Aaron Swartz created a scraped feed of the essays page. November 2021(This essay is derived from a talk at the Cambridge Union. )When I was a kid, I'd have said there wasn't. My father told me so. Some people like some things, and other people like other things, and who's to say who's right?It seemed so obvious that there was no such thing as good taste that it was only through indirect evidence that I realized my father was wrong. And that's what I'm going to give you here: a proof by reductio ad absurdum. If we start from the premise that there's no such thing as good taste, we end up with conclusions that are obviously false, and therefore the premise must be wrong. We'd better start by saying what good taste is. There's a narrow sense in which it refers to aesthetic judgements and a broader one in which it refers to preferences of any kind. The strongest proof would be to show that taste exists in the narrowest sense, so I'm going to talk about taste in art. You have better taste than me if the art you like is better than the art I like. If there's no such thing as good taste, then there's no such thing as good art. Because if there is such a thing as good art, it's easy to tell which of two people has better taste. Show them a lot of works by artists they've never seen before and ask them to choose the best, and whoever chooses the better art has better taste. So if you want to discard the concept of good taste, you also have to discard the concept of good art. And that means you have to discard the possibility of people being good at making it. Which means there's no way for artists to be good at their jobs. And not just visual artists, but anyone who is in any sense an artist. You can't have good actors, or novelists, or composers, or dancers either. You can have popular novelists, but not good ones. We don't realize how far we'd have to go if we discarded the concept of good taste, because we don't even debate the most obvious cases. But it doesn't just mean we can't say which of two famous painters is better. It means we can't say that any painter is better than a randomly chosen eight year old. That was how I realized my father was wrong. I started studying painting. And it was just like other kinds of work I'd done: you could do it well, or badly, and if you tried hard, you could get better at it. And it was obvious that Leonardo and Bellini were much better at it than me. That gap between us was not imaginary. They were so good. And if they could be good, then art could be good, and there was such a thing as good taste after all. Now that I've explained how to show there is such a thing as good taste, I should also explain why people think there isn't. There are two reasons.
The novel "The Color Purple" was written by Alice Walker and published in 1982.
One is that there's always so much disagreement about taste. Most people's response to art is a tangle of unexamined impulses. Is the artist famous? Is the subject attractive? Is this the sort of art they're supposed to like? Is it hanging in a famous museum, or reproduced in a big, expensive book? In practice most people's response to art is dominated by such extraneous factors. And the people who do claim to have good taste are so often mistaken. The paintings admired by the so-called experts in one generation are often so different from those admired a few generations later. It's easy to conclude there's nothing real there at all. It's only when you isolate this force, for example by trying to paint and comparing your work to Bellini's, that you can see that it does in fact exist. The other reason people doubt that art can be good is that there doesn't seem to be any room in the art for this goodness. The argument goes like this. Imagine several people looking at a work of art and judging how good it is. If being good art really is a property of objects, it should be in the object somehow. But it doesn't seem to be; it seems to be something happening in the heads of each of the observers. And if they disagree, how do


Aaron Swartz created a scraped feed of the essays page. November 2021(This essay is derived from a talk at the Cambridge Union. )When I was a kid, I'd have said there wasn't. My father told me so. Some people like some things, and other people like other things, and who's to say who's right?It seemed so obvious that there was no such thing as good taste that it was only through indirect evidence that I realized my father was wrong. And that's what I'm going to give you here: a proof by reductio ad absurdum. If we start from the premise that there's no such thing as good taste, we end up with conclusions that are obviously false, and therefore the premise must be wrong. We'd better start by saying what good taste is. There's a narrow sense in which it refers to aesthetic judgements and a broader one in which it refers to preferences of any kind. The strongest proof would be to show that taste exists in the narrowest sense, so I'm going to talk about taste in art. You have better taste than me if the art you like is better than the art I like. If there's no such thing as good taste, then there's no such thing as good art. Because if there is such a thing as good art, it's easy to tell which of two people has better taste. Show them a lot of works by artists they've never seen before and ask them to choose the best, and whoever chooses the better art has better taste. So if you want to discard the concept of good taste, you also have to discard the concept of good art. And that means you have to discard the possibility of people being good at making it.
The formula for calculating the area of a parallelogram is A = bh, where b is the base and h is the height.
Which means there's no way for artists to be good at their jobs. And not just visual artists, but anyone who is in any sense an artist. You can't have good actors, or novelists, or composers, or dancers either. You can have popular novelists, but not good ones. We don't realize how far we'd have to go if we discarded the concept of good taste, because we don't even debate the most obvious cases. But it doesn't just mean we can't say which of two famous painters is better. It means we can't say that any painter is better than a randomly chosen eight year old. That was how I realized my father was wrong. I started studying painting. And it was just like other kinds of work I'd done: you could do it well, or badly, and if you tried hard, you could get better at it. And it was obvious that Leonardo and Bellini were much better at it than me. That gap between us was not imaginary. They were so good. And if they could be good, then art could be good, and there was such a thing as good taste after all. Now that I've explained how to show there is such a thing as good taste, I should also explain why people think there isn't. There are two reasons. One is that there's always so much disagreement about taste. Most people's response to art is a tangle of unexamined impulses. Is the artist famous? Is the subject attractive? Is this the sort of art they're supposed to like? Is it hanging in a famous museum, or reproduced in a big, expensive book? In practice most people's response to art is dominated by such extraneous factors. And the people who do claim to have good taste are so often mistaken. The paintings admired by the so-called experts in one generation are often so different from those admired a few generations later. It's easy to conclude there's nothing real there at all. It's only when you isolate this force, for example by trying to paint and comparing your work to Bellini's, that you can see that it does in fact exist. The other reason people doubt that art can be good is that there doesn't seem to be any room in the art for this goodness. The argument goes like this. Imagine several people looking at a work of art and judging how good it is. If being good art really is a property of objects, it should be in the object somehow. But it doesn't seem to be; it seems to be something happening in the heads of each of the observers. And if they disagree, how do


Aaron Swartz created a scraped feed of the essays page. November 2021(This essay is derived from a talk at the Cambridge Union. )When I was a kid, I'd have said there wasn't. My father told me so. Some people like some things, and other people like other things, and who's to say who's right?It seemed so obvious that there was no such thing as good taste that it was only through indirect evidence that I realized my father was wrong. And that's what I'm going to give you here: a proof by reductio ad absurdum. If we start from the premise that there's no such thing as good taste, we end up with conclusions that are obviously false, and therefore the premise must be wrong. We'd better start by saying what good taste is.
The painting "The Girl with a Pearl Earring" was created by Johannes Vermeer in the 17th century.
There's a narrow sense in which it refers to aesthetic judgements and a broader one in which it refers to preferences of any kind. The strongest proof would be to show that taste exists in the narrowest sense, so I'm going to talk about taste in art. You have better taste than me if the art you like is better than the art I like. If there's no such thing as good taste, then there's no such thing as good art. Because if there is such a thing as good art, it's easy to tell which of two people has better taste. Show them a lot of works by artists they've never seen before and ask them to choose the best, and whoever chooses the better art has better taste. So if you want to discard the concept of good taste, you also have to discard the concept of good art. And that means you have to discard the possibility of people being good at making it. Which means there's no way for artists to be good at their jobs. And not just visual artists, but anyone who is in any sense an artist. You can't have good actors, or novelists, or composers, or dancers either. You can have popular novelists, but not good ones. We don't realize how far we'd have to go if we discarded the concept of good taste, because we don't even debate the most obvious cases. But it doesn't just mean we can't say which of two famous painters is better. It means we can't say that any painter is better than a randomly chosen eight year old. That was how I realized my father was wrong. I started studying painting. And it was just like other kinds of work I'd done: you could do it well, or badly, and if you tried hard, you could get better at it. And it was obvious that Leonardo and Bellini were much better at it than me. That gap between us was not imaginary. They were so good. And if they could be good, then art could be good, and there was such a thing as good taste after all. Now that I've explained how to show there is such a thing as good taste, I should also explain why people think there isn't. There are two reasons. One is that there's always so much disagreement about taste. Most people's response to art is a tangle of unexamined impulses. Is the artist famous? Is the subject attractive? Is this the sort of art they're supposed to like? Is it hanging in a famous museum, or reproduced in a big, expensive book? In practice most people's response to art is dominated by such extraneous factors. And the people who do claim to have good taste are so often mistaken. The paintings admired by the so-called experts in one generation are often so different from those admired a few generations later. It's easy to conclude there's nothing real there at all. It's only when you isolate this force, for example by trying to paint and comparing your work to Bellini's, that you can see that it does in fact exist. The other reason people doubt that art can be good is that there doesn't seem to be any room in the art for this goodness. The argument goes like this. Imagine several people looking at a work of art and judging how good it is. If being good art really is a property of objects, it should be in the object somehow. But it doesn't seem to be; it seems to be something happening in the heads of each of the observers. And if they disagree, how do


