[vunderba]

> 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.

[wafflebot]

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.

[vunderba]

> 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.

[coldtea]

>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.

[selridge]

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

[mecsred]

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.

[vunderba]

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

[fluoridation]

>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"?

[ludston]

It probably depends on who likes it and why.