Take Something You Don’t Like and Try to Like It

Good taste should be intriguing, so you might be doing it wrong.

I think that's orthogonal. The author is not saying that everything in every field is good: their TV example explicitly calls out bad TV.

What they are saying is that you can make yourself enjoy a field _at all_, in which you can then apply taste. For example I don't like whisky, but that's not a matter of me applying "good taste": I would never claim that whisky is bad in general and if I really tried I'm pretty sure I would start being able to enjoy whisky and separate the good from the bad (at least subjectively).

But remain open to the possibility it's not your good taste that is making you unpopular at parties.

No, fuck taste. It's either a class shibboleth or just a game of Calvinball where snobs trying to one up each other.

It’s fine to like trash.

It’s best to be able to tell it’s trash, because if you can’t then it means you’re missing what you need to fully appreciate really good things, which is less than ideal.

But it’s totally fine to like it. Zero shame.

And it doesn’t make people bad who can’t tell the difference between trash and good stuff, they’ve just prioritized different (and, maybe, less, but who cares) stuff than you have. Though when they try to make recommendations it’s fair to totally ignore them. Even if you are looking for a particular kind of trash, you need a critic who can tell good from bad (but appreciates that even bad things have an audience) if you want a good hit-rate. And when those sorts start to opine that actually good things are bad (because they haven’t developed the ability to appreciate them) it’s fine to regard that behavior as boorish, because it is. It’s basically the inverse of snobbery, and yeah, it’s also shitty.

I like plain oatmeal. I wouldn't say it's "good" in most qualitative senses.

"Cultivating taste" might mean less capacity to tolerate or enjoy things that are fine-but-not-great.

“The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts.”

Try that with an abscessed molar. Some experiences are truly extreme.

Do you have any tips for how to work on this with kids?

Musicals are fine (even the stage version of Lord of the Rings) but opera took a lot of persuading for me to actually to go and see one live - and it was quite an incredible experience.

yep, for me, the wild overemphasis on grunts, huuuhs, hmmm, uhhh, errr, etc drives me absolutely bonkers.

it isn’t at all the animated aspect, i do love a few anime’s but the good ones don’t do that weird noise huh thing. the stories can be incredible i just wish i could watch them without ripping my hair out every time the characters do that.

Because they fleeced their fans?

That's the spirit!

How are you an old curmudgeon at 30

I hate cooking...for others. Three kids, wife - everyone has a different taste. I put peppers in pasta sauce, my boys won't eat it. I make it a bit too spicy, my wife won't eat it. I had a joy for cooking when I was younger because I surprised myself with how tasty I could make things but constantly trying to please family is just grueling as it's required to do the lowest common denominator.

But I agree overall with your point. There are some things that I just will never like. I will try new things, but I quickly realize I'm not vibing with it and need to stop pretending.

100%. I think the article makes space for this, too. In 3, 4, and 5 the author describes the experience of bouncing off of something despite trying to like it as well as _thinking_ you like something despite not _really_ liking it. Both types of experiences resonated with me.

I think the key here is that you did try, you gave cooking and sports an honest chance, and it turns out that you're not into them. It doesn't feel like many people would put the effort in to really figure out if they _would_ like something that's initially uncomfortable or difficult. I think that's what the article is responding to - I read the overall thesis as "you might actually end up liking something that you don't like initially" rather than "you will like anything given enough effort".

In order to be sure you don't like something you have to try it a number of times before you can sure you dislike it. But its also important to assess what you dislike about it to ensure its not peer/societal pressure based or other potential assaults on the self rather than core to you.

> I know what stuff I do not like

You know that there are some things you don't like almost for sure. That makes all the difference.

I'm slightly older than you and keep running into things I used to dislike and that I surprisingly dislike less now. And that feels good.

Keeping the door open on disliking less seems critical to me.

edit: read your other comment, good luck, I wish you the best and I hope you can enjoy more things as time passes and find a path that suits you!

What are some of your current obsessions? I enjoy learning and discovering so I enjoy tech and when I get into something the joy is from the rabbit hole and then I am done and move on.

