[b112]

Like it or not, tastes change. Both the personal and society's tastes.

If you look back through the past, you can see some horrid design choices. Thus, some designs we think as awesome right now, will be seen as horrid to our descendants.

So if that's true, what if taste is social? And if it's social, then... well, all people have is peer pressure taste.

And your words show the truth in this, to a degree. Pre-curated options, to ensure "good taste" in choice. And how style conveys social status in some capacity, I don't mean "this style means success" but "this style means you have good taste".

Hair styles can be described as "taste", just as a taste in clothing. Yet hair styles suddenly become "ugly" where a decade before they were "tasteful".

Even beauty changes. One century it's skin and bones, the next more corpulent. Sometimes it's muscular, other times slim.

It's all peer pressure, all social status.

[nothrabannosir]

Some tastes change but not _all_ tastes change. This is a common misconception in conversations about taste: “some of it is subjective therefore it must all be 100% subjective and meaningless”. Yet when this comes round to something you’re good at (music, painting, literature, cooking, sport, …) you immediately recognize that there are in fact timeless elements. Universal truths, which are characterized as subjective only by those who cannot see it.

Elements of taste are subjective. Not all of it. You recognize this yourself in your own area of skill. Everyone has one area where suddenly they agree not every opinion has equal merit, and can articulate why.

But move out of that subject and into one of their blind spots, and we’re right back to “that’s just taste, taste is subjective, taste changes over time.”

Subjectivity is the refuge of the tasteless, who can afford to let others do our thinking for us. GP was right on point in that regard.

[raincole]

> Yet when this comes round to something you’re good at (music, painting, literature, cooking, sport, …) you immediately recognize that there are in fact timeless elements

The gap between practitioners and bystanders is wide.

There was a "AI art or human art" quiz posted on HN [0]. I got > 90% right while the median score was 60%. I thought I was good at telling AI-generated content and was proud of myself.

Last week I listened to music on a random channel Youtube pushed to me for hours without realizing they're all AI-generated.

In turns out it's not that I have a human's soul or something. It's just that I practiced digital painting before but not music production.

[0]: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/how-did-you-do-on-the-ai-ar...

[non_aligned]

Isn't that just a lot of words to say "my taste is objective / rooted in reason, other people's tastes are a crapshoot"?

Can you prescribe some specific test to tell objective design aesthetics from the "groupthink" ones? If not, then what are you saying, other than "I know when I see it, but not everyone does"?

Sure, there are things we do in a particular way because of manufacturability or utility considerations, and that stays pretty stable in the long haul. We put windows in homes in specific places and make them rectangular. But that's not taste, that's practicality. Everything else changes dramatically from one decade to another.

[Daishiman]

> Can you prescribe some specific test to tell objective design aesthetics from the "groupthink" ones? If not, then what are you saying, other than "I know when I see it, but not everyone does"?

When you develop a good eye for clothing your sense of taste will be detached from fashion trends. Whether you like oversize pieces or not, you can tell whether the fit is good because fit is a matter of crafstmanship. You can tell from the color scheme what was the artistic attempt and whether the attempt was reached. You can tell the quality of the fabrics. You can tell the historical references a piece is inspired by and whether those references are coherent.

You develop a taste for cocktails and wines and you can try a cocktail that you don't personally prefer, say a Negroni. But you can tell whether the acidity and sweetness levels go well with the ingredients of choice, whether the aromatics are high quality, whether the glass accompanies the drink and if the drink was served at the correct temperature.

If you know about cuisine and someone executes a dish based on a specific style, you can immediately tell of the chef knew about the underlying theory behind those styles and how well they were executed. And they decided to purposefully make a break from a style, you can tell if that made for an impactful quality result or if they should have stuck to the original.

[saulpw]

The short answer to your question is "no". The long answer is "read Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance".

[sings]

This thread also makes me think of Susan Sontag’s essay On Style.

[tsunamifury]

When you spend a lifetime learning design you learn the difference between taste and fashion. Taste is the ability to make solid choices coherently within a system being it fashionable or not.

Fashion is just the latest system that is popular.

Tasteful people can design good things regardless of the fashionable era. Great ones can create new fashionable eras.

[privatelypublic]

More examples: look up Dieter Rams (a person). Ran into the name a while back, and man- he made a record player 50yrs+ ago and it was never meant to be in fashion. It sure would still fit in as "simple device that does X" in the 2020's.

[non_aligned]

I really don't think that's a good example. That's someone who designers hold in high esteem. Most people today would not buy products with these aesthetics.

Granted, I does hold up better than most, but I don't think it's an example of some immutable, objective principles of fashion.

[tsunamifury]

Bro. You know the iPhone is almost entirely inspired by dieter right?

Like you statement could not be more absurdly wrong to a laughable degree.

[CGMthrowaway]

I don't disagree. Taste is dynamic. One distinction I'm making is that there are tastemakers and tastetakers. And they are not the same.

The dynamism can come in different ways as well. For example, the tastemaker can change their mind. Or, gen pop can change who they look up to as arbiters of taste.

[lo_zamoyski]

No. Tastes are subjective; beauty is objective. This is what permits us to say whether someone has good or bad taste. If it were purely subjective, then it would be impossible to make these claims. They would be nothing more than expressions of power, whether by the majority or some authority.

Fads and fashions occur, sure, but they aren't always aligned with good taste. And you can have varieties of beauty (why can't two different styles both be beautiful in two different ways?). I also wouldn't exaggerate the divergence. Some of what you've written is cliche rather than history.

Unity, the true, the good, and the beautiful are but three different perspectives on being and a matter of objective reality. The discernment or subjective condition of the tastes of a person have to do with how one receives reality rather than reality itself. Reality is, after all, received according to the mode of the receiver.

[entropicdrifter]

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder", though I agree some forms of beauty are relatively universal

[dgfitz]

I had taste before it was cool!

> It's all peer pressure, all social status.

You nailed it here. having 'taste' is a completely subjective concept driven mostly by the 'market-makers' of whatever industry. Your 'taste' is determined by the judgment of others.

[paulryanrogers]

There seems to be an element of familiarity too. What was considered 'cool' when one is a teenager becomes an anchor of sorts. Even if society moves on, there will be a cohort who holds on to the era which made the deepest impression on them.

[kjkjadksj]

Horrid is just what dramatic people say. Old styles were and are still great. You have to see things for what they were to really understand them. Anything with a good amount of thought put into it is great no matter the time or place. This is why fashions are cyclical: it was always a good idea just one that became too familiar at one point and had to be forgotten and rediscovered. A sort of wanderlust situation.