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Being too ambitious is a clever form of self-sabotage

(maalvika.substack.com)
759 points alihm | 7 comments | 04 Jul 25 21:11 UTC | HN request time: 0.703s | source | bottom
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meander_water ◴[05 Jul 25 00:31 UTC] No.44469163[source]▶
> the "taste-skill discrepancy." Your taste (your ability to recognize quality) develops faster than your skill (your ability to produce it). This creates what Ira Glass famously called "the gap," but I think of it as the thing that separates creators from consumers.

This resonated quite strongly with me. It puts into words something that I've been feeling when working with AI. If you're new to something and using AI for it, it automatically boosts the floor of your taste, but not your skill. And you end up never slowing down to make mistakes and learn, because you can just do it without friction.

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1. furyofantares ◴[05 Jul 25 02:15 UTC] No.44469609[source]▶
I'm confused. I often say of every genAI I've seen of all types that it is totally lacking in taste and only has skill. And it drastically raises your skill floor immediately, perhaps all the way up to your taste, closing the gap.

Maybe that actually is what you were saying? But I'm confused because you used the opposite words.

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2. phi-go ◴[05 Jul 25 05:54 UTC] No.44470373[source]▶
To me the argument also only makes sense as you understood it.
3. conartist6 ◴[05 Jul 25 12:07 UTC] No.44472200[source]▶
The gap will open itself back up again. If you can do anything in 10 seconds with a GenAI, it won't be long until 1,000,000 people have all done it and it's considered poor taste...
4. debugnik ◴[05 Jul 25 12:22 UTC] No.44472295[source]▶
Closing the gap? I think we're inverting the gap: Many people now have access to a higher skill level than they've developed taste for (if they ever did), which makes them unable to judge their own slop.
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5. ItsHarper ◴[05 Jul 25 14:06 UTC] No.44472901[source]▶
Yeah this type of gap is going to become a huge problem the way things are going
6. furyofantares ◴[05 Jul 25 15:14 UTC] No.44473313[source]▶
After sleeping on it and reading some replies I think I worked out what they were saying. Take drawing - your skill at producing an image is raised to a professional aesthetic (what I was saying) but your skill at drawing is unchanged (what they are saying).

But they're saying your taste, in the context of self-judgment at attempting to learn to draw, might also be raised to a professional aesthetic, because you can already produce images of that level by typing words.

I guess I will add that a difference here is we are talking about taste somewhat differently. To me, genai has been a demonstration that taste and skill are not two points on the same dimension.

7. dmbche ◴[05 Jul 25 15:48 UTC] No.44473548[source]▶
Might be unrelated, but I feel like the "boost" that everyone is talking about is cause by translating one medium into text, which most people are more capable at than the medium they are trying to produce in.

While it lets you create something you previously can't, the qualities of the medium are replaced with those of languguage.

I.e. to produce visual images you don't need an understanding of conrtast, composition, tranparency, chroma and all that, you just need to be able to articulate what you want.

I think that's where the lack of taste appears, you have a text-based interaction with a non-language medium.

How when a movie tries to keep as close as possible to a book it rarely will be a noteworthy movie, versus something built from the ground up in that medium