Some musings on what makes good taste in projects / priorities
(Copy-pasting and lightly editing an off-the-cuff Slack message that I originally wrote in the context of investments / trading)
Some people have really good taste (in research, startups, career priorities, investment ideas, etc.). E.g. not chasing after current trends but instead building something truly novel. I’ve been trying to cultivate good taste and I think I’m decent at it, but others are substantially better than me.
Examples of bad taste (most of these are examples that I consider my own mistakes): founding undifferentiated SaaS startups, shallow EA movement building programs, fundraising from poker pros (regcharity.org), buying BTC because it vaguely looks cheap (I did this in 2021), shorting overvalued meme stocks without a clear story for information advantage (my RGTI/QUBT put spread trades), or market-making in illiquid secondaries where you have an information disadvantage.
Examples of good taste: founding Tesla, founding Cradle, investing in Anthropic Series A, Atlas Fellowship, AI 2027, the Covid short.
Taste is by definition hard to grasp, but here are some prompts: 1) a year later, will this look like the genius move of the week/year? (will I feel great about how I spent that part of my life?) 2) if it succeeds, will I be proud to tell my peers about it, or will it look like dumb luck? if it fails, will I be proud to tell my peers about it (will it look like an excellent bet that didn’t pan out)? 3) if someone told me they’re doing this, would I think they’re a genius or an idiot (accounting for the fact that genius ideas sometimes look dumb at first glance)? 4) does it build towards something big and exciting and revolutionary? 5) how would I feel telling someone really impressive/smart/successful about it? (e.g. [insert your intellectual heroes here])
Is this idiomatically correct? I have only heard “good taste” used in reference to aesthetics and decorum not practical matters like you enumerate here.
I reckon it’s probably a generalisation of “research taste” which means “good judgement about what kind of research to try and do”. This is subtly different to the more typical usage of the word taste — like, “music taste” usually means “ability to discern what music is good” not “ability to discern what music to try and make”.
When I googled “research taste” many of the top results are LessWrong-adjacent, but I did find this page on “cultivating your research taste” written by some academics in 2013.
Maybe someone with superior googling skills to me can figure out if that’s the origin of the phrase.
I have never in my life heard it used like that—the closest is when Steve Jobs would discuss the overlap of aesthetics and product at Apple, bemoaning his competitors “had no taste”. All the written sources I find on websearch don’t seem to suggest that practical decision making is a common or a go-to meaning. Not being from the Bay Area or knowing anyone there though—maybe it is a localism?
The Wikipedia page for “good taste” redirects to Aesthetic taste with a big picture of Kant (the author of ‘the Critique of Judgement’ of which the first half is “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment”. This 4 year old Forbes article closely associates “taste” with aesthetics, particularly “beauty” and subjective measures which are no longer dictated by social class. This editorial in Town and Country magazine explores the classist/elitist ideas of “good taste”:
This more modern understanding of good taste as being completely arbitrary, meant merely to suppress whole classes of people in the service of a tiny elite, brings us back to Sitwell, Duchamp, and Dalí and their dismissals of good taste as being “the enemy of art”—something stifling rather than liberating.
And while language is a multifaceted and constantly evolving thing. The dictionaries and idiom lists seem to preclude anything that veers too far away from ideas of decorum and aesthetics:
1. An appropriate or acceptable amount of tact or discretion; a sense of what is proper or will not cause offense in a given social situation. 2. A refined, sophisticated ability to appreciate or make discerning judgments about artistic, aesthetic, or intellectual matters. good taste. (n.d.) Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. (2015). Retrieved June 23 2025 from https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/good+taste
Some musings on what makes good taste in projects / priorities
(Copy-pasting and lightly editing an off-the-cuff Slack message that I originally wrote in the context of investments / trading)
Some people have really good taste (in research, startups, career priorities, investment ideas, etc.). E.g. not chasing after current trends but instead building something truly novel. I’ve been trying to cultivate good taste and I think I’m decent at it, but others are substantially better than me.
Examples of bad taste (most of these are examples that I consider my own mistakes): founding undifferentiated SaaS startups, shallow EA movement building programs, fundraising from poker pros (regcharity.org), buying BTC because it vaguely looks cheap (I did this in 2021), shorting overvalued meme stocks without a clear story for information advantage (my RGTI/QUBT put spread trades), or market-making in illiquid secondaries where you have an information disadvantage.
Examples of good taste: founding Tesla, founding Cradle, investing in Anthropic Series A, Atlas Fellowship, AI 2027, the Covid short.
Taste is by definition hard to grasp, but here are some prompts:
1) a year later, will this look like the genius move of the week/year? (will I feel great about how I spent that part of my life?)
2) if it succeeds, will I be proud to tell my peers about it, or will it look like dumb luck? if it fails, will I be proud to tell my peers about it (will it look like an excellent bet that didn’t pan out)?
3) if someone told me they’re doing this, would I think they’re a genius or an idiot (accounting for the fact that genius ideas sometimes look dumb at first glance)?
4) does it build towards something big and exciting and revolutionary?
5) how would I feel telling someone really impressive/smart/successful about it? (e.g. [insert your intellectual heroes here])
Is this idiomatically correct? I have only heard “good taste” used in reference to aesthetics and decorum not practical matters like you enumerate here.
This usage might originate with Paul Graham around 2002.
Wasn’t aware of that piece, thanks!
I reckon it’s probably a generalisation of “research taste” which means “good judgement about what kind of research to try and do”. This is subtly different to the more typical usage of the word taste — like, “music taste” usually means “ability to discern what music is good” not “ability to discern what music to try and make”.
When I googled “research taste” many of the top results are LessWrong-adjacent, but I did find this page on “cultivating your research taste” written by some academics in 2013.
Maybe someone with superior googling skills to me can figure out if that’s the origin of the phrase.
Sounds completely normal to me? Maybe a Bay Area thing? But I feel like I’ve heard it from other people.
I have never in my life heard it used like that—the closest is when Steve Jobs would discuss the overlap of aesthetics and product at Apple, bemoaning his competitors “had no taste”. All the written sources I find on websearch don’t seem to suggest that practical decision making is a common or a go-to meaning. Not being from the Bay Area or knowing anyone there though—maybe it is a localism?
The Wikipedia page for “good taste” redirects to Aesthetic taste with a big picture of Kant (the author of ‘the Critique of Judgement’ of which the first half is “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment”. This 4 year old Forbes article closely associates “taste” with aesthetics, particularly “beauty” and subjective measures which are no longer dictated by social class. This editorial in Town and Country magazine explores the classist/elitist ideas of “good taste”:
And while language is a multifaceted and constantly evolving thing. The dictionaries and idiom lists seem to preclude anything that veers too far away from ideas of decorum and aesthetics:
1. An appropriate or acceptable amount of tact or discretion; a sense of what is proper or will not cause offense in a given social situation.
2. A refined, sophisticated ability to appreciate or make discerning judgments about artistic, aesthetic, or intellectual matters.
good taste. (n.d.) Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. (2015). Retrieved June 23 2025 from https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/good+taste
in good taste
idiom : proper and acceptable
“In good taste.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/in%20good%20taste. Accessed 23 Jun. 2025.
Yeah, good point. Edited the title to say “good taste in projects / priorities”
“Research taste” is a frequently mentioned concept here.
Some people downvoted / disagree-voted. I’m very curious what you disagree with!