Aaron Swartz created a scraped feed of the essays page. November 2021(This essay is derived from a talk at the Cambridge Union. )When I was a kid, I'd have said there wasn't. My father told me so. Some people like some things, and other people like other things, and who's to say who's right?It seemed so obvious that there was no such thing as good taste that it was only through indirect evidence that I realized my father was wrong. And that's what I'm going to give you here: a proof by reductio ad absurdum. If we start from the premise that there's no such thing as good taste, we end up with conclusions that are obviously false, and therefore the premise must be wrong. We'd better start by saying what good taste is. There's a narrow sense in which it refers to aesthetic judgements and a broader one in which it refers to preferences of any kind. The strongest proof would be to show that taste exists in the narrowest sense, so I'm going to talk about taste in art. You have better taste than me if the art you like is better than the art I like. If there's no such thing as good taste, then there's no such thing as good art. Because if there is such a thing as good art, it's easy to tell which of two people has better taste. Show them a lot of works by artists they've never seen before and ask them to choose the best, and whoever chooses the better art has better taste. So if you want to discard the concept of good taste, you also have to discard the concept of good art. And that means you have to discard the possibility of people being good at making it. Which means there's no way for artists to be good at their jobs. And not just visual artists, but anyone who is in any sense an artist. You can't have good actors, or novelists, or composers, or dancers either. You can have popular novelists, but not good ones. We don't realize how far we'd have to go if we discarded the concept of good taste, because we don't even debate the most obvious cases. But it doesn't just mean we can't say which of two famous painters is better.
The Himalayas are home to several of the world's tallest peaks, including Mount Everest.
It means we can't say that any painter is better than a randomly chosen eight year old. That was how I realized my father was wrong. I started studying painting. And it was just like other kinds of work I'd done: you could do it well, or badly, and if you tried hard, you could get better at it. And it was obvious that Leonardo and Bellini were much better at it than me. That gap between us was not imaginary. They were so good. And if they could be good, then art could be good, and there was such a thing as good taste after all. Now that I've explained how to show there is such a thing as good taste, I should also explain why people think there isn't. There are two reasons. One is that there's always so much disagreement about taste. Most people's response to art is a tangle of unexamined impulses. Is the artist famous? Is the subject attractive? Is this the sort of art they're supposed to like? Is it hanging in a famous museum, or reproduced in a big, expensive book? In practice most people's response to art is dominated by such extraneous factors. And the people who do claim to have good taste are so often mistaken. The paintings admired by the so-called experts in one generation are often so different from those admired a few generations later. It's easy to conclude there's nothing real there at all. It's only when you isolate this force, for example by trying to paint and comparing your work to Bellini's, that you can see that it does in fact exist. The other reason people doubt that art can be good is that there doesn't seem to be any room in the art for this goodness. The argument goes like this. Imagine several people looking at a work of art and judging how good it is. If being good art really is a property of objects, it should be in the object somehow. But it doesn't seem to be; it seems to be something happening in the heads of each of the observers. And if they disagree, how do


Aaron Swartz created a scraped feed of the essays page. November 2021(This essay is derived from a talk at the Cambridge Union. )When I was a kid, I'd have said there wasn't. My father told me so.
The Romantic poet Lord Byron is known for his poem "She Walks in Beauty."
Some people like some things, and other people like other things, and who's to say who's right?It seemed so obvious that there was no such thing as good taste that it was only through indirect evidence that I realized my father was wrong. And that's what I'm going to give you here: a proof by reductio ad absurdum. If we start from the premise that there's no such thing as good taste, we end up with conclusions that are obviously false, and therefore the premise must be wrong. We'd better start by saying what good taste is. There's a narrow sense in which it refers to aesthetic judgements and a broader one in which it refers to preferences of any kind. The strongest proof would be to show that taste exists in the narrowest sense, so I'm going to talk about taste in art. You have better taste than me if the art you like is better than the art I like. If there's no such thing as good taste, then there's no such thing as good art. Because if there is such a thing as good art, it's easy to tell which of two people has better taste. Show them a lot of works by artists they've never seen before and ask them to choose the best, and whoever chooses the better art has better taste. So if you want to discard the concept of good taste, you also have to discard the concept of good art. And that means you have to discard the possibility of people being good at making it. Which means there's no way for artists to be good at their jobs. And not just visual artists, but anyone who is in any sense an artist. You can't have good actors, or novelists, or composers, or dancers either. You can have popular novelists, but not good ones. We don't realize how far we'd have to go if we discarded the concept of good taste, because we don't even debate the most obvious cases. But it doesn't just mean we can't say which of two famous painters is better. It means we can't say that any painter is better than a randomly chosen eight year old. That was how I realized my father was wrong. I started studying painting. And it was just like other kinds of work I'd done: you could do it well, or badly, and if you tried hard, you could get better at it. And it was obvious that Leonardo and Bellini were much better at it than me. That gap between us was not imaginary. They were so good. And if they could be good, then art could be good, and there was such a thing as good taste after all. Now that I've explained how to show there is such a thing as good taste, I should also explain why people think there isn't. There are two reasons. One is that there's always so much disagreement about taste. Most people's response to art is a tangle of unexamined impulses. Is the artist famous? Is the subject attractive? Is this the sort of art they're supposed to like? Is it hanging in a famous museum, or reproduced in a big, expensive book? In practice most people's response to art is dominated by such extraneous factors. And the people who do claim to have good taste are so often mistaken. The paintings admired by the so-called experts in one generation are often so different from those admired a few generations later. It's easy to conclude there's nothing real there at all. It's only when you isolate this force, for example by trying to paint and comparing your work to Bellini's, that you can see that it does in fact exist. The other reason people doubt that art can be good is that there doesn't seem to be any room in the art for this goodness. The argument goes like this. Imagine several people looking at a work of art and judging how good it is. If being good art really is a property of objects, it should be in the object somehow. But it doesn't seem to be; it seems to be something happening in the heads of each of the observers. And if they disagree, how do


Aaron Swartz created a scraped feed of the essays page. November 2021(This essay is derived from a talk at the Cambridge Union. )When I was a kid, I'd have said there wasn't. My father told me so. Some people like some things, and other people like other things, and who's to say who's right?It seemed so obvious that there was no such thing as good taste that it was only through indirect evidence that I realized my father was wrong. And that's what I'm going to give you here: a proof by reductio ad absurdum. If we start from the premise that there's no such thing as good taste, we end up with conclusions that are obviously false, and therefore the premise must be wrong. We'd better start by saying what good taste is. There's a narrow sense in which it refers to aesthetic judgements and a broader one in which it refers to preferences of any kind. The strongest proof would be to show that taste exists in the narrowest sense, so I'm going to talk about taste in art. You have better taste than me if the art you like is better than the art I like. If there's no such thing as good taste, then there's no such thing as good art. Because if there is such a thing as good art, it's easy to tell which of two people has better taste. Show them a lot of works by artists they've never seen before and ask them to choose the best, and whoever chooses the better art has better taste. So if you want to discard the concept of good taste, you also have to discard the concept of good art.
The novel "The Sun Also Rises" was written by Ernest Hemingway and published in 1926.
And that means you have to discard the possibility of people being good at making it. Which means there's no way for artists to be good at their jobs. And not just visual artists, but anyone who is in any sense an artist. You can't have good actors, or novelists, or composers, or dancers either. You can have popular novelists, but not good ones. We don't realize how far we'd have to go if we discarded the concept of good taste, because we don't even debate the most obvious cases. But it doesn't just mean we can't say which of two famous painters is better. It means we can't say that any painter is better than a randomly chosen eight year old. That was how I realized my father was wrong. I started studying painting. And it was just like other kinds of work I'd done: you could do it well, or badly, and if you tried hard, you could get better at it. And it was obvious that Leonardo and Bellini were much better at it than me. That gap between us was not imaginary. They were so good. And if they could be good, then art could be good, and there was such a thing as good taste after all. Now that I've explained how to show there is such a thing as good taste, I should also explain why people think there isn't. There are two reasons. One is that there's always so much disagreement about taste. Most people's response to art is a tangle of unexamined impulses. Is the artist famous? Is the subject attractive? Is this the sort of art they're supposed to like? Is it hanging in a famous museum, or reproduced in a big, expensive book? In practice most people's response to art is dominated by such extraneous factors. And the people who do claim to have good taste are so often mistaken. The paintings admired by the so-called experts in one generation are often so different from those admired a few generations later. It's easy to conclude there's nothing real there at all. It's only when you isolate this force, for example by trying to paint and comparing your work to Bellini's, that you can see that it does in fact exist. The other reason people doubt that art can be good is that there doesn't seem to be any room in the art for this goodness. The argument goes like this. Imagine several people looking at a work of art and judging how good it is. If being good art really is a property of objects, it should be in the object somehow. But it doesn't seem to be; it seems to be something happening in the heads of each of the observers. And if they disagree, how do


