As an update, I’ve now gotten a bunch of useful responses of why people liked this! I was worried people would interpret me as being needlessly negative, but it seems mostly not so. I think I’m still far from enjoying this myself, but I do think I’ve learned a good amount from the answers I got, and I got some interesting things to think about.
I’m a big fan of dialoguing explicitly about taste. IME there’s often a bunch of cool perceptions and implicit predictive models and stuff buried in there. I appreciate that you asked here, since it let me see the responses too.
Yeah there seems to be a common idea that talking about taste is impossible, it’s not, and it’s the most important thing in the world for writers to do, it’s a critical part of learning to write for other people, instead of just writing for yourself.
I just went and read that one and found it interesting, yes!
That said, even if I’m unlikely to get a satisfactory response, I still want to ask. I would like to be able to better predict what other people like/think. And sometimes, I’ve even found that understanding someone else can help find new dimensions to appreciate :)
tbh, I think you just saw an attempt at art you don’t like and you’re unlikely to get a satisfactory response. The only fiction I have written which I suspect you won’t find disgusting is this: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/H4kadKrC2xLK24udn/the-maker-of-mind
As an update, I’ve now gotten a bunch of useful responses of why people liked this! I was worried people would interpret me as being needlessly negative, but it seems mostly not so. I think I’m still far from enjoying this myself, but I do think I’ve learned a good amount from the answers I got, and I got some interesting things to think about.
I’m a big fan of dialoguing explicitly about taste. IME there’s often a bunch of cool perceptions and implicit predictive models and stuff buried in there. I appreciate that you asked here, since it let me see the responses too.
Yeah there seems to be a common idea that talking about taste is impossible, it’s not, and it’s the most important thing in the world for writers to do, it’s a critical part of learning to write for other people, instead of just writing for yourself.
I just went and read that one and found it interesting, yes!
That said, even if I’m unlikely to get a satisfactory response, I still want to ask. I would like to be able to better predict what other people like/think. And sometimes, I’ve even found that understanding someone else can help find new dimensions to appreciate :)