We Listen and We Absolutely Judge

Taste took over the internet last week, and I’ve now read the word so many times it’s started to lose meaning, like saying my name in the mirror as a kid until the syllables felt like an illusion. I don’t even like being in the conversation, feeling like the act of mentioning the t-word means you probably don’t have it.

… Since we’re here though, and other people are talking about it, and the weather is shitty, let’s get into it.

I’ll be referencing a 2024 study from Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications called “Evidence-based scientific thinking and decision-making in everyday life” by Caitlin Dawson et al. throughout this piece to help explain in a few bullet points.

Taste is about preference. What you like, what you gravitate toward, what you curate. It’s not personal; you have good taste if a large group of people agree with you and you have bad taste if you’re out of fashion or enough people disagree. It’s a social verdict as much as it is an individual one.

Discernment is about judgment, and specifically I’m talking about cognitive discernment. Your ability to rationally assess situations, motives, and character. Whether something works, whether it’s the right approach, whether it actually solves the problem. It’s not about what you like or how it looks, it’s about whether the thinking behind it holds up. Unlike taste, discernment can be measured.

• “Curiosity and positive science attitudes, cognitive flexibility, prosociality and emotional states, were related to engaging with information and discernment of evidence reliability, more than numerical skills.” How you think matters more than what you know.

I’m not sure I have taste, but I do have discernment and I try to exercise it as much as I can in the hopes that one day it manifests into something that could be considered good taste. I think that’s the order of operations that gets skipped when people jump straight to calling themselves a tastemaker or a vibe curator or a storyteller. These words imply a destination without asking for the work of getting there.

• “Social authority is a powerful cue for source credibility, even above the actual quality and relevance of the sources.” People trust what looks credible over what actually is credible and that’s a problem when it comes to the whole tastemaker thing.

We should learn to recognize when other people’s taste is good before trying to invent our own. Start with discernment.

Going forward, you will be hired for your discernment rather than your skillset. Non-developers are already building their own tools instead of buying software, because they understood the problem better than any existing product could. Creative generalists are overtaking specialists, because breadth of understanding gives you more leverage than depth of execution alone. The job is knowing whether the website solves the right problem, not knowing how to build one. Knowing when math is the right approach, not being good at math. Knowing whether the code addresses the actual issue, not writing the code.

People overlook this because it asks something of them. They want to be done more than they want to be right.

• “Need for closure” is what researchers call the urge to just be done. It “motivates people to end the information-seeking process, sometimes by settling on the nearest acceptable answer regardless of its quality.”

The good news is that discernment isn’t fixed. It’s a practice. The more you exercise it, the sharper it gets.

• “Some of these processes, such as cognitive flexibility, may be able to be improved with targeted interventions.”

In a world where hard work is going to be harder to find, putting in the effort sets you light-years ahead. Do the work, do the hard work, then figure out if it actually solved what it needed to solve. Especially when the “do the work” part can be done by a prompt.

Your resume is going to matter less than your ability to look at a problem and know what it needs. The skills are things you pick up along the way. What matters is whether you can tell the difference between something that works and something that doesn’t, and whether you’re willing to learn whatever it takes to close that gap.

Related Brain Dump

• As AI makes it easier to create anything, the most valuable skill is no longer mastering one tool, but knowing what to make and why. The future belongs to creative generalists who focus on strong fundamentals, curiosity, and the ability to keep learning and adapting over time. (It’s Nice That)

• Pope Leo XIV urged AI leaders to prioritize moral discernment as artificial intelligence rapidly reshapes society. He called on companies and developers to build AI systems grounded in justice, human dignity, and respect for life, warning that technological progress carries ethical and spiritual responsibility alongside innovation. (Vatican News)

• AI coding tools are making it possible for non-developers to build their own personal “micro apps” instead of buying software. These apps are often temporary, hyper-specific, and created for individual needs, like choosing restaurants, tracking health issues, or managing chores. As vibe coding lowers technical barriers, software creation is shifting from mass products toward personalized, build-it-yourself tools that people use only as long as they need them. (TechCrunch)