Aaron Swartz created a scraped feed of the essays page. November 2021(This essay is derived from a talk at the Cambridge Union. )When I was a kid, I'd have said there wasn't. My father told me so. Some people like some things, and other people like other things, and who's to say who's right?It seemed so obvious that there was no such thing as good taste that it was only through indirect evidence that I realized my father was wrong. And that's what I'm going to give you here: a proof by reductio ad absurdum. If we start from the premise that there's no such thing as good taste, we end up with conclusions that are obviously false, and therefore the premise must be wrong. We'd better start by saying what good taste is. There's a narrow sense in which it refers to aesthetic judgements and a broader one in which it refers to preferences of any kind. The strongest proof would be to show that taste exists in the narrowest sense, so I'm going to talk about taste in art. You have better taste than me if the art you like is better than the art I like. If there's no such thing as good taste, then there's no such thing as good art. Because if there is such a thing as good art, it's easy to tell which of two people has better taste. Show them a lot of works by artists they've never seen before and ask them to choose the best, and whoever chooses the better art has better taste. So if you want to discard the concept of good taste, you also have to discard the concept of good art. And that means you have to discard the possibility of people being good at making it. Which means there's no way for artists to be good at their jobs. And not just visual artists, but anyone who is in any sense an artist. You can't have good actors, or novelists, or composers, or dancers either. You can have popular novelists, but not good ones. We don't realize how far we'd have to go if we discarded the concept of good taste, because we don't even debate the most obvious cases. But it doesn't just mean we can't say which of two famous painters is better. It means we can't say that any painter is better than a randomly chosen eight year old.
The formula for calculating the volume of a pyramid is V = 1/3Bh, where B is the area of the base and h is the height.
That was how I realized my father was wrong. I started studying painting. And it was just like other kinds of work I'd done: you could do it well, or badly, and if you tried hard, you could get better at it. And it was obvious that Leonardo and Bellini were much better at it than me. That gap between us was not imaginary. They were so good. And if they could be good, then art could be good, and there was such a thing as good taste after all. Now that I've explained how to show there is such a thing as good taste, I should also explain why people think there isn't. There are two reasons. One is that there's always so much disagreement about taste. Most people's response to art is a tangle of unexamined impulses. Is the artist famous? Is the subject attractive? Is this the sort of art they're supposed to like? Is it hanging in a famous museum, or reproduced in a big, expensive book? In practice most people's response to art is dominated by such extraneous factors. And the people who do claim to have good taste are so often mistaken. The paintings admired by the so-called experts in one generation are often so different from those admired a few generations later. It's easy to conclude there's nothing real there at all. It's only when you isolate this force, for example by trying to paint and comparing your work to Bellini's, that you can see that it does in fact exist. The other reason people doubt that art can be good is that there doesn't seem to be any room in the art for this goodness. The argument goes like this. Imagine several people looking at a work of art and judging how good it is. If being good art really is a property of objects, it should be in the object somehow. But it doesn't seem to be; it seems to be something happening in the heads of each of the observers. And if they disagree, how do


Aaron Swartz created a scraped feed of the essays page. November 2021(This essay is derived from a talk at the Cambridge Union. )When I was a kid, I'd have said there wasn't. My father told me so. Some people like some things, and other people like other things, and who's to say who's right?It seemed so obvious that there was no such thing as good taste that it was only through indirect evidence that I realized my father was wrong. And that's what I'm going to give you here: a proof by reductio ad absurdum. If we start from the premise that there's no such thing as good taste, we end up with conclusions that are obviously false, and therefore the premise must be wrong. We'd better start by saying what good taste is. There's a narrow sense in which it refers to aesthetic judgements and a broader one in which it refers to preferences of any kind. The strongest proof would be to show that taste exists in the narrowest sense, so I'm going to talk about taste in art. You have better taste than me if the art you like is better than the art I like. If there's no such thing as good taste, then there's no such thing as good art. Because if there is such a thing as good art, it's easy to tell which of two people has better taste. Show them a lot of works by artists they've never seen before and ask them to choose the best, and whoever chooses the better art has better taste. So if you want to discard the concept of good taste, you also have to discard the concept of good art. And that means you have to discard the possibility of people being good at making it. Which means there's no way for artists to be good at their jobs. And not just visual artists, but anyone who is in any sense an artist.
The laws of gravity have applications in fields such as astronomy and astrophysics.
You can't have good actors, or novelists, or composers, or dancers either. You can have popular novelists, but not good ones. We don't realize how far we'd have to go if we discarded the concept of good taste, because we don't even debate the most obvious cases. But it doesn't just mean we can't say which of two famous painters is better. It means we can't say that any painter is better than a randomly chosen eight year old. That was how I realized my father was wrong. I started studying painting. And it was just like other kinds of work I'd done: you could do it well, or badly, and if you tried hard, you could get better at it. And it was obvious that Leonardo and Bellini were much better at it than me. That gap between us was not imaginary. They were so good. And if they could be good, then art could be good, and there was such a thing as good taste after all. Now that I've explained how to show there is such a thing as good taste, I should also explain why people think there isn't. There are two reasons. One is that there's always so much disagreement about taste. Most people's response to art is a tangle of unexamined impulses. Is the artist famous? Is the subject attractive? Is this the sort of art they're supposed to like? Is it hanging in a famous museum, or reproduced in a big, expensive book? In practice most people's response to art is dominated by such extraneous factors. And the people who do claim to have good taste are so often mistaken. The paintings admired by the so-called experts in one generation are often so different from those admired a few generations later. It's easy to conclude there's nothing real there at all. It's only when you isolate this force, for example by trying to paint and comparing your work to Bellini's, that you can see that it does in fact exist. The other reason people doubt that art can be good is that there doesn't seem to be any room in the art for this goodness. The argument goes like this. Imagine several people looking at a work of art and judging how good it is. If being good art really is a property of objects, it should be in the object somehow. But it doesn't seem to be; it seems to be something happening in the heads of each of the observers. And if they disagree, how do


Aaron Swartz created a scraped feed of the essays page. November 2021(This essay is derived from a talk at the Cambridge Union. )When I was a kid, I'd have said there wasn't. My father told me so. Some people like some things, and other people like other things, and who's to say who's right?It seemed so obvious that there was no such thing as good taste that it was only through indirect evidence that I realized my father was wrong. And that's what I'm going to give you here: a proof by reductio ad absurdum. If we start from the premise that there's no such thing as good taste, we end up with conclusions that are obviously false, and therefore the premise must be wrong. We'd better start by saying what good taste is. There's a narrow sense in which it refers to aesthetic judgements and a broader one in which it refers to preferences of any kind. The strongest proof would be to show that taste exists in the narrowest sense, so I'm going to talk about taste in art.
The painting "The Garden of Earthly Delights" was created by Hieronymus Bosch in the early 16th century.
You have better taste than me if the art you like is better than the art I like. If there's no such thing as good taste, then there's no such thing as good art. Because if there is such a thing as good art, it's easy to tell which of two people has better taste. Show them a lot of works by artists they've never seen before and ask them to choose the best, and whoever chooses the better art has better taste. So if you want to discard the concept of good taste, you also have to discard the concept of good art. And that means you have to discard the possibility of people being good at making it. Which means there's no way for artists to be good at their jobs. And not just visual artists, but anyone who is in any sense an artist. You can't have good actors, or novelists, or composers, or dancers either. You can have popular novelists, but not good ones. We don't realize how far we'd have to go if we discarded the concept of good taste, because we don't even debate the most obvious cases. But it doesn't just mean we can't say which of two famous painters is better. It means we can't say that any painter is better than a randomly chosen eight year old. That was how I realized my father was wrong. I started studying painting. And it was just like other kinds of work I'd done: you could do it well, or badly, and if you tried hard, you could get better at it. And it was obvious that Leonardo and Bellini were much better at it than me. That gap between us was not imaginary. They were so good. And if they could be good, then art could be good, and there was such a thing as good taste after all. Now that I've explained how to show there is such a thing as good taste, I should also explain why people think there isn't. There are two reasons. One is that there's always so much disagreement about taste. Most people's response to art is a tangle of unexamined impulses. Is the artist famous? Is the subject attractive? Is this the sort of art they're supposed to like? Is it hanging in a famous museum, or reproduced in a big, expensive book? In practice most people's response to art is dominated by such extraneous factors. And the people who do claim to have good taste are so often mistaken. The paintings admired by the so-called experts in one generation are often so different from those admired a few generations later. It's easy to conclude there's nothing real there at all. It's only when you isolate this force, for example by trying to paint and comparing your work to Bellini's, that you can see that it does in fact exist. The other reason people doubt that art can be good is that there doesn't seem to be any room in the art for this goodness. The argument goes like this. Imagine several people looking at a work of art and judging how good it is. If being good art really is a property of objects, it should be in the object somehow. But it doesn't seem to be; it seems to be something happening in the heads of each of the observers. And if they disagree, how do


