Taste Is the New Intelligence

There will always be creators. But the ones who stand out in this era are also curators. People who filter their worldview so cleanly that you want to see through their eyes. People who make you feel sharper just by paying attention to what they pay attention to.

But taste requires subtraction. It means not participating in every viral moment. It means not resharing something just because it’s getting attention. It means opting out of the churn.

That doesn’t mean being contrarian for the sake of it. It means noticing when the culture’s default setting no longer reflects what’s true for you—and walking away.

“Everything we come into contact with has the potential to influence our taste. So the art of living well includes the art of feeding your input stream.” — Rick Rubin

That’s why taste is a responsibility. It’s not just about what you like. It’s about what you allow in.

Taste is how you protect your mental environment.

And that’s what real taste is: a deep internal coherence. A way of filtering the world through intuition that’s been sharpened by attention.

The internet has flattened information access so thoroughly that hoarding knowledge is no longer impressive. What matters now is what you do with it. How you filter it. How you recognize signal in the noise.

Curation is the new IQ test.

Underneath all of this is something deeper: taste as a spiritual orientation. Not in the religious sense, but in the felt sense of alignment. Of knowing what your energy wants. Of feeling what’s harmonious and what’s out of tune.

Taste isn’t about having one interest. It’s about threading coherence through your many interests. It’s the connective tissue between the books on your shelf, the music in your car, the way you write emails. It doesn’t mean boring. It means intentional.

We used to associate intelligence with accumulation. The smartest people were the ones who knew the most. But that model doesn’t hold anymore. AI knows more than anyone. Wikipedia is free. The internet has flattened information access so thoroughly that hoarding knowledge is no longer impressive. What matters now is what you do with it. How you fil... See more