What has kept your interest?

As I creak and grunt into my mid-forties, I find a major concern of mine is my mind growing stale and stiff like an old slice of bread, and a good random deep dive into cheesemaking or the different uses of tofu in traditional Chinese cooking might help stave that off. Or it might just make me boring in a different way, IDK.

As someone with ADHD, for me obsessing over something to the point of needing to be reminded to eat and drink is actually extremely healthy.

It took me a long time to accept that following my special interests is what my brain craves and what gives me a sense of fulfillment. It might be unhealthy for a neurotypical person but very healthy for me.

In fact when I am losing the spark and just can't get into anything that is when I know I am burning out and need to make changes.

Your comment immediately made me think of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZK8Z8hulFg

I'm in the other spectrum I think. I like a lot of stuff, but I don't seem to be able to immerse myself in them. The flow doesn't come easily. Instead I feel detached and ambivalent about pretty much everything. It's fine that I'm doing, and while I'm doing it I'll do it with a lot of presence. I also get very good at it. But in time I just wanna lazy out and watch TV while browsing the web. It's pretty sad and I wish I could will myself into one obsession or another.

> I don’t drink coffee because in a month I’ll be neck deep in forums about the proper way to grind beans.

This was me last week. I was looking to buy a new coffee grinder, and I just could not believe the way that people on the Internet talk about these things. One popular coffee YouTuber recommended a $200 hand grinder as an entry level grinder [1]. There's also a widely repeated concept in the community of the "end game" grinder - as if working your way up to a $1000 coffee grinder should be the goal of every coffee drinker rather than just being satisfied with a $200 - $300 grinder (or even a $100 grinder, god forbid).

And I decided not to go down the rabbit hole because I really doubt whether spending more and obsessing more would actually increase my enjoyment of coffee. I currently use a $23 hand grinder [2] that makes a tasty cup of coffee (I am looking for a new grinder not because I am dissatisfied with the results, but rather because grinding by hand can be annoying). Now that I know there are $200 grinders out there, it makes me wonder what I am missing out on. And I'm sure if I had a $200 grinder, I would be wondering what $500 would get me, etc. And how am I ever going to be able to enjoy a cup of coffee at a restaraunt, or at a friend's house, if I allow my standards to get so high?

So I guess to bring this back to the original article: try to find enjoyment in the basic, no-frills version. If you're a coffee snob, can you still enjoy a cup of Nescafe instant coffee? If you're a wine snob, can you enjoy a glass of Yellow Tail? If you're a music snob, can you enjoy listening to Taylor Swift?

[1] https://youtu.be/1t8qUbZ6nSs?si=JrpezhykYAm2lZoq&t=705

[2] https://a.co/d/aIqZtw1

As an alternative... I have fun, for lack of a better phrase, collecting hobbies. I don't intentionally try to stop having one interest to give another "more important" one space, I just follow my nose. (most recently, auto repair and painting)

Similarly, I have so many hobbies now that I am actually stressed by them taking us so much space and costing so much money, and me spending so little time on each of them.

I'm now actively trying to cut down on them instead, and accept that I'll have some "boredom" time as a result.

I can "like" just about any hobby. I definitely don't need to explore more of them. They find me on their own, and I really don't need them to.

There's a difference between being present and enjoying something in the moment versus equating the background process with the moment itself.

I never learnt to bake, because I'm already fat enough.

I managed to acquire a taste for gin and tonic - I went as an adult from thinking it was the most revolting thing ever to one of the few drinks I occasionally find myself craving. Acquiring the taste clearly involved drinking the stuff but I have no idea how...

In Spanish the translation is literal, gusto adquirido.

I like churches, I just don’t like going to church :)

I don't believe that most people's dislike of churches stem from the architecture.

>Most people who dislike a whole music genre generally don't really understand it and haven't put any effort into it.

I still can't get my family to get into noise and pigfuck, any advice ?

Counterpoint, understanding alone isn't enough either if you don't have an affinity.

