[jclulow]

Yeah I agree with the positive part of the thesis; i.e., that it's alright to like things, and it's alright to pick things in part because you are a feeling sentient person and you should have nice things.

I think the corollary that people, when looking also at the data or at constraints, are acting irrationally or its sophistry or whatever is bunk, though. Plenty of people do actually engage in some amount of evaluation, and it's intellectually lazy to disregard that because they may have also made an aesthetic or otherwise personal decision on some level as well.

I use a bunch of niche software, and it's difficult or impossible to completely separate my aesthetic preferences from the concrete reasons I also have for doing so -- my aesthetic preferences and my joy in using certain things actually stem from those concrete benefits in some cases!