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 -
My brewing narcissistic self-injury vs masturbation theory explains this pretty well.
I believe myself to be an arbiter of taste. I think Laufey's music isn't jazz. Therefore, when I come across someone who thinks Laufey's music is jazz, they must be wrong about jazz.
Enter credentialism! What is that person's jazz credentials, and are they better than mine?
If they are, then either a) denigrate their credentials, because they clearly aren't worth shit if they can't tell what is and isn't jazz, or b) take the self-injury and engage in self-reflection.
If that person has worse jazz credentials, then that person is tasteless and my credentials are worthwhile.
Psyche protects itself. Go back to masturbation.
Some people might remember the utter asspain that exploded over virtually half the internet when Ebert had the temerity to say that video games were not art. What caused the massively disproportionate reaction? Was Ebert wrong or was he credentialed and respected in the field of film criticism, and therefore the collective narcissism of those who had spent too much time playing video games refused to take it on the chin?
Welcome back, Alone. We've missed you.
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