I have a bit of a problem with Graham’s argument. As you continue to design things, two different processes happen:
your mastery of the purely technical aspects of the craft improve (e.g. you learn to use more tools and use them better, you learn more techniques, etc). This makes you better at translating the image in your head into an actual material thing. It improves your agency. It does not mean your taste is better, but rather, whatever your taste is, the product will match it more closely and will be less random;
you will be subject to more aesthetics and examples of other people’s work and this will in turn affect and transform your own aesthetics. To some extent, this might mean “improving” them insofar as you yourself aren’t necessarily aware of what exactly best tickles you. So in a parallel to the first process, where the thing-outside-you better matches the thing-inside-you, you may also learn how to make the thing-inside-you better match the thing-that-gives-you-good-feelings. But also, as you get exposed to all this churn of aesthetics and of your own style, your feelings change too. And this I surmise is a purely horizontal change. It’s not about them becoming better. In fact it’s often about you becoming bored of the common, obvious thing, and moving on to the next, and then the next, in pursuit of a new dopamine kick as the old stuff is now samey and unremarkable, like a junkie. You end up with a taste that is probably unusual, extravagant, or at least much more complex than the average Joe’s.
I think 2) is what people actually mean by “good taste”. I don’t think it’s necessarily actual “good taste” in any objective sense, but rather, the taste of those who happen to all be very good at their craft and dominate the scene, so they are trend-setters. But how often have the fortunes of art turned completely? A century’s artists if presented with the works of those two hundred years later would have likely called them in horrible taste. Has taste just been improved through time, like a science? And why is it then that the present-day ultimate taste seems to often resonate less with the average person than the old one? By what metric is it precisely best?
The situation with the AI thing is actually kind of relevant. If you see it for the first time you might actually be left in awe by it. If you see it a hundred times you pick up on the patterns and the tricks. I’ve experienced the same with human authors—writers especially, you just read enough of them at you start noticing the prose tricks and style features repeating over and over again and at some point it feels like it’s stale and meaningless. But does that mean that individually each of those things are just objectively Bad in some sense? It’s not them who changed. They’re the same that impressed you the first time. You changed.
I have a bit of a problem with Graham’s argument. As you continue to design things, two different processes happen:
your mastery of the purely technical aspects of the craft improve (e.g. you learn to use more tools and use them better, you learn more techniques, etc). This makes you better at translating the image in your head into an actual material thing. It improves your agency. It does not mean your taste is better, but rather, whatever your taste is, the product will match it more closely and will be less random;
you will be subject to more aesthetics and examples of other people’s work and this will in turn affect and transform your own aesthetics. To some extent, this might mean “improving” them insofar as you yourself aren’t necessarily aware of what exactly best tickles you. So in a parallel to the first process, where the thing-outside-you better matches the thing-inside-you, you may also learn how to make the thing-inside-you better match the thing-that-gives-you-good-feelings. But also, as you get exposed to all this churn of aesthetics and of your own style, your feelings change too. And this I surmise is a purely horizontal change. It’s not about them becoming better. In fact it’s often about you becoming bored of the common, obvious thing, and moving on to the next, and then the next, in pursuit of a new dopamine kick as the old stuff is now samey and unremarkable, like a junkie. You end up with a taste that is probably unusual, extravagant, or at least much more complex than the average Joe’s.
I think 2) is what people actually mean by “good taste”. I don’t think it’s necessarily actual “good taste” in any objective sense, but rather, the taste of those who happen to all be very good at their craft and dominate the scene, so they are trend-setters. But how often have the fortunes of art turned completely? A century’s artists if presented with the works of those two hundred years later would have likely called them in horrible taste. Has taste just been improved through time, like a science? And why is it then that the present-day ultimate taste seems to often resonate less with the average person than the old one? By what metric is it precisely best?
The situation with the AI thing is actually kind of relevant. If you see it for the first time you might actually be left in awe by it. If you see it a hundred times you pick up on the patterns and the tricks. I’ve experienced the same with human authors—writers especially, you just read enough of them at you start noticing the prose tricks and style features repeating over and over again and at some point it feels like it’s stale and meaningless. But does that mean that individually each of those things are just objectively Bad in some sense? It’s not them who changed. They’re the same that impressed you the first time. You changed.