OT: Crazy Programming

[Laura Creighton]

Donn Cave wrote:
> Yes, but here "subjective" is really about development.  You can develop
> in a variety of directions depending on the influences of environment,
> there's no arguing that.  Is there also a non-subjective factor, i.e.,
> objective beauty?  If we are all the same in some ways, then yes.  These
> two can be in conflict, hence rap music, and list comprehensions.
> 
> 	Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu
> -- 

This is the basis of the distinction between 'style' and 'beauty'.
The word 'taste' is used, nowadays, to indicate both the appreciation
of beauty and the appreciation of a certain style or fashion.  This
confusion is most unfortunate.  It is tragic, but not uncommon for people 
to be discriminating about styles and fashions while remaining insenstive
to beauty.

Note -- if what you want to express is 'beyond reasonable debate; not
merely an opinion' you do not need to get out the word 'objective' to
describe that quality.  Having found something beautiful, it is most
frustrating when you show it to other people and they do not see it.
But you do not bring them any closer by listing those qualities that
you find attractive, because, in general, it is not that they have
overlooked those qualities -- it is that the thing as a whole does not
work for them.  You can agree on all the objective qualities there -- 
it is the subjective 'experience of beauty'  which you are getting and
they are not.

Laura Creighton