So PG thinks that someone has good taste if prefer "better" art and bad taste if they prefer "worse" art. He knows some art can be better than other art because when he started painting, his art wasn't very good. Then he kept practicing and produced better art. Therefore, one piece can definitely be better than another.
But if we're looking at two pieces we've never seen before and trying to determine which is better, are there any approaches besides just surveying a bunch of people about which one they prefer?
PG makes an analogy to vaccines, but we measure vaccine quality objectively based on how many people it can help. To simplify a bit, if vaccine A works on 1% of people and vaccine B works on 99% of people, we say vaccine B is better. It wouldn't matter if some "expert" looked at both vaccines while swirling his wine and said in a pompous tone that "vaccine A is clearly more refined no matter what the masses may think."
So how is art any different? Isn't the "better" art determined by what more people like, in which case the top-grossing blockbuster films represent the best art of our generation? If so, then "good taste" is the ability to look at two unreleased movies and correctly predict which will make more money-- a valuable skill, no doubt!
But if we're looking at two pieces we've never seen before and trying to determine which is better, are there any approaches besides just surveying a bunch of people about which one they prefer?
PG makes an analogy to vaccines, but we measure vaccine quality objectively based on how many people it can help. To simplify a bit, if vaccine A works on 1% of people and vaccine B works on 99% of people, we say vaccine B is better. It wouldn't matter if some "expert" looked at both vaccines while swirling his wine and said in a pompous tone that "vaccine A is clearly more refined no matter what the masses may think."
So how is art any different? Isn't the "better" art determined by what more people like, in which case the top-grossing blockbuster films represent the best art of our generation? If so, then "good taste" is the ability to look at two unreleased movies and correctly predict which will make more money-- a valuable skill, no doubt!