taste
musings on taste
sari and
taste
AI image generation is essentially a truncated exercise in taste; a product of knowing which inputs and keywords to feed the image-mashup machine, and the eye to identify which outputs contain any semblance of artistry. All that is to say: AI itself can’t generate good taste for you.
Elizabeth Goodspeed on the Importance of Taste – And How to Acquire It
in the age of AI being able to select from the vast sea of possibilities becomes the most important skill.
I think of finding high-leverage work as having two interrelated components:
Agency: i.e. some combination of the initiative/proactiveness to try to make things happen, and relentlessness and resourcefulness to make sure you’ll succeed.
Taste: you need a good intuition for what things will and won’t work well to try. Taste is important both “in the large” (picking important problems) and “in the small” (picking approaches to solving those problems that will work well); I usually see people first become great at the latter, then the former.
I mentioned that implicit conviction “comes from something deeper than the cause and effect we perceive in the unfolding of events.” What exactly is this deeper -something? My first attempt to answer this question happened spontaneously, over a decade ago: “Some companies have a soul,” I found myself saying to a friend over lunch, “others are just... See more
Anonymous • Conviction
When I’m traveling, I like to bring back one thing where I say, This could only exist here . As unattainable as it may seem, I want to have things in my life where I say, ‘I can’t link to this. I came upon it by chance, it’s imperfect, it has a soul, and probably no one else has it.’”
Blackbird Spyplane: The unlinked thing with a soul. It can feel
... See moreBlackbird Spyplane • Everyone's Disrupting and It's Exhausting
Everyone in design circles loves to pontificate about taste, but it's always the people with portfolios that look like a Vegas casino who have the most to say. Taste is the emperor's new clothes of the creative industry, claimed by all, possessed by few, recognized only by those who already have it.
But the twisted... See more
- van Schneider
Interestingly, I also find that experiencing Quality i n any one domain (e.g., music or meditation, to use examples that are dear to me) can be helpful for recognizing it in other domains (including business) because Quality’s nature is universal, even as its manifestations are necessarily particular.
Anonymous • Conviction
Alison Roman: “People are so brand-conscious now, and I think they’ve become that way about food. ‘Are those the Fishwife anchovies?’ No, it’s Cento. Or some Spanish brand you’ve never heard of, but it’s the same anchovies inside the tin. People are too conscious about choosing the ‘right’ thing that signifies their taste level, or who they are as
... See moreBlackbird Spyplane • Everyone's Disrupting and It's Exhausting
Scale is quite valuable, but the costs are usually hidden. Consolidation leads to monoculture, it reduces the stock of unique ferments.
Culture, taste, and invention are often bottom-up phenomena. They require the opposite of scale. They require distance, and working alone.
Simon Sarrisx.com