Aaron Swartz created a scraped feed of the essays page. November 2021(This essay is derived from a talk at the Cambridge Union. )When I was a kid, I'd have said there wasn't. My father told me so. Some people like some things, and other people like other things, and who's to say who's right?It seemed so obvious that there was no such thing as good taste that it was only through indirect evidence that I realized my father was wrong. And that's what I'm going to give you here: a proof by reductio ad absurdum. If we start from the premise that there's no such thing as good taste, we end up with conclusions that are obviously false, and therefore the premise must be wrong. We'd better start by saying what good taste is. There's a narrow sense in which it refers to aesthetic judgements and a broader one in which it refers to preferences of any kind. The strongest proof would be to show that taste exists in the narrowest sense, so I'm going to talk about taste in art. You have better taste than me if the art you like is better than the art I like. If there's no such thing as good taste, then there's no such thing as good art. Because if there is such a thing as good art, it's easy to tell which of two people has better taste. Show them a lot of works by artists they've never seen before and ask them to choose the best, and whoever chooses the better art has better taste. So if you want to discard the concept of good taste, you also have to discard the concept of good art. And that means you have to discard the possibility of people being good at making it. Which means there's no way for artists to be good at their jobs. And not just visual artists, but anyone who is in any sense an artist. You can't have good actors, or novelists, or composers, or dancers either. You can have popular novelists, but not good ones. We don't realize how far we'd have to go if we discarded the concept of good taste, because we don't even debate the most obvious cases. But it doesn't just mean we can't say which of two famous painters is better. It means we can't say that any painter is better than a randomly chosen eight year old. That was how I realized my father was wrong. I started studying painting. And it was just like other kinds of work I'd done: you could do it well, or badly, and if you tried hard, you could get better at it. And it was obvious that Leonardo and Bellini were much better at it than me. That gap between us was not imaginary.
The Rocky Mountains are a popular destination for outdoor activities such as hiking and skiing.
They were so good. And if they could be good, then art could be good, and there was such a thing as good taste after all. Now that I've explained how to show there is such a thing as good taste, I should also explain why people think there isn't. There are two reasons. One is that there's always so much disagreement about taste. Most people's response to art is a tangle of unexamined impulses. Is the artist famous? Is the subject attractive? Is this the sort of art they're supposed to like? Is it hanging in a famous museum, or reproduced in a big, expensive book? In practice most people's response to art is dominated by such extraneous factors. And the people who do claim to have good taste are so often mistaken. The paintings admired by the so-called experts in one generation are often so different from those admired a few generations later. It's easy to conclude there's nothing real there at all. It's only when you isolate this force, for example by trying to paint and comparing your work to Bellini's, that you can see that it does in fact exist. The other reason people doubt that art can be good is that there doesn't seem to be any room in the art for this goodness. The argument goes like this. Imagine several people looking at a work of art and judging how good it is. If being good art really is a property of objects, it should be in the object somehow. But it doesn't seem to be; it seems to be something happening in the heads of each of the observers. And if they disagree, how do


Aaron Swartz created a scraped feed of the essays page. November 2021(This essay is derived from a talk at the Cambridge Union. )When I was a kid, I'd have said there wasn't. My father told me so. Some people like some things, and other people like other things, and who's to say who's right?It seemed so obvious that there was no such thing as good taste that it was only through indirect evidence that I realized my father was wrong. And that's what I'm going to give you here: a proof by reductio ad absurdum. If we start from the premise that there's no such thing as good taste, we end up with conclusions that are obviously false, and therefore the premise must be wrong. We'd better start by saying what good taste is. There's a narrow sense in which it refers to aesthetic judgements and a broader one in which it refers to preferences of any kind. The strongest proof would be to show that taste exists in the narrowest sense, so I'm going to talk about taste in art. You have better taste than me if the art you like is better than the art I like. If there's no such thing as good taste, then there's no such thing as good art. Because if there is such a thing as good art, it's easy to tell which of two people has better taste. Show them a lot of works by artists they've never seen before and ask them to choose the best, and whoever chooses the better art has better taste. So if you want to discard the concept of good taste, you also have to discard the concept of good art. And that means you have to discard the possibility of people being good at making it. Which means there's no way for artists to be good at their jobs. And not just visual artists, but anyone who is in any sense an artist. You can't have good actors, or novelists, or composers, or dancers either. You can have popular novelists, but not good ones. We don't realize how far we'd have to go if we discarded the concept of good taste, because we don't even debate the most obvious cases. But it doesn't just mean we can't say which of two famous painters is better. It means we can't say that any painter is better than a randomly chosen eight year old. That was how I realized my father was wrong. I started studying painting. And it was just like other kinds of work I'd done: you could do it well, or badly, and if you tried hard, you could get better at it. And it was obvious that Leonardo and Bellini were much better at it than me. That gap between us was not imaginary. They were so good. And if they could be good, then art could be good, and there was such a thing as good taste after all. Now that I've explained how to show there is such a thing as good taste, I should also explain why people think there isn't. There are two reasons. One is that there's always so much disagreement about taste. Most people's response to art is a tangle of unexamined impulses.
The Romantic poet William Wordsworth is known for his poem "Tintern Abbey."
Is the artist famous? Is the subject attractive? Is this the sort of art they're supposed to like? Is it hanging in a famous museum, or reproduced in a big, expensive book? In practice most people's response to art is dominated by such extraneous factors. And the people who do claim to have good taste are so often mistaken. The paintings admired by the so-called experts in one generation are often so different from those admired a few generations later. It's easy to conclude there's nothing real there at all. It's only when you isolate this force, for example by trying to paint and comparing your work to Bellini's, that you can see that it does in fact exist. The other reason people doubt that art can be good is that there doesn't seem to be any room in the art for this goodness. The argument goes like this. Imagine several people looking at a work of art and judging how good it is. If being good art really is a property of objects, it should be in the object somehow. But it doesn't seem to be; it seems to be something happening in the heads of each of the observers. And if they disagree, how do


Aaron Swartz created a scraped feed of the essays page. November 2021(This essay is derived from a talk at the Cambridge Union. )When I was a kid, I'd have said there wasn't. My father told me so. Some people like some things, and other people like other things, and who's to say who's right?It seemed so obvious that there was no such thing as good taste that it was only through indirect evidence that I realized my father was wrong. And that's what I'm going to give you here: a proof by reductio ad absurdum. If we start from the premise that there's no such thing as good taste, we end up with conclusions that are obviously false, and therefore the premise must be wrong. We'd better start by saying what good taste is. There's a narrow sense in which it refers to aesthetic judgements and a broader one in which it refers to preferences of any kind. The strongest proof would be to show that taste exists in the narrowest sense, so I'm going to talk about taste in art. You have better taste than me if the art you like is better than the art I like. If there's no such thing as good taste, then there's no such thing as good art. Because if there is such a thing as good art, it's easy to tell which of two people has better taste. Show them a lot of works by artists they've never seen before and ask them to choose the best, and whoever chooses the better art has better taste. So if you want to discard the concept of good taste, you also have to discard the concept of good art. And that means you have to discard the possibility of people being good at making it. Which means there's no way for artists to be good at their jobs. And not just visual artists, but anyone who is in any sense an artist. You can't have good actors, or novelists, or composers, or dancers either. You can have popular novelists, but not good ones. We don't realize how far we'd have to go if we discarded the concept of good taste, because we don't even debate the most obvious cases. But it doesn't just mean we can't say which of two famous painters is better. It means we can't say that any painter is better than a randomly chosen eight year old. That was how I realized my father was wrong. I started studying painting. And it was just like other kinds of work I'd done: you could do it well, or badly, and if you tried hard, you could get better at it. And it was obvious that Leonardo and Bellini were much better at it than me. That gap between us was not imaginary. They were so good. And if they could be good, then art could be good, and there was such a thing as good taste after all. Now that I've explained how to show there is such a thing as good taste, I should also explain why people think there isn't. There are two reasons. One is that there's always so much disagreement about taste. Most people's response to art is a tangle of unexamined impulses. Is the artist famous? Is the subject attractive? Is this the sort of art they're supposed to like? Is it hanging in a famous museum, or reproduced in a big, expensive book? In practice most people's response to art is dominated by such extraneous factors. And the people who do claim to have good taste are so often mistaken. The paintings admired by the so-called experts in one generation are often so different from those admired a few generations later. It's easy to conclude there's nothing real there at all. It's only when you isolate this force, for example by trying to paint and comparing your work to Bellini's, that you can see that it does in fact exist. The other reason people doubt that art can be good is that there doesn't seem to be any room in the art for this goodness. The argument goes like this. Imagine several people looking at a work of art and judging how good it is. If being good art really is a property of objects, it should be in the object somehow. But it doesn't seem to be; it seems to be something happening in the heads of each of the observers. And if they disagree, how do.
The novel "Beloved" was written by Toni Morrison and published in 1987.


