon. Are you really going to tell me "ahem dear sir, I found out that this Mr Bourdieu likes him some nuance!" His most famous book is essentially an article ballooned into a monograph via nuance.

No counter argument? Ad hominin? I was politely saying you were wrong and your attempt to muddy the water with "They are both intertwined" was a poor deflection based on the source you provided. But now I see you are a troll and I was lured.

Your source does not support your position.

You didn't read it, how would you know?

I'm happy to wait for any argument you can provide that cultural capital and economic capital are "intertwined, often strategically" instead of bowing to the authority of a source that in abstract clearly argues for the predominance of cultural authority in the constitution of taste.

But we aren't here to discuss apparently.

> I think that enough time has passed that we can critique poor old Kant

No, no, no! Here on Hacker News, it is apparently forbidden to criticize the dead because "they can't defend themselves." It's seen as somewhere between "cowardly" and "uncouth."

This policy seems to mainly apply, for some weird reason I suspect I would prefer not to know about, to the recently-departed Dilbert guy. But I'm sure his fans would stick up for Kant also!

Oh damn. Dilbert dude died. Pour one out for someone other than him who deserves it.

Ok, but there's no consensus that AI is bad taste. For example, I believe that AI art looks bad, but many boomers on Facebook apparently love it.

> "that's just your opinion man"...But we don't believe that

Why not? Many people have opinions I strongly disagree with, but I don't question that they actually have the opinion.

> we are constantly seeking consensus

I disagree, it seems to me that most people are seeking validation. In that sense, we don't want some global consensus, but a consensus within a specifically chosen group that proves our membership.

Software is for the end user, not for critics and opinionists, they are welcome to create software too.

There are so many problems that people have that have never been important enough to get solutions, that now can.

It's less about taste and more about experience and outcomes now.

The way we built software in the past, including the processes, ceremonies

> Taste is subjective.

I would like to offer a counterexample: iPhone, when it first came out anyways. Tasteful design is rather so obvious that when you see it you'd say yes, this is what anyone would expect from a "phone". That doesn't seem to be so subjective.

Except for all the people who used it and realized they hate touch screens for typing.

That was not at all the universal response to the iphone. http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=iphone is a (nsfw) contemporary article that I agreed with at the time, and I knew a decent number of people who got an early iphone and then switched back to a blackberry.

Well some people are stubborn but most do the switch to better designed items. So its not really subjective, the initial knee jerk reaction is but the more reasoned response after a few years isn't very subjective.

> It makes me happy and it works the way I want. Exactly how I want.

(emphasis mine)

Sounds like (good) taste to me!

Like you mentioned, ofc nobody wants ugliness.

But "good taste" in software can mean things that are not just decoration. And presentation is not irrelevant because it is our interface to any software.

It's far more than "frontend" or even "how things look like".

Words like "user story" are made from grains of truth!

> One thing I won't do though, is complain about how there's now 1 million todo apps that aren't up to my standards.

HN is generally considered a filter in industry, or a place to launch and make a hot start. The author is making their comments from the context of Show HN, where we expect some self-filtering, for quality and appropriateness.

What we see in Show HN the last few weeks is slop, submissions where the time from first commit to posting on HN is less than an hour. I've been posting some selections to Bluesky. The fastest I've seen so far is 25m [1]

I fully agree with everything you said and everything the author said. The two are not mutually exclusive.

[1] https://bsky.app/profile/verdverm.com/post/3mf2hygnbkc2o

Taste in the public, means how others perceive it, not totally yourself only. Have good taste for yourself isn't what is being talked about here. It is subjective but the public component and meeting the trend then leading it without too much shock is tough. Copying can be tasteful, you need to know what's good to copy, but there is no wow factor.

I can’t actually get to the article on the WiFi network I’m on but when I see “No skill. No taste.” you don’t sound like the butt of that punchline. Clearly you at least have skill, and I’m in no position to judge your taste.

The people I have a problem with are the ones who have neither but nonetheless find their ways into positions of power and influence where they proceed to make everyone else’s lives varying degrees of miserable.

OTOH I have huge respect for anyone who makes their thing for their own satisfaction.