Epistemic Status: Not a cohesive theory of community art perception/criticism, just speculation that two or more things are related
For those who haven't seen it, Scott posted his latest piece on architecture, last night, a review of Tom Wolfe's "From Bauhaus To Our House.". The comments are pretty similar to past comments. I'm less interested in the question of why people do or don't like modern architecture (there's a lot of variation in quality, and tastes vary - of course it's polarizing) than the variation in discernment over McMansions, a type of architecture defined by qualities that are a) bad and b) to me, fall in to the category of "once you see it, you can't unsee it."
For our purposes, I'll use the guide from McMansion Hell (https://mcmansionhell.com/post/149284377161/mansionvsmcmansion, https://mcmansionhell.com/post/149563260641/mcmansions-101-mansion-vs-mcmansion-part-2), which includes simple heuristics like Relationship to the Landscape: Often, a New Traditional mansion carefully considers its environment and is built to accentuate, rather than dominate it. A McMansion is out of scale with its landscape or lot, often too big for a tiny lot. and Architectural and Stylistic Integrity: The best New Traditional houses are those who are virtually indistinguishable from the styles they represent. McMansions tend to be either a chaotic mix of individual styles, or a poorly done imitation of a previous style. This house in Texas invokes four separate styles: the Gothic (the steep angle of the gables), Craftsman (the overhanging eaves with braces), French (the use of stone and arched 2nd story windows), and Tudor Revival (the EIFS half-timbering above the garage), each poorly rendered in a busy combination of EIFS coupled with stone and brick veneers. (Follow the links for annotated photos.)
These criteria are really heuristics - part two includes a house that could go either way, with arguments on each side - but they aren't "rocket surgery" to apply, it's just a matter of discernment; why can't everyone learn to apply the criteria, whether or not they share the opinion that McMansions are bad architecture? The criteria of mixing styles can require more consideration than the others - it takes some scrutiny to determine if stylistic elements were mixed in a thoughtful manner - and whether or not the styles are complementary is a matter of taste, but most of it is pretty simple.
[Edit 1: I was thinking of this at the time, but too lazy to go back to the ACX post to incorporate it - this is similar to how an artist friend of Scott's discribed how she identified an AI-generated image as AI art and why she disliked it. Once you see it, can you unsee it? Does it change how much you enjoy the image?]
This reminded me of a video jazz musician and YouTuber Adam Neely made on the question of whether Laufey's music is within the jazz genre. TL;DW, no, he puts her alongside 1950s pop that borrowed from the same set of musical styles as jazz of the period, but applied those stylistic elements to pop songs, rather than a musical form defined more by improvisation (especially group improvisation) than aesthetic. One clip used in the video is someone asking why it matters if jazz musicians don't recognize Laufey's music as jazz - good point; why are we asking the question, in the first place? My speculation is that Laufey's fans want her music to be considered jazz, not pop that has stylistic elements in common with jazz, because jazz has cultural cachet and drawing a distinction between jazz and superficially similar pop music would be perceived as gatekeeping or snobbery. In light of the precedent of 1950s pop, this is rather silly - jazz musicians aren't turning their noses up at Sinatra and Bennett - but, in addition to being denied the cachet associated with jazz appreciation, I can imagine that being told you lack the discernment to tell jazz from non-jazz feels like being told you lack taste.
Discernment and taste are distinct phenomena; if Scott tells me that he agrees with the criteria for distinguishing McMansions from other architecture, we establish inter-rater reliability for this, but he disagrees that they're bad design, I'll accept that he is capable of discerning the style, while declaring our tastes to be different. But Scott writes that architecture buffs tell him about superior modern architecture he might like and he can't discern the difference. To what extent is the discussion of architecture unproductive because people are conflating discernment and taste?
If you can't discern the difference between two things and someone else says that they have strong opinions over their respective quality, do you question your discernment or their taste? In the absence of a prior that you need to cultivate your abilities of discernment, I would speculate that you are more likely to question the other person's taste and are liable to come to the conclusion that their discernment is arbitrary, from which it follows that they're engaging in snobbery. Counter-Snobbery would be to reject the "arbitrary" distinction or, if conceding that there is a distinction, embrace the supposed "lesser" of the two things.
If you can't discern the difference between two things and someone else says that they have strong opinions over their respective quality... what do YOU do?
[Edit 2: While this was in the mod queue, Scott published a new post on theories of taste. Some of the commenters are commenting along the lines of a causal relationship between developing abilities of discernment with changes in taste, without using those terms. Interestingly, neither Scott nor a commenter went back to that section of the AI art post, even though the new post begins "Recently we’ve gotten into discussions about artistic taste (see comments to AI Art Turing Test..."]
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Notes -
I like this post because it is legitimately "off-topic" from a lot of what the Motte usually focuses on. I'll offer some points, random and unorganized.
"My speculation is that Laufey's fans want her music to be considered jazz"
I think this is at the core of most issues with what is called "taste" in the aesthetic and fashion(able) sense. One's tastes are closely linked to one's personal affinities, but within the context of what social proof collectively deems "good". If I have a beer on my own with no one around me, it's almost nonsensical for me to tell myself that "I have good taste." Ordering the "right" beer (or other drink) around others is a matter of taste. If I'm at a fancy steakhouse and order a shot and a beer to the table, this is a faux pas because it signals a failure to recognize context and circumstance. In that way, taste is very much like humor - I can tell dick jokes with my buddies when we're out camping, but, at that same steakhouse, I need to recognize the social context.