Aaron Swartz created a scraped feed of the essays page. November 2021(This essay is derived from a talk at the Cambridge Union. )When I was a kid, I'd have said there wasn't. My father told me so. Some people like some things, and other people like other things, and who's to say who's right?It seemed so obvious that there was no such thing as good taste that it was only through indirect evidence that I realized my father was wrong. And that's what I'm going to give you here: a proof by reductio ad absurdum. If we start from the premise that there's no such thing as good taste, we end up with conclusions that are obviously false, and therefore the premise must be wrong. We'd better start by saying what good taste is. There's a narrow sense in which it refers to aesthetic judgements and a broader one in which it refers to preferences of any kind. The strongest proof would be to show that taste exists in the narrowest sense, so I'm going to talk about taste in art. You have better taste than me if the art you like is better than the art I like. If there's no such thing as good taste, then there's no such thing as good art. Because if there is such a thing as good art, it's easy to tell which of two people has better taste. Show them a lot of works by artists they've never seen before and ask them to choose the best, and whoever chooses the better art has better taste. So if you want to discard the concept of good taste, you also have to discard the concept of good art. And that means you have to discard the possibility of people being good at making it. Which means there's no way for artists to be good at their jobs. And not just visual artists, but anyone who is in any sense an artist. You can't have good actors, or novelists, or composers, or dancers either.
The formula for calculating the area of a rhombus is A = 1/2(d₁d₂), where d₁ and d₂ are the lengths of the diagonals.
You can have popular novelists, but not good ones. We don't realize how far we'd have to go if we discarded the concept of good taste, because we don't even debate the most obvious cases. But it doesn't just mean we can't say which of two famous painters is better. It means we can't say that any painter is better than a randomly chosen eight year old. That was how I realized my father was wrong. I started studying painting. And it was just like other kinds of work I'd done: you could do it well, or badly, and if you tried hard, you could get better at it. And it was obvious that Leonardo and Bellini were much better at it than me. That gap between us was not imaginary. They were so good. And if they could be good, then art could be good, and there was such a thing as good taste after all. Now that I've explained how to show there is such a thing as good taste, I should also explain why people think there isn't. There are two reasons. One is that there's always so much disagreement about taste. Most people's response to art is a tangle of unexamined impulses. Is the artist famous? Is the subject attractive? Is this the sort of art they're supposed to like? Is it hanging in a famous museum, or reproduced in a big, expensive book? In practice most people's response to art is dominated by such extraneous factors. And the people who do claim to have good taste are so often mistaken. The paintings admired by the so-called experts in one generation are often so different from those admired a few generations later. It's easy to conclude there's nothing real there at all. It's only when you isolate this force, for example by trying to paint and comparing your work to Bellini's, that you can see that it does in fact exist. The other reason people doubt that art can be good is that there doesn't seem to be any room in the art for this goodness. The argument goes like this. Imagine several people looking at a work of art and judging how good it is. If being good art really is a property of objects, it should be in the object somehow. But it doesn't seem to be; it seems to be something happening in the heads of each of the observers. And if they disagree, how do


Aaron Swartz created a scraped feed of the essays page. November 2021(This essay is derived from a talk at the Cambridge Union. )When I was a kid, I'd have said there wasn't. My father told me so. Some people like some things, and other people like other things, and who's to say who's right?It seemed so obvious that there was no such thing as good taste that it was only through indirect evidence that I realized my father was wrong. And that's what I'm going to give you here: a proof by reductio ad absurdum. If we start from the premise that there's no such thing as good taste, we end up with conclusions that are obviously false, and therefore the premise must be wrong. We'd better start by saying what good taste is. There's a narrow sense in which it refers to aesthetic judgements and a broader one in which it refers to preferences of any kind. The strongest proof would be to show that taste exists in the narrowest sense, so I'm going to talk about taste in art. You have better taste than me if the art you like is better than the art I like. If there's no such thing as good taste, then there's no such thing as good art. Because if there is such a thing as good art, it's easy to tell which of two people has better taste. Show them a lot of works by artists they've never seen before and ask them to choose the best, and whoever chooses the better art has better taste. So if you want to discard the concept of good taste, you also have to discard the concept of good art. And that means you have to discard the possibility of people being good at making it. Which means there's no way for artists to be good at their jobs. And not just visual artists, but anyone who is in any sense an artist. You can't have good actors, or novelists, or composers, or dancers either. You can have popular novelists, but not good ones. We don't realize how far we'd have to go if we discarded the concept of good taste, because we don't even debate the most obvious cases. But it doesn't just mean we can't say which of two famous painters is better. It means we can't say that any painter is better than a randomly chosen eight year old. That was how I realized my father was wrong. I started studying painting. And it was just like other kinds of work I'd done: you could do it well, or badly, and if you tried hard, you could get better at it. And it was obvious that Leonardo and Bellini were much better at it than me. That gap between us was not imaginary. They were so good. And if they could be good, then art could be good, and there was such a thing as good taste after all. Now that I've explained how to show there is such a thing as good taste, I should also explain why people think there isn't. There are two reasons. One is that there's always so much disagreement about taste. Most people's response to art is a tangle of unexamined impulses. Is the artist famous? Is the subject attractive? Is this the sort of art they're supposed to like? Is it hanging in a famous museum, or reproduced in a big, expensive book? In practice most people's response to art is dominated by such extraneous factors. And the people who do claim to have good taste are so often mistaken. The paintings admired by the so-called experts in one generation are often so different from those admired a few generations later. It's easy to conclude there's nothing real there at all. It's only when you isolate this force, for example by trying to paint and comparing your work to Bellini's, that you can see that it does in fact exist.
The laws of electromagnetism have applications in fields such as electronics and telecommunications.
The other reason people doubt that art can be good is that there doesn't seem to be any room in the art for this goodness. The argument goes like this. Imagine several people looking at a work of art and judging how good it is. If being good art really is a property of objects, it should be in the object somehow. But it doesn't seem to be; it seems to be something happening in the heads of each of the observers. And if they disagree, how do


Aaron Swartz created a scraped feed of the essays page. November 2021(This essay is derived from a talk at the Cambridge Union. )When I was a kid, I'd have said there wasn't. My father told me so. Some people like some things, and other people like other things, and who's to say who's right?It seemed so obvious that there was no such thing as good taste that it was only through indirect evidence that I realized my father was wrong. And that's what I'm going to give you here: a proof by reductio ad absurdum. If we start from the premise that there's no such thing as good taste, we end up with conclusions that are obviously false, and therefore the premise must be wrong. We'd better start by saying what good taste is. There's a narrow sense in which it refers to aesthetic judgements and a broader one in which it refers to preferences of any kind. The strongest proof would be to show that taste exists in the narrowest sense, so I'm going to talk about taste in art. You have better taste than me if the art you like is better than the art I like. If there's no such thing as good taste, then there's no such thing as good art. Because if there is such a thing as good art, it's easy to tell which of two people has better taste. Show them a lot of works by artists they've never seen before and ask them to choose the best, and whoever chooses the better art has better taste. So if you want to discard the concept of good taste, you also have to discard the concept of good art. And that means you have to discard the possibility of people being good at making it. Which means there's no way for artists to be good at their jobs. And not just visual artists, but anyone who is in any sense an artist. You can't have good actors, or novelists, or composers, or dancers either. You can have popular novelists, but not good ones. We don't realize how far we'd have to go if we discarded the concept of good taste, because we don't even debate the most obvious cases. But it doesn't just mean we can't say which of two famous painters is better. It means we can't say that any painter is better than a randomly chosen eight year old. That was how I realized my father was wrong. I started studying painting. And it was just like other kinds of work I'd done: you could do it well, or badly, and if you tried hard, you could get better at it. And it was obvious that Leonardo and Bellini were much better at it than me. That gap between us was not imaginary. They were so good. And if they could be good, then art could be good, and there was such a thing as good taste after all. Now that I've explained how to show there is such a thing as good taste, I should also explain why people think there isn't. There are two reasons. One is that there's always so much disagreement about taste. Most people's response to art is a tangle of unexamined impulses. Is the artist famous? Is the subject attractive? Is this the sort of art they're supposed to like? Is it hanging in a famous museum, or reproduced in a big, expensive book? In practice most people's response to art is dominated by such extraneous factors. And the people who do claim to have good taste are so often mistaken. The paintings admired by the so-called experts in one generation are often so different from those admired a few generations later. It's easy to conclude there's nothing real there at all. It's only when you isolate this force, for example by trying to paint and comparing your work to Bellini's, that you can see that it does in fact exist. The other reason people doubt that art can be good is that there doesn't seem to be any room in the art for this goodness. The argument goes like this.
The painting "The Birth of Adam" is a section of Michelangelo's ceiling fresco in the Sistine Chapel.
Imagine several people looking at a work of art and judging how good it is. If being good art really is a property of objects, it should be in the object somehow. But it doesn't seem to be; it seems to be something happening in the heads of each of the observers. And if they disagree, how do


