TokensDon't BuyTaste

Every major tool in history collapsed the cost of making things. The printing press made text cheap. Photography made images cheap. Digital audio made music cheap. And every time the same thing happened: output exploded and most of it was forgettable.

Generative models are the latest and most dramatic version of this collapse. They can spit out almost anything. But they lack taste—the ability to reject almost everything.

Taste is the residue of paying close attention. It's recognizing that something just isn't good enough yet and knowing the difference between what looks impressive and what is. The capacity to hold a standard and refuse to lower it. To fight for it.

A model can simulate any taste. That's precisely why it has none. It has no stake, no felt experience that might lead it to stand for something. It will execute one path as readily as the opposite. It cannot care. It cannot defend.

We are entering an era of absurd abundance. The floodgates are open and the tools will only get faster and more fluent.

In that world, it can feel like those optimizing for appearance rather than substance pull ahead. They might, for a while. Plausible output is often hard to distinguish from good output until you have to live with it.

But the same collapse that fills every channel with plausibility also hands those who care deeply a tireless collaborator—one that lets them close the gap between their taste and their output at speeds once impossible. The collapse brings mediocrity, but it also creates a golden age for those with taste sharp enough to cut through it.

If anything, this is not the end of quality. It may be the best chance quality has ever had.

So go have fun. Experiment, iterate, and refine faster on a playground that is larger and more colorful than ever before. Create what was once impossible.

But don't mistake speed for quality. Don't mistake output for outcome. And don't mistake the ability to make things for the ability to know which things are worth making.

The scarce resource is not production. It never has been. The scarce resource is taste. And tokens don't buy taste.