There's a few classical and jazz pieces that I like, but that doesn’t mean that I like classical music and/or jazz, even though I do get why other people do.

Same for your church architecture example. I can appreciate it on an intellectual level, but in the end I still find it mostly boring and not my kind of aesthetics.

I would have said no on Rap before Hamilton. I would like to know your goto for Jazz.

"I don't like X" is of course not an absolute statement (and neither is "I like X", for that matter). I don't like Hip-Hop. Of course there is some hip-hop that I think is alright, but by and large, "I don't like Hip-Hop" is accurate.

Different people are different, and different things resonate with different people. I find snobbery highly obnoxious, but to be honest my opinion of this kind of dismissal of different people liking different things with a fairly condescending "you have simply not understood it" is not much better.

Adding to this: Some classical music sucks!

It took me longer than it should have to start getting into classical music, because when I heard a piece that sucked I just assumed I didn't understand it and that classical music was too complicated. No, it's just that a lot of classical music sucks and is annoying to listen to. But a lot of it is fantastic.

I've been trying to acquire a taste for Free Jazz a few times over the years and haven't been very successful.

I tell people I don't like country because I grew up in the country, and I'm sick of listening to relatable things like one lane roads and escaping cows one moment, then switching to bible-thumping alcoholism when the song changes.

Listening to any given country song might be lovely. Listening to the genre is painful. Sometimes the aggregate effect of a genre ruins the enjoyment of any given song.

Liking certain songs within a genre doesn’t mean one enjoys the genre generally.

Usually the songs anyone can enjoy tend to be the ones that are the most palatable and are not as genre specific.

To some degree it’s a matter of semantics but to say someone enjoys a genre of music they should be able to enjoy the more esoteric songs in the genre.

You can go too far the other way. I only stopped liking jazz once I understood it.

yup cannot imagine how much better the world would be if we would just force ourselves to appreciate each other, despite our differences.

I do this with sports to fit in better and make it easier to socialize.

I do this with music, films, and books because I think some things are objectively better than others in ways that don't always line up with my own tastes.

If there is an ideal amount of some personality trait then for most people the advice would be "do more of this" even though for some others it'll have to be "do less of this" depending on where you're coming from. When I was young I definitely did a bit of over-socialization (everybody seems to like music festivals so I guess I must like them too if I don't want to be a weirdo?) but as you can see in the comments to this post, as we get older it's easy to get into a pattern where anything you're not familiar with is instantly met with suspicion or derision, and a lot of people don't like this about themselves, which is why this blogpost resonates with them.

Also, "liking something intrinsically", what does that even mean?

If I hadn’t pursued things that initially didn’t click for me, I’d be missing out on what are now my favorite… everything, really, and still stuck with some things that are by-comparison so bad that I can’t believe I ever liked them, at least not to the degree that I did.

There are a lot of negatives attributes to people that they think are fundamental to themselves that folks identify with which turn out to be... well... bad habits and bad attitudes.

I had a very intentional palate reset in my late teens going into my early 20s.

I wasn't exposed to any variety of food growing up and I stopped eating meat at a very young age (In my 40s now, still don't eat meat). So before adulthood all I ever ate was pasta, and almost always boxed pasta at that. I also had issues with some texture and flavors being extremely off-putting and making me wanna gag.

I knew I wasn't going to be able to eat that way forever, for a number of reasons (health being a big one) so I forced myself to try new foods, gradually. I fucking hated it, but I kept at it. I now like most non-meat foods, even enjoy mushrooms which have previously made me vomit. The first time I had avocado it was the nastiest thing I ever tasted but I eat (and like) avocado most days now.

I used to be very judgemental about picky eaters and felt they are all super spoiled people but it important to know that there are vastly different reasons for being one.

Some neurodivergent people have genuine sensory issues that forces them to be selective about their food. They can't just get over it. Especially as exposure therapy does not work for them or at least not as well as for neurotypical people.

So it is always good to remind oneself to be kind and not judge people harshly. You don't know what they are struggling with.

That said, yeah most people absolutely profit from opening up their palate and trying new things.