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[https://dynomight.net/taste-games/]

Tastes are just a matter of:

  1. Understanding the consequences of liking stuff in your social context, and
  2. Having the cultural knowledge of how to like things “correctly.”

Basically, your brain does game theory: Do the cool people around you like potatoes? Would you benefit from liking potatoes? Do you understand potato consumption rituals well enough to blend in at the hot potato salons? Then: Start liking potatoes. Unsettlingly, this is mostly supposed to be unconscious. We’re social creatures, we sense what we should become to get ahead, and then we become it, all without involving fickle rationality. Can that be right?

People with mostly economic capital play the Expensive Cars game. People with mostly cultural capital play the Glass Bead Game. We all play the game we think we can do better at. But I think it goes beyond that? I reckon I could beat Donald Trump in a debate about the hard problem of consciousness. But Trump would obliterate me in a “travel between your mansions in your private plane while being fed caviar by models” contest. Conceivably, Trump and I could decide that there’s no conflict between our different status-seeking strategies and leave each other alone. But we don’t seem to do that. In practice, people like me sneer at gold-plated toilet seats and insist we really really really have no interest in anything like that…