Artists best served making their favorite thing
Rubin's core creative philosophy: make what you yourself love, and the right audience will find you — anything else is guesswork.
Snapshot · The a16z Show
Rick Rubin on AI, Creativity, and The Way of Code
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Jul 1, 2026
Where this was said
The Future of Education: Taste Over Expertise
At 1:08:15 · chapter starts 1:08:00
Erik Torenberg raises the question of education's future in a world where technical expertise matters less and taste matters more. [1] — Rick Rubin "As AI absorbs technical skills, what becomes scarce and valuable is taste, curiosity, and open-mindedness. Rubin says he can't remember lea…" 1:11:10 Rubin's answer is simple and direct: taste, curiosity, and open-mindedness are where it's at — and he cannot recall a single thing he learned in school that has been useful to him in life. Ben Horowitz and Rubin agree that self-knowledge is a profound concept that gets unfairly tagged as narcissism by a society that lacks a positive word for it. Anjney Midha frames Rubin's overall message as 'vibing with yourself' — The Way of Code as a window into how Rubin applies his own creative process to every domain he enters. Rubin has the final word: the book is, ultimately, a 3,000-year-old manual on how to vibe with yourself — ancient wisdom dressed in the language of the present.
Taste Matters More Than Expertise in the AI Age
As AI absorbs technical skills, what becomes scarce and valuable is taste, curiosity, and open-mindedness. Rubin says he can't remember learning anything in school that was ever useful to him — and that self-knowledge may be the real curriculum of the future.
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