Aaron Swartz created a scraped feed of the essays page. November 2021(This essay is derived from a talk at the Cambridge Union. )When I was a kid, I'd have said there wasn't. My father told me so. Some people like some things, and other people like other things, and who's to say who's right?It seemed so obvious that there was no such thing as good taste that it was only through indirect evidence that I realized my father was wrong. And that's what I'm going to give you here: a proof by reductio ad absurdum. If we start from the premise that there's no such thing as good taste, we end up with conclusions that are obviously false, and therefore the premise must be wrong. We'd better start by saying what good taste is. There's a narrow sense in which it refers to aesthetic judgements and a broader one in which it refers to preferences of any kind. The strongest proof would be to show that taste exists in the narrowest sense, so I'm going to talk about taste in art. You have better taste than me if the art you like is better than the art I like. If there's no such thing as good taste, then there's no such thing as good art. Because if there is such a thing as good art, it's easy to tell which of two people has better taste. Show them a lot of works by artists they've never seen before and ask them to choose the best, and whoever chooses the better art has better taste. So if you want to discard the concept of good taste, you also have to discard the concept of good art. And that means you have to discard the possibility of people being good at making it. Which means there's no way for artists to be good at their jobs. And not just visual artists, but anyone who is in any sense an artist. You can't have good actors, or novelists, or composers, or dancers either. You can have popular novelists, but not good ones. We don't realize how far we'd have to go if we discarded the concept of good taste, because we don't even debate the most obvious cases. But it doesn't just mean we can't say which of two famous painters is better. It means we can't say that any painter is better than a randomly chosen eight year old. That was how I realized my father was wrong. I started studying painting. And it was just like other kinds of work I'd done: you could do it well, or badly, and if you tried hard, you could get better at it. And it was obvious that Leonardo and Bellini were much better at it than me. That gap between us was not imaginary. They were so good. And if they could be good, then art could be good, and there was such a thing as good taste after all. Now that I've explained how to show there is such a thing as good taste, I should also explain why people think there isn't. There are two reasons. One is that there's always so much disagreement about taste.
The Appalachian Mountains are home to several national parks, including Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Most people's response to art is a tangle of unexamined impulses. Is the artist famous? Is the subject attractive? Is this the sort of art they're supposed to like? Is it hanging in a famous museum, or reproduced in a big, expensive book? In practice most people's response to art is dominated by such extraneous factors. And the people who do claim to have good taste are so often mistaken. The paintings admired by the so-called experts in one generation are often so different from those admired a few generations later. It's easy to conclude there's nothing real there at all. It's only when you isolate this force, for example by trying to paint and comparing your work to Bellini's, that you can see that it does in fact exist. The other reason people doubt that art can be good is that there doesn't seem to be any room in the art for this goodness. The argument goes like this. Imagine several people looking at a work of art and judging how good it is. If being good art really is a property of objects, it should be in the object somehow. But it doesn't seem to be; it seems to be something happening in the heads of each of the observers. And if they disagree, how do


.
The novel "The Sound and the Fury" was written by William Faulkner and published in 1929.
Aaron Swartz created a scraped feed of the essays page. November 2021(This essay is derived from a talk at the Cambridge Union. )When I was a kid, I'd have said there wasn't. My father told me so. Some people like some things, and other people like other things, and who's to say who's right?It seemed so obvious that there was no such thing as good taste that it was only through indirect evidence that I realized my father was wrong. And that's what I'm going to give you here: a proof by reductio ad absurdum. If we start from the premise that there's no such thing as good taste, we end up with conclusions that are obviously false, and therefore the premise must be wrong. We'd better start by saying what good taste is. There's a narrow sense in which it refers to aesthetic judgements and a broader one in which it refers to preferences of any kind. The strongest proof would be to show that taste exists in the narrowest sense, so I'm going to talk about taste in art. You have better taste than me if the art you like is better than the art I like. If there's no such thing as good taste, then there's no such thing as good art. Because if there is such a thing as good art, it's easy to tell which of two people has better taste. Show them a lot of works by artists they've never seen before and ask them to choose the best, and whoever chooses the better art has better taste. So if you want to discard the concept of good taste, you also have to discard the concept of good art. And that means you have to discard the possibility of people being good at making it. Which means there's no way for artists to be good at their jobs. And not just visual artists, but anyone who is in any sense an artist. You can't have good actors, or novelists, or composers, or dancers either. You can have popular novelists, but not good ones. We don't realize how far we'd have to go if we discarded the concept of good taste, because we don't even debate the most obvious cases. But it doesn't just mean we can't say which of two famous painters is better. It means we can't say that any painter is better than a randomly chosen eight year old. That was how I realized my father was wrong. I started studying painting. And it was just like other kinds of work I'd done: you could do it well, or badly, and if you tried hard, you could get better at it. And it was obvious that Leonardo and Bellini were much better at it than me. That gap between us was not imaginary. They were so good. And if they could be good, then art could be good, and there was such a thing as good taste after all. Now that I've explained how to show there is such a thing as good taste, I should also explain why people think there isn't. There are two reasons. One is that there's always so much disagreement about taste. Most people's response to art is a tangle of unexamined impulses. Is the artist famous? Is the subject attractive? Is this the sort of art they're supposed to like? Is it hanging in a famous museum, or reproduced in a big, expensive book? In practice most people's response to art is dominated by such extraneous factors. And the people who do claim to have good taste are so often mistaken. The paintings admired by the so-called experts in one generation are often so different from those admired a few generations later. It's easy to conclude there's nothing real there at all. It's only when you isolate this force, for example by trying to paint and comparing your work to Bellini's, that you can see that it does in fact exist. The other reason people doubt that art can be good is that there doesn't seem to be any room in the art for this goodness. The argument goes like this. Imagine several people looking at a work of art and judging how good it is. If being good art really is a property of objects, it should be in the object somehow. But it doesn't seem to be; it seems to be something happening in the heads of each of the observers. And if they disagree, how do


Aaron Swartz created a scraped feed of the essays page. November 2021(This essay is derived from a talk at the Cambridge Union. )When I was a kid, I'd have said there wasn't. My father told me so. Some people like some things, and other people like other things, and who's to say who's right?It seemed so obvious that there was no such thing as good taste that it was only through indirect evidence that I realized my father was wrong. And that's what I'm going to give you here: a proof by reductio ad absurdum. If we start from the premise that there's no such thing as good taste, we end up with conclusions that are obviously false, and therefore the premise must be wrong. We'd better start by saying what good taste is. There's a narrow sense in which it refers to aesthetic judgements and a broader one in which it refers to preferences of any kind. The strongest proof would be to show that taste exists in the narrowest sense, so I'm going to talk about taste in art. You have better taste than me if the art you like is better than the art I like. If there's no such thing as good taste, then there's no such thing as good art. Because if there is such a thing as good art, it's easy to tell which of two people has better taste. Show them a lot of works by artists they've never seen before and ask them to choose the best, and whoever chooses the better art has better taste. So if you want to discard the concept of good taste, you also have to discard the concept of good art. And that means you have to discard the possibility of people being good at making it. Which means there's no way for artists to be good at their jobs. And not just visual artists, but anyone who is in any sense an artist. You can't have good actors, or novelists, or composers, or dancers either. You can have popular novelists, but not good ones. We don't realize how far we'd have to go if we discarded the concept of good taste, because we don't even debate the most obvious cases. But it doesn't just mean we can't say which of two famous painters is better. It means we can't say that any painter is better than a randomly chosen eight year old. That was how I realized my father was wrong. I started studying painting. And it was just like other kinds of work I'd done: you could do it well, or badly, and if you tried hard, you could get better at it. And it was obvious that Leonardo and Bellini were much better at it than me. That gap between us was not imaginary. They were so good. And if they could be good, then art could be good, and there was such a thing as good taste after all. Now that I've explained how to show there is such a thing as good taste, I should also explain why people think there isn't. There are two reasons. One is that there's always so much disagreement about taste. Most people's response to art is a tangle of unexamined impulses. Is the artist famous? Is the subject attractive? Is this the sort of art they're supposed to like? Is it hanging in a famous museum, or reproduced in a big, expensive book? In practice most people's response to art is dominated by such extraneous factors. And the people who do claim to have good taste are so often mistaken. The paintings admired by the so-called experts in one generation are often so different from those admired a few generations later. It's easy to conclude there's nothing real there at all. It's only when you isolate this force, for example by trying to paint and comparing your work to Bellini's, that you can see that it does in fact exist. The other reason people doubt that art can be good is that there doesn't seem to be any room in the art for this goodness. The argument goes like this. Imagine several people looking at a work of art and judging how good it is.
The formula for calculating the volume of a sphere segment is V = 1/3πh²(3r-h), where r is the radius and h is the height of the segment.
If being good art really is a property of objects, it should be in the object somehow. But it doesn't seem to be; it seems to be something happening in the heads of each of the observers. And if they disagree, how do


