Taste improves when you explain what you like and dislike

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 1:00:29

   the psychology underneath them was crazy the rabbit hole goes deep deep deep deep um i well on this like topic uh i've been thinking more about of there's two the two words of 2026 i think and they're almost it's kind of david foster wallace the fish can't see the water anymore but the two words that are thrown around constantly taste and slop and i'm fascinated by these two words and how little discussion there is around these two words and taste in particular is a word that you can just you can say and i get to i get to say how high status i am by going the thing that's really important in 2026 is taste and you fucking peasants don't have any fucking taste um and slops like the inverse of that where somebody can just say the word slop now with no definition of what why they mean slop it's kind of like in a less emotionally charged

2. 1:01:23

   way but like the word racist or sexist that you can just throw it around now you throw it around willy-nilly you can band it around the office willy-nilly um and nobody knows exactly what it is and there's a great essay um george orwell's politics and the english language and he talks about how there's these new turns of phrase like as a writer you can just put in there at the end of the day or just turns of phrase which can just signal that i think people will like this right and i can seem smart but there's no depth to this at all and i'm fascinated by because jack you're somebody who I'd say has like what people would describe as taste, but I've been fascinated by how do you actually develop that muscle? And there's a wonderful exercise I got from my friend, Billy, where it's like, it's always very simple, Billy Oppenheimer. And he has this thing

3. 1:02:07

   called, um, what I like about what I like, where whenever he sees something that he likes, he will just capture it, put in his phone and then try and explain to himself why he likes it. And then I created a what I dislike about what I dislike. And then when I see something I don't like, I'll capture it and write it down. And then you also have like a little swipe file. to go through when you're doing it. But I'm just fascinated by right now, these two words in particular that everybody's using them and nobody defines it. Can you find, um, there's a quote by Ira Glass. It's like, if you put Ira Glass, taste gap, I think it's a taste gap. It's like a one paragraph definition of like having taste means you will always be dissatisfied with what you produce. This quote is from the American author Ira Glass. Nobody tells this to people who are

4. 1:02:57

   beginners. I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple of years, you make stuff. It's just not that good. It's trying to be good. It has potential, but it's not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn't have this special thing that we want it to have.

5. 1:03:23

   We go through this. And if you are just starting out or if you are still in this phase, you've got to know it's normal. And the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took too long to figure out how to do this than anyone I've ever met. It's going to take a while. It's normal to take a while you just got to fight your way through it damn bang there is ship at what the i can't remember i think it was shane parish who said um like um maybe tiago forte like procrastination is bad because it stops you from doing stuff but it's mostly bad because it stops you from shipping work at a volume sufficiently enough to work out what works like if you don't

6. 1:04:13

   ever it's your thing about i'd rather be high conviction and wrong than low conviction and right. I'd rather be an idiot than a coward. Yeah. Yeah. Because if you don't ever put stuff out or if you only put stuff out when you know that it's going to work, you haven't actually learned all that much. Learning a lot means, okay, I've got a big sample set. I've thrown a load of stuff out. I mean, the shortest thing, at least for me, like taste is the ability to discern between good and not good. And yeah, I would like, I would pair up the slop comment with basically your outsourcing taste. I think that's what people are trying to refer to when they use the word slop it's like there is a lacking intention in the output and a lot of people think that that is like if any tool that has like an incredible amount of power was used

7. 1:04:59

   you're giving up some agency I think that's like the done without taste. So I think slop is done without taste. And like the way that these things are trained, it's like the clawed, there's like textbook, like little marks on there that if you did not guide this with a certain amount of intention, it's just going to show up every time. And my like rebuttal or the next level that I think exists is that's fine. And to say slop when you see slop is fine, but that is slop. So you just, I just call that slop slop. Yeah. So if you're going to say, your criticism is also unoriginal.

8. 1:05:29

   if you're going to say slop tell me why yeah explain what's on your list you said you have a list now of like things why i dislike what i dislike or um let me pull it up hold on one second