The Futile Pursuit of Taste

Taste is not that interesting.

Everyone has taste. Taste is encoded preferences. It is having opinions on things.

There is no universal definition of what “good taste” looks like. Everyone has their own taste, which depends on context, and constantly evolves.

Taste is not an objective measure, quality, or thing. It is derived from personal intuition about what is good or bad, beautiful or appalling, weird or funny, interesting or boring. We can apply taste to everything we can perceive and judge: aesthetics, products, ideas, people, processes, and more. My personal taste can align with someone else’s in certain domains, and vary widely in others.

The pursuit of taste is therefore a futile pursuit - not because taste should not be developed, but because it is not something to pursue. Taste is intrinsic to us. It is an internal signal to connect with and learn to trust. It can be informed and influenced by our environment and experience, but remains dependent to how our biology interprets and encodes it.

Seeking external models of "good taste" or exposing oneself to as many "tasteful" things as possible does not develop the sense of taste. This would imply that there is such a thing as "tasteful", which again, is a fallacy.

While there is no objective measure of taste, it is true that there are patterns of what “good” looks like in specific domains. Preference opinions tend to converge, primarily because humans are pattern matching engines, and secondarily because it is not feasible to develop or acquire taste in all fields. We tend to outsource our judgement of what “good” looks like to those we trust where we lack the insight to inform our taste, often converging to the most common denominator of opinions. What exemplifies “good taste” is therefore subject to a form of reinforcement learning. We default to outsourcing taste in most domains, validating the common point of view, and reinforcing the status quo. In this way, having "good taste" is more a matter of empathy and social attunement than actually “developing taste”.

What is more interesting is tastemaking.

Tastemaking is the art and science of setting the standard of what “good taste” looks like. It is not about following “good taste”, but about defining it. Tastemakers reset the status quo that aggregate preferences converge towards. They are the ultimate Creative Directors of culture.

Tastemakers inspire and influence others with their own sense of taste. They manifest what they like without needing external validation, which others interpret as a sense of knowing what good looks like. It is largely a function of confidence rather than aesthetic choices (more on this here). The creators, influencers, and disruptors that take ownership of the definition of “good taste” are the ones who lead with it.

The paradox is that by trying to pursue “good taste”, you are not taste-making, but taste-following. You are not setting the standard, but letting others set the standard for you. It can be useful when the intent is to appeal to what is already established, but is not as productive when trying to create something new, win a market, or challenge the norm.

This is specifically why it is reasonable for anyone who is an entrepreneur to dismiss the discourse on taste, and to go back to tuning into their intuition about what good looks like to them. The more they craft and tune their internal radar what good is and should be, the more they can create their proprietary taste definition - in the way that is most aligned with them, and hopefully compels others.