Venkatesh Rao

Like say at 20, you and I both like chocolate chip cookies but have only ever had cheap Chips Ahoy commodity cookies. Over 20 years we both sample all kinds, from the finest gourmet ones, to various Grandma recipes etc. How might our cookie sensibilities have diverged by 40?

You, the aesthetics-first person, will likely have developed a deep distaste for Chips Ahoy grade “bad” cookies. You have your fine recipes, and favorite gourmet brand. Me, despite being exposed to better cookies and developed some discernment, am still fine eating Chips Ahoy.

There’s learning to tell things apart, and learning to *care* about the differences. The non-aesthetics-first person can learn to tell and even perhaps appreciate differences to a degree. But they stop short of learning to care. Cookies are not aesthetics-first for philistines.

If you cannot learn distinctions without *necessarily* going on to care about differences, you’ll tend conservative, and start to censor out novelty where caring might be painful. Be causing learning to care is developing a pain sensitivity in order to live more exquisitely.

I suspect our notional cookie aesthete will experience near-physical pain if forced to eat an ordinary cookie. The non-aesthete might prefer a good cookie, but will not find it painful to eat an ordinary one.

I’m literally this way about cookies while my wife is a cookie conservative. She’ll experiment and fuss and go through agonies about them not coming out right. I’ll happily eat pretty much all her experiment outputs, whether failures or successes. I’m a Cookie Monster.

Right now, I’m working my way through a batch of Ted Lasso cookies, which she attempted to replicate after we both thought they looked good on the show. I think they came out great. She’s not happy with them and is now making a more reliable one she knows she likes.

Cookies for me are not primarily about optimally embodying the essence of cookie aesthetics. They are primarily a functional sugar hit to go with coffee. Anything above a fairly low satisficing baseline will do. I can never be a cookie conservative.