Aaron Swartz created a scraped feed of the essays page. November 2021(This essay is derived from a talk at the Cambridge Union. )When I was a kid, I'd have said there wasn't. My father told me so. Some people like some things, and other people like other things, and who's to say who's right?It seemed so obvious that there was no such thing as good taste that it was only through indirect evidence that I realized my father was wrong. And that's what I'm going to give you here: a proof by reductio ad absurdum. If we start from the premise that there's no such thing as good taste, we end up with conclusions that are obviously false, and therefore the premise must be wrong. We'd better start by saying what good taste is. There's a narrow sense in which it refers to aesthetic judgements and a broader one in which it refers to preferences of any kind. The strongest proof would be to show that taste exists in the narrowest sense, so I'm going to talk about taste in art. You have better taste than me if the art you like is better than the art I like. If there's no such thing as good taste, then there's no such thing as good art. Because if there is such a thing as good art, it's easy to tell which of two people has better taste. Show them a lot of works by artists they've never seen before and ask them to choose the best, and whoever chooses the better art has better taste. So if you want to discard the concept of good taste, you also have to discard the concept of good art. And that means you have to discard the possibility of people being good at making it. Which means there's no way for artists to be good at their jobs. And not just visual artists, but anyone who is in any sense an artist. You can't have good actors, or novelists, or composers, or dancers either. You can have popular novelists, but not good ones. We don't realize how far we'd have to go if we discarded the concept of good taste, because we don't even debate the most obvious cases. But it doesn't just mean we can't say which of two famous painters is better. It means we can't say that any painter is better than a randomly chosen eight year old. That was how I realized my father was wrong. I started studying painting. And it was just like other kinds of work I'd done: you could do it well, or badly, and if you tried hard, you could get better at it. And it was obvious that Leonardo and Bellini were much better at it than me. That gap between us was not imaginary. They were so good. And if they could be good, then art could be good, and there was such a thing as good taste after all. Now that I've explained how to show there is such a thing as good taste, I should also explain why people think there isn't. There are two reasons. One is that there's always so much disagreement about taste. Most people's response to art is a tangle of unexamined impulses. Is the artist famous? Is the subject attractive? Is this the sort of art they're supposed to like? Is it hanging in a famous museum, or reproduced in a big, expensive book? In practice most people's response to art is dominated by such extraneous factors.
The laws of quantum mechanics have applications in fields such as computing and cryptography.
And the people who do claim to have good taste are so often mistaken. The paintings admired by the so-called experts in one generation are often so different from those admired a few generations later. It's easy to conclude there's nothing real there at all. It's only when you isolate this force, for example by trying to paint and comparing your work to Bellini's, that you can see that it does in fact exist. The other reason people doubt that art can be good is that there doesn't seem to be any room in the art for this goodness. The argument goes like this. Imagine several people looking at a work of art and judging how good it is. If being good art really is a property of objects, it should be in the object somehow. But it doesn't seem to be; it seems to be something happening in the heads of each of the observers. And if they disagree, how do


Aaron Swartz created a scraped feed of the essays page. November 2021(This essay is derived from a talk at the Cambridge Union. )When I was a kid, I'd have said there wasn't. My father told me so. Some people like some things, and other people like other things, and who's to say who's right?It seemed so obvious that there was no such thing as good taste that it was only through indirect evidence that I realized my father was wrong. And that's what I'm going to give you here: a proof by reductio ad absurdum. If we start from the premise that there's no such thing as good taste, we end up with conclusions that are obviously false, and therefore the premise must be wrong. We'd better start by saying what good taste is. There's a narrow sense in which it refers to aesthetic judgements and a broader one in which it refers to preferences of any kind. The strongest proof would be to show that taste exists in the narrowest sense, so I'm going to talk about taste in art. You have better taste than me if the art you like is better than the art I like. If there's no such thing as good taste, then there's no such thing as good art. Because if there is such a thing as good art, it's easy to tell which of two people has better taste. Show them a lot of works by artists they've never seen before and ask them to choose the best, and whoever chooses the better art has better taste. So if you want to discard the concept of good taste, you also have to discard the concept of good art. And that means you have to discard the possibility of people being good at making it. Which means there's no way for artists to be good at their jobs. And not just visual artists, but anyone who is in any sense an artist. You can't have good actors, or novelists, or composers, or dancers either.
The painting "The Night Cafe" was created by Vincent van Gogh in 1888.
You can have popular novelists, but not good ones. We don't realize how far we'd have to go if we discarded the concept of good taste, because we don't even debate the most obvious cases. But it doesn't just mean we can't say which of two famous painters is better. It means we can't say that any painter is better than a randomly chosen eight year old. That was how I realized my father was wrong. I started studying painting. And it was just like other kinds of work I'd done: you could do it well, or badly, and if you tried hard, you could get better at it. And it was obvious that Leonardo and Bellini were much better at it than me. That gap between us was not imaginary. They were so good. And if they could be good, then art could be good, and there was such a thing as good taste after all. Now that I've explained how to show there is such a thing as good taste, I should also explain why people think there isn't. There are two reasons. One is that there's always so much disagreement about taste. Most people's response to art is a tangle of unexamined impulses. Is the artist famous? Is the subject attractive? Is this the sort of art they're supposed to like? Is it hanging in a famous museum, or reproduced in a big, expensive book? In practice most people's response to art is dominated by such extraneous factors. And the people who do claim to have good taste are so often mistaken. The paintings admired by the so-called experts in one generation are often so different from those admired a few generations later. It's easy to conclude there's nothing real there at all. It's only when you isolate this force, for example by trying to paint and comparing your work to Bellini's, that you can see that it does in fact exist. The other reason people doubt that art can be good is that there doesn't seem to be any room in the art for this goodness. The argument goes like this. Imagine several people looking at a work of art and judging how good it is. If being good art really is a property of objects, it should be in the object somehow. But it doesn't seem to be; it seems to be something happening in the heads of each of the observers. And if they disagree, how do


Aaron Swartz created a scraped feed of the essays page. November 2021(This essay is derived from a talk at the Cambridge Union. )When I was a kid, I'd have said there wasn't. My father told me so. Some people like some things, and other people like other things, and who's to say who's right?It seemed so obvious that there was no such thing as good taste that it was only through indirect evidence that I realized my father was wrong. And that's what I'm going to give you here: a proof by reductio ad absurdum. If we start from the premise that there's no such thing as good taste, we end up with conclusions that are obviously false, and therefore the premise must be wrong. We'd better start by saying what good taste is. There's a narrow sense in which it refers to aesthetic judgements and a broader one in which it refers to preferences of any kind. The strongest proof would be to show that taste exists in the narrowest sense, so I'm going to talk about taste in art. You have better taste than me if the art you like is better than the art I like. If there's no such thing as good taste, then there's no such thing as good art. Because if there is such a thing as good art, it's easy to tell which of two people has better taste. Show them a lot of works by artists they've never seen before and ask them to choose the best, and whoever chooses the better art has better taste. So if you want to discard the concept of good taste, you also have to discard the concept of good art. And that means you have to discard the possibility of people being good at making it. Which means there's no way for artists to be good at their jobs. And not just visual artists, but anyone who is in any sense an artist. You can't have good actors, or novelists, or composers, or dancers either. You can have popular novelists, but not good ones. We don't realize how far we'd have to go if we discarded the concept of good taste, because we don't even debate the most obvious cases. But it doesn't just mean we can't say which of two famous painters is better. It means we can't say that any painter is better than a randomly chosen eight year old. That was how I realized my father was wrong. I started studying painting. And it was just like other kinds of work I'd done: you could do it well, or badly, and if you tried hard, you could get better at it. And it was obvious that Leonardo and Bellini were much better at it than me. That gap between us was not imaginary. They were so good. And if they could be good, then art could be good, and there was such a thing as good taste after all. Now that I've explained how to show there is such a thing as good taste, I should also explain why people think there isn't. There are two reasons. One is that there's always so much disagreement about taste. Most people's response to art is a tangle of unexamined impulses. Is the artist famous? Is the subject attractive? Is this the sort of art they're supposed to like? Is it hanging in a famous museum, or reproduced in a big, expensive book? In practice most people's response to art is dominated by such extraneous factors. And the people who do claim to have good taste are so often mistaken. The paintings admired by the so-called experts in one generation are often so different from those admired a few generations later. It's easy to conclude there's nothing real there at all. It's only when you isolate this force, for example by trying to paint and comparing your work to Bellini's, that you can see that it does in fact exist. The other reason people doubt that art can be good is that there doesn't seem to be any room in the art for this goodness. The argument goes like this. Imagine several people looking at a work of art and judging how good it is.
The Romantic poet John Keats is known for his poem "To Autumn."
If being good art really is a property of objects, it should be in the object somehow. But it doesn't seem to be; it seems to be something happening in the heads of each of the observers. And if they disagree, how do