The problem your quote about Jazz points to - as well as the larger McMansion discussion - is that, sometimes, people will correctly identify something that is seen as high value taste signalling, but utterly fuck up their own interpretation of it. We can forgive their lack of ability to correctly imitate / execute the attainment of that high value taste, but we tend not to forgive their obvious desire to attain it. In this way, taste is like coolness; if you have to loudly announce how cool you are, you aren't cool (social proof cannot be coerced by sheer force of will ... at best, it can be purchased). Laufey's fans want her to be considered Jazz because Jazz is cool and they want to be cool. What they've failed to recognize is that there are other ways of being cool (you brought up Sinatra, for example), so the better signalling strategy is to signal towards what you are naturally inclined to.
Returning to my steak dinner example, there can be times when a crass dick joke is not only appropriate but uproariously funny - when it is an authentic gesture. If Matthew McConaughey is at the table with me and makes the dick joke, it's an authentic reflection of his cool-guy-down-to-earth-texas-man-of-the-people attitude (leave aside for a moment if this is a carefully crafted hollywood persona, that's a whole different discussion).
Which leads me to point 2
Taste is about knowledge and expertise.
The McMansion Hell write-ups are great because they describe in specific terms what a lot of people feel intuitively but cannot label. A house that is too big for its lot size with a bunch of mixed architectural styles (each trying to separately ape something that is already recognize as cool and high value taste) represents both a) an inauthentic imitation of style that is incongruent within the context and b) poorly executed. A good architect would do a better job of combining those styles, or choosing a single style for the whole home. It would be proportional to the lot size and probably fit better with the surrounding homes in the neighborhood.
Bad taste is as much about bad reasoning and familiarity with a subject as it is about poor social understanding. Johnny Depp can get away with dressing like a homeless pirate because he actually knows (or his stylist actually knows) how to drape scarves just the right way, and how many bracelets are too much. That is a specific knowledge and it can't be faked. A lot of it is in the details. Three piece suits have made a bit of a comeback in the past few years. Aside from a lot of guys not knowing how the vest should fit, they wear it with the bottom-most button fastened. This is not how a vest is buttoned up (you leave the last button undone). Why? There's probably some historical reason but today it is a subtle signal that you've taken the time to become knowledgeable about the fashion and you aren't being an inauthentic and clumsy imitator.
As a bit of an aside, the taste-knowledge feedback loop is, indeed, a reinforcing loop. A few years ago, I decided I wanted to upgrade by cooking skills. I studied some of the classic French schools and would drill myself repeatedly (Chicken Fricasse...four nights in a row). Eventually, my taste (in the literal sense) did actually become more sensitive and precise. I could actually taste different fruits in cognac. I could tell if a sauce was the right consistency based on mouth feel. I used to think sommeliers were full of shit for saying a wine was "light and airy" but now I .... kind of get it. (p.s. I will still go HAM on a Big Mac at 2 am because I'm "a real one" as the kids say).
The point, again, is that taste is cultivated with knowledge, and destroyed with cheap imitations of it. I'd say this even applies to domains that aren't at all associated with normal notions of "taste." Sales, for instance. A bad salesman apes the appearance of a good salesman - the suit, plastic smile, haircut, expensive watch. They throw out a couple of salesman lines they read online somewhere meant to "reframe" the conversation, but they're done clumsily and without much effect other than to make the bad salesman feel like he's a good one. The best salesman ... talk very little and mostly let the customer sell themselves. How do they do this? I don't know for sure and, if I did, I doubt it could be condensed into a few sentences other than to say; they have some form of real knowledge and expertise that let's them do this.
So, to answer you final question:
Exercise epistemic humility first, then make a value judgement.
Defer to the person who can demonstrate knowledge about the taste subject. The architect who can point out that the gables are too gable-y. The sommelier who can tell you that the Chateau Pop-D-Noof was founded in 1769 by 420 gay monks because the vineyards were the least heretical in all the land. The steak guy who can tell you about the hind quarter fatty tissue rendering temperature. These people know more than you, and you need to have the humility to know that. If your taste differs from them, understand you know less and that your taste could change if you knew more.
Then, make a value judgement for your life about if you care enough to go get that knowledge. If you don't, that's perfectly fine and you can then say "Well, I like Franzia." You are allowed to take comfort in that because of your control over your own values and time in life. The value of that opinion is no less than the value of the expert - but the expert, in the right context, will collect more social esteem than you. And that's also fine because then you can demonstrate a higher level virtue - humility - and learn a little.
I'd always heard that this was attributed to King Edward VII (late 19th / early 20th century). While Prince of Wales he apparently became too rotund to fasten the bottom button, and his courtiers imitated this style. (A quick Google suggests this as the reason, but doesn't seem to be definitive and some other possibilities are given, so it may be apocryphal).
Apparently a lot of etiquette boils down to something the court copied from a king or queen. Not surprising, as how quickly you adopt a new trend would be a reliable signal of how close you are to high status people (exemplified in the monarch). This also predicts that the fashion will change by the time that it's diffused out to the general public, as it has ceased to be a good indicator.
In the case of the undone waistcoat button, a corollary of this is that the trend probably only exists because waistcoats themselves went out of fashion. If we'd been wearing waistcoats all this time, a trend from the early 20th century wouldn't have survived that long! (Or it would have cycled out and back in to fashion at least once).
At the highest meta-level I thus generally think of taste as being a hard to fake status signal (which isn't quite the same as knowledge and expertise, though does require it).
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