On the irrationality of refinement
Here's a kind-of-silly argument that I nonetheless think is basically correct.
A lot of people think that philosophers are, or must be, essentially, snobs. And, really, a lot of us are. Most of the examples people talk about in the aesthetics of music, for instance, are about the minute differences between different pieces of classical music that one needs to have had A Certain Education in order to really know about. (Well, it used to be that way, at least. There is certainly more discussion of jazz and, uh, Taylor Swift in the contemporary aesthetics literature. But, if Kit Fine's incredibly strange recent paper about how woke music theory is (which uses the mere fact that music theory papers talk about genres other than classical music sometimes as a key piece of evidence for "wokeness") is representative, it is by no means dead.)
So, one might think, philosophers must have all kinds of arguments that tell us why it is good to refine our capacities for enjoyment and appreciation of expensive things. And, indeed, philosophers do have those kinds of arguments. One need only look at various defenses of perfectionism and objective-list theory in the theory of well-being to see philosophers waxing poetically about the value of refining our rational capacities. And to be totally clear: I too think it is good to refine one's capacities, in general! This is not an argument against the idea that learning how to think well, and cultivating one's abilities in areas where one can succeed, is a bad thing.
But, when it comes to aesthetic refinement specifically, I think, for the vast majority of us, we have overwhelming practical reason to avoid doing too much of it. That's because I think that, unless you have sufficient evidence that you will be rich for the rest of your life, practical reality and reason dictates that you should not develop your capacities for refinement.
The argument, given that initial statement, is pretty simple. In most aesthetic domains, refinement increases the cost of securing the object of appreciation. This is most obvious in the case of food, where garbage (read: glorious) diner food can be secured (even in the Year of Our Lord 2026) for like $5, but more refined meals will cost you $100s. Not only that, but (as an expert who has dined at both Alinea and Schwa in Chicago, so I know whereof I speak) one must also spend additional $100s on buying the appropriate outfits to go to said fancy restaurants. Or, instead, one has to spend an inordinate amount of time (and probably money, too) on learning how to cook such meals oneself.
This is not restricted to the culinary domain, of course. Increasing refinement in musical taste requires ever-more-complicated searches for ever-more-obscure records and concert recordings, many of which are not available on streaming services that cater to the masses. Refinement in preferences for visual art requires traveling to expensive cities (god FORBID one ever merely look at a painting on a laptop screen), paying out the ass to sit around and wait for a performance artist to fart into a can and hand it to a man in a business suit, thus saying something Deep About Capitalism. And so on.
There is another, more psychological aspect of the misery that cultivated snobbery brings to the non-rich as well: constant disappointment. Again, take my case as an example. I live in a relatively small college town (and a college town attached to a STEM-focused university at that) in the Midwest. There is essentially nothing in this town that meets my own refined sensibilities. The food, with about 1 and 1/2 exceptions, is dogshit. (And the one unironically good restaurant, a Sichuan restaurant literally just called "Taste," I can't even really eat anymore because I'm on this stupid GLP-1 now. That's another reason not to develop one's palette: you might have to then be on a GLP-1.) There is, apparently, a local symphony orchestra, but I shudder to think what going to a concert of theirs might actually sound like. The "best" (actually, they're not that bad, really) coffee shop in town has a bunch of AI-generated images on their menu. I could go on.
In contrast, someone who has no refinement to speak of will a) save a shit-ton of money by just buying McDonald's every night, and will b) be way happier than I am. They will not know this pain.
I'm not joking when I say that practical reason speaks against this, by the way. In Reasons and Persons, Parfit plausibly talks about an interesting feature of practical reason: it asks us to make predictions about how we will be in the future and act on it right now. Knowing right now that I might later prefer some option that I currently do not is, even right now (and even lacking those preferences right now), something that changes what it might be rational for me to do presently. If I am currently a zealous radical in my 20s, but I foresee that in my 60s I will want the kids to get off my damn lawn, Parfit thinks (I think correctly) that knowing that fact should change how I behave today, in my zealous youth. (I'm 33, but the point stands.)
So, before one has really developed these sensibilities (and thus doomed oneself to a lifetime of hating the things one sees, hears, and consumes), one should ask: how reasonable is it to assume that, across the rest of my life, I will continue to have access to the objects of my refinement? For many of us, the answer will be: not that reasonable. And that fact is of deep practical significance for figuring out what one should do right now, before all of the pain has started.
Of course, there is one way to immediately diffuse this worry: just be rich. I have been trying to figure out how to "just be rich" for a while now. If I make any progress on that deep problem, I will let you know.
For the rest of us who (irrationally!) already have these refinements but are not able to satisfy them regularly, there is a separate question of whether it is practically rational to at least attempt to rid oneself of said preferences. I think it is. My quest to actually enjoy diner food is going pretty well. My quest to enjoy Taylor Swift is, uh, not going at all. And so we beat on, boats against etc etc.
Analytic philosophy forever. Enjoy the Food Fight.