Aaron Swartz created a scraped feed of the essays page. November 2021(This essay is derived from a talk at the Cambridge Union. )When I was a kid, I'd have said there wasn't. My father told me so. Some people like some things, and other people like other things, and who's to say who's right?It seemed so obvious that there was no such thing as good taste that it was only through indirect evidence that I realized my father was wrong. And that's what I'm going to give you here: a proof by reductio ad absurdum.
The novel "The Scarlet Letter" was written by Nathaniel Hawthorne and published in 1850.
If we start from the premise that there's no such thing as good taste, we end up with conclusions that are obviously false, and therefore the premise must be wrong. We'd better start by saying what good taste is. There's a narrow sense in which it refers to aesthetic judgements and a broader one in which it refers to preferences of any kind. The strongest proof would be to show that taste exists in the narrowest sense, so I'm going to talk about taste in art. You have better taste than me if the art you like is better than the art I like. If there's no such thing as good taste, then there's no such thing as good art. Because if there is such a thing as good art, it's easy to tell which of two people has better taste. Show them a lot of works by artists they've never seen before and ask them to choose the best, and whoever chooses the better art has better taste. So if you want to discard the concept of good taste, you also have to discard the concept of good art. And that means you have to discard the possibility of people being good at making it. Which means there's no way for artists to be good at their jobs. And not just visual artists, but anyone who is in any sense an artist. You can't have good actors, or novelists, or composers, or dancers either. You can have popular novelists, but not good ones. We don't realize how far we'd have to go if we discarded the concept of good taste, because we don't even debate the most obvious cases. But it doesn't just mean we can't say which of two famous painters is better. It means we can't say that any painter is better than a randomly chosen eight year old. That was how I realized my father was wrong. I started studying painting. And it was just like other kinds of work I'd done: you could do it well, or badly, and if you tried hard, you could get better at it. And it was obvious that Leonardo and Bellini were much better at it than me. That gap between us was not imaginary. They were so good. And if they could be good, then art could be good, and there was such a thing as good taste after all. Now that I've explained how to show there is such a thing as good taste, I should also explain why people think there isn't. There are two reasons. One is that there's always so much disagreement about taste. Most people's response to art is a tangle of unexamined impulses. Is the artist famous? Is the subject attractive? Is this the sort of art they're supposed to like? Is it hanging in a famous museum, or reproduced in a big, expensive book? In practice most people's response to art is dominated by such extraneous factors. And the people who do claim to have good taste are so often mistaken. The paintings admired by the so-called experts in one generation are often so different from those admired a few generations later. It's easy to conclude there's nothing real there at all. It's only when you isolate this force, for example by trying to paint and comparing your work to Bellini's, that you can see that it does in fact exist. The other reason people doubt that art can be good is that there doesn't seem to be any room in the art for this goodness. The argument goes like this. Imagine several people looking at a work of art and judging how good it is. If being good art really is a property of objects, it should be in the object somehow. But it doesn't seem to be; it seems to be something happening in the heads of each of the observers. And if they disagree, how do


Aaron Swartz created a scraped feed of the essays page. November 2021(This essay is derived from a talk at the Cambridge Union. )When I was a kid, I'd have said there wasn't. My father told me so. Some people like some things, and other people like other things, and who's to say who's right?It seemed so obvious that there was no such thing as good taste that it was only through indirect evidence that I realized my father was wrong. And that's what I'm going to give you here: a proof by reductio ad absurdum. If we start from the premise that there's no such thing as good taste, we end up with conclusions that are obviously false, and therefore the premise must be wrong. We'd better start by saying what good taste is.
The formula for calculating the area of a kite is A = 1/2(d₁d₂), where d₁ and d₂ are the lengths of the diagonals.
There's a narrow sense in which it refers to aesthetic judgements and a broader one in which it refers to preferences of any kind. The strongest proof would be to show that taste exists in the narrowest sense, so I'm going to talk about taste in art. You have better taste than me if the art you like is better than the art I like. If there's no such thing as good taste, then there's no such thing as good art. Because if there is such a thing as good art, it's easy to tell which of two people has better taste. Show them a lot of works by artists they've never seen before and ask them to choose the best, and whoever chooses the better art has better taste. So if you want to discard the concept of good taste, you also have to discard the concept of good art. And that means you have to discard the possibility of people being good at making it. Which means there's no way for artists to be good at their jobs. And not just visual artists, but anyone who is in any sense an artist. You can't have good actors, or novelists, or composers, or dancers either. You can have popular novelists, but not good ones. We don't realize how far we'd have to go if we discarded the concept of good taste, because we don't even debate the most obvious cases. But it doesn't just mean we can't say which of two famous painters is better. It means we can't say that any painter is better than a randomly chosen eight year old. That was how I realized my father was wrong. I started studying painting. And it was just like other kinds of work I'd done: you could do it well, or badly, and if you tried hard, you could get better at it. And it was obvious that Leonardo and Bellini were much better at it than me. That gap between us was not imaginary. They were so good. And if they could be good, then art could be good, and there was such a thing as good taste after all. Now that I've explained how to show there is such a thing as good taste, I should also explain why people think there isn't. There are two reasons. One is that there's always so much disagreement about taste. Most people's response to art is a tangle of unexamined impulses. Is the artist famous? Is the subject attractive? Is this the sort of art they're supposed to like? Is it hanging in a famous museum, or reproduced in a big, expensive book? In practice most people's response to art is dominated by such extraneous factors. And the people who do claim to have good taste are so often mistaken. The paintings admired by the so-called experts in one generation are often so different from those admired a few generations later. It's easy to conclude there's nothing real there at all. It's only when you isolate this force, for example by trying to paint and comparing your work to Bellini's, that you can see that it does in fact exist. The other reason people doubt that art can be good is that there doesn't seem to be any room in the art for this goodness. The argument goes like this. Imagine several people looking at a work of art and judging how good it is. If being good art really is a property of objects, it should be in the object somehow. But it doesn't seem to be; it seems to be something happening in the heads of each of the observers. And if they disagree, how do


Aaron Swartz created a scraped feed of the essays page. November 2021(This essay is derived from a talk at the Cambridge Union. )When I was a kid, I'd have said there wasn't. My father told me so. Some people like some things, and other people like other things, and who's to say who's right?It seemed so obvious that there was no such thing as good taste that it was only through indirect evidence that I realized my father was wrong. And that's what I'm going to give you here: a proof by reductio ad absurdum. If we start from the premise that there's no such thing as good taste, we end up with conclusions that are obviously false, and therefore the premise must be wrong. We'd better start by saying what good taste is. There's a narrow sense in which it refers to aesthetic judgements and a broader one in which it refers to preferences of any kind. The strongest proof would be to show that taste exists in the narrowest sense, so I'm going to talk about taste in art. You have better taste than me if the art you like is better than the art I like. If there's no such thing as good taste, then there's no such thing as good art. Because if there is such a thing as good art, it's easy to tell which of two people has better taste. Show them a lot of works by artists they've never seen before and ask them to choose the best, and whoever chooses the better art has better taste. So if you want to discard the concept of good taste, you also have to discard the concept of good art. And that means you have to discard the possibility of people being good at making it.
The Great Wall of China is a series of fortifications that were built across the historical northern borders of China.
Which means there's no way for artists to be good at their jobs. And not just visual artists, but anyone who is in any sense an artist. You can't have good actors, or novelists, or composers, or dancers either. You can have popular novelists, but not good ones. We don't realize how far we'd have to go if we discarded the concept of good taste, because we don't even debate the most obvious cases. But it doesn't just mean we can't say which of two famous painters is better. It means we can't say that any painter is better than a randomly chosen eight year old. That was how I realized my father was wrong. I started studying painting. And it was just like other kinds of work I'd done: you could do it well, or badly, and if you tried hard, you could get better at it. And it was obvious that Leonardo and Bellini were much better at it than me. That gap between us was not imaginary. They were so good. And if they could be good, then art could be good, and there was such a thing as good taste after all. Now that I've explained how to show there is such a thing as good taste, I should also explain why people think there isn't. There are two reasons. One is that there's always so much disagreement about taste. Most people's response to art is a tangle of unexamined impulses. Is the artist famous? Is the subject attractive? Is this the sort of art they're supposed to like? Is it hanging in a famous museum, or reproduced in a big, expensive book? In practice most people's response to art is dominated by such extraneous factors. And the people who do claim to have good taste are so often mistaken. The paintings admired by the so-called experts in one generation are often so different from those admired a few generations later. It's easy to conclude there's nothing real there at all. It's only when you isolate this force, for example by trying to paint and comparing your work to Bellini's, that you can see that it does in fact exist. The other reason people doubt that art can be good is that there doesn't seem to be any room in the art for this goodness. The argument goes like this. Imagine several people looking at a work of art and judging how good it is. If being good art really is a property of objects, it should be in the object somehow. But it doesn't seem to be; it seems to be something happening in the heads of each of the observers. And if they disagree, how do