I enjoyed the baroque, philosophical writing here - a style-reflects-content match. A sameness of crisp, concise, professional, or autoregressive writing has enveloped a lot of long-form content—in the same way software has converged to “interfaces so frictionless they feel ghostly.” Sometimes, heaviness is nice. It’s good to feel some weight, some depth, some difficulty. It’s refreshing to read a piece that’s unapologetically complex.
And this good style is also paired with a convincing, well-articulated thesis that challenges a prevailing dogma — chef’s kiss!! I think a core insight is that taste is hollow when it comes from conforming to some aesthetic standard without putting in the effort to understand it. Eg just copying the Linear or Stripe landing page design. Tech does have genuine insights about beauty - eg that function can make an object more beautiful, or that speed and simplicity can be part of the aesthetic appeal of software. But these principles have ossified into dogmas, and it is not taste to adopt them wholesale and apply them to everything thoughtlessly. Taste is about how you’ve learned to see. You can’t learn a way of seeing by just imitating.
At the same time, it was a bit fast-and-loose or hand-wavey with philosophical terms and at times they felt unnecessary or forced. Do you really think people are making Kantian a priori judgements when they believe a restaurant is good because it’s Michelin-starred? People taking Michelin stars at face value - or in other ways accepting dogmas of taste - are not engaging in anything Kant would call “a priori.” They’re not deriving a universal judgment purely from reason, independent of all experience. Rather, they’re relying on a social marker or brand authority. A priori is knowledge grounded in reason alone, but it’s used here as shorthand for unexamined assumptions. This takes a bit away from the essay for me.
Thank you Jeremy. I really appreciate your kind words and this thoughtful response. I particularly appreciate the compliments on the style and argument. Re the casual philosophy - pretty fair criticism and something I will look to improve in my future writing. I think in the example provided, I had a 'seemingly' floating in my head that never made it to the page. But it is careless overall. Thank you again for your words!
The epistemic laziness that devolves taste into fashion is the reason AI art is milquetoast. AI will deliver what you ask it for, and what you do not ask for, it considers unimportant and fills with an average of what it knows. Taste understands that everything is important and curates those details carefully.
It is a bitter pill when you understand that people do not know either what they like or want, but can easily tell you if they like something. What they like is often an iteration on what they have seen previously... mimicry.
I'd love to hear more about what you appreciate about Drake because I find him as lyrically expressive as 3 Lego blocks.
AI art is not always milquetoast. Just like any other medium, you can exercise taste over it. It just takes effort and skill, and AI art is an immature medium that encourages neither of those things. Some art created with AI is genuinely moving, striking, or beautiful, but it’s rare in the seas of slop.
Thank you! Keep your eyes peeled for my next essay which is very relevant to AI art.
Re Drake, the point I'm making is that the complexity in his writing technique is often overlooked for his subject matter. Say what you will about depth of the lyrical contents, but the rhyme technique is world class for a mainstream artist.
I enjoyed the baroque, philosophical writing here - a style-reflects-content match. A sameness of crisp, concise, professional, or autoregressive writing has enveloped a lot of long-form content—in the same way software has converged to “interfaces so frictionless they feel ghostly.” Sometimes, heaviness is nice. It’s good to feel some weight, some depth, some difficulty. It’s refreshing to read a piece that’s unapologetically complex.
And this good style is also paired with a convincing, well-articulated thesis that challenges a prevailing dogma — chef’s kiss!! I think a core insight is that taste is hollow when it comes from conforming to some aesthetic standard without putting in the effort to understand it. Eg just copying the Linear or Stripe landing page design. Tech does have genuine insights about beauty - eg that function can make an object more beautiful, or that speed and simplicity can be part of the aesthetic appeal of software. But these principles have ossified into dogmas, and it is not taste to adopt them wholesale and apply them to everything thoughtlessly. Taste is about how you’ve learned to see. You can’t learn a way of seeing by just imitating.
At the same time, it was a bit fast-and-loose or hand-wavey with philosophical terms and at times they felt unnecessary or forced. Do you really think people are making Kantian a priori judgements when they believe a restaurant is good because it’s Michelin-starred? People taking Michelin stars at face value - or in other ways accepting dogmas of taste - are not engaging in anything Kant would call “a priori.” They’re not deriving a universal judgment purely from reason, independent of all experience. Rather, they’re relying on a social marker or brand authority. A priori is knowledge grounded in reason alone, but it’s used here as shorthand for unexamined assumptions. This takes a bit away from the essay for me.
Thank you Jeremy. I really appreciate your kind words and this thoughtful response. I particularly appreciate the compliments on the style and argument. Re the casual philosophy - pretty fair criticism and something I will look to improve in my future writing. I think in the example provided, I had a 'seemingly' floating in my head that never made it to the page. But it is careless overall. Thank you again for your words!
A well-written piece on a difficult topic.
The epistemic laziness that devolves taste into fashion is the reason AI art is milquetoast. AI will deliver what you ask it for, and what you do not ask for, it considers unimportant and fills with an average of what it knows. Taste understands that everything is important and curates those details carefully.
It is a bitter pill when you understand that people do not know either what they like or want, but can easily tell you if they like something. What they like is often an iteration on what they have seen previously... mimicry.
I'd love to hear more about what you appreciate about Drake because I find him as lyrically expressive as 3 Lego blocks.
AI art is not always milquetoast. Just like any other medium, you can exercise taste over it. It just takes effort and skill, and AI art is an immature medium that encourages neither of those things. Some art created with AI is genuinely moving, striking, or beautiful, but it’s rare in the seas of slop.
Thank you! Keep your eyes peeled for my next essay which is very relevant to AI art.
Re Drake, the point I'm making is that the complexity in his writing technique is often overlooked for his subject matter. Say what you will about depth of the lyrical contents, but the rhyme technique is world class for a mainstream artist.
Fantastic.
Called me out for reading, a priori.
I need to become a writer
Why listening mode is muted for this… you can paste the link to Reader by 11labs anyway