A Lovely Harmless Monster

Editing: archive/price-of-eggs

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title:The Price of Eggs, the Value of Taste
author:matt
tags:archive, cats, currents, food, music, no-ai, personal, politics
date:2025-03-20
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One of my coworkers has an entire carton of eggs in the shared fridge. I don't know what they intend to do with them. We don't have a proper kitchen here. Maybe they have a little electric hob or griddle they plug in at their desk. It seems like an awfully inconvenient way to eat eggs. Maybe the jacked-up cost of eggs has given them a perceived value beyond their actual worth. They *must* be worth all the hassle if they cost nearly $8/doz, right?

Or maybe they're not here to be eaten. Maybe whoever it is is simply trying to keep the precious ovoids away from whatever greedy hands are fixing to crack them.

Me, I don't really get it. I like eggs fine, but their main value to me is as a cheap source of protein. If they're no longer cheap, I can get protein from other sources. Eggs have a little vitamin D, some B6, a tiny bit of iron, but there are plenty of other cheap ways to get those too. I guess I'd be upset if eggs were some incredible delicacy, but I don't think they're *that* tasty. To me they're mostly a vehicle delivery for salt and pepper. To each their own, I suppose.

I'm not saying the skyrocketing cost of eggs isn't annoying, I just don't think it's as big a deal as a lot of people seem to think. For example, I don't think it justifies allowing a fascist takeover of my country's government. If the choice is paying a lot for eggs or voting in the fascists—it *wasn't*, but even if it was—I'd be perfectly fine eating more chicken salad until prices go back to normal.

## There's No Accounting for Taste

This is one of those clichés that's been repeated until it's lost all meaning, but I think it's a good way to describe the ways recommendation algorithms and "AI art" leave me wanting. Computers are good at dealing with quantifiable information, and the qualia, the subjective internal experiences that define our artistic tastes, are unquantifiable. There are no formulae a computer can understand that will communicate the reasons I like or don't like a particular piece of art.

There are a million examples I could pick, but let's take music. I intensely dislike the band Rush. On paper, one might think they'd be in my wheelhouse. I like progressive rock. I like complicated guitar stuff. I like vocalists with unique and unpolished voices. But I can't stand Rush. They never did anything for me. My dislike could stem from the fact that they have right-libertarian beliefs and wrote an album inspired by Ayn Rand, but I didn't like them before I knew that about them.[^rand]

A computer could look at the fact that I like classic prog like Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull, and epic guitar/synth shreds from jam bands like Phish and The Disco Biscuits; and it might conclude oh, of course this person likes Rush. There's no way they *couldn't*. These elements add up to a perfectly Rush-shaped sum. But I don't like Rush. There's no accounting for taste.

There's no accounting for why "AI art" makes my skin crawl. A computer can look at a bunch of disparate elements and add them up into what its programming concludes is the most logically perfect distillate of art. But that has no bearing on whether it's something humans want to look at. There's no function that defines what makes people feel things.

Now, I'm a materialist.[^mat] I don't think anything about this process is the result of a soul, or a god, or anything supernatural.[^sacred] But that doesn't mean I think all of our subjective experiences can be quantified and codified. I think there are processes in the brain that we don't understand on a technical level, and are probably unknowable. And that's cool. It means philosophy and art can never be "solved". Our quest to understand and express ourselves is a constantly-evolving journey of learning and introspection. If it were possible to program a computer to make perfectly enjoyable human art, we'd lose an important source of meaning in our lives. Thank goodness it's all bullshit

## Cat Food Flavors

I don't know why they sell cat food in flavors meant to appeal to humans. "Mixed Grill"? "Salmon Dinner"? "Prime Filets"? I think my cat would enjoy it just as much even if the can was labeled "Poop". And, well, from my perspective that would be a more accurate way to describe how it smells. Sunny will still eat it up, though. She likes other cheap proteins, like chicken and tuna, but she'll also go bananas for various whimsical flavors of nauseating meat paste. There's no accounting for taste 🦝

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[^rand]: Neil Peart, who apparently wrote all the band's lyrics, later disavowed Rand and described himself as a "left-leaning libertarian" (Bob Cook, [The Spirit of Rand](https://web.archive.org/web/20080503183904/http://jewsrock.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=words.view&wordid=5C400234-ACA1-4A3E-8CDCC1A3C6B074C4)) which is a confusing phrase from an American perspective, but I figure he just didn't want to use the word "anarchist". So good on him for evolving, but it doesn't make me like the band's music more.

[^mat]: In the [philosophical sense](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism).

[^sacred]: I'm okay using words like "sacred" or "spiritual" to define these experiences and our relationship with the unknown, I just think it's dangerous to think of things as having causes which are somehow separate from or outside of our physical world.

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