Aren't we over-thinking this?

To begin with I think Persig is terribly over-thinking quality and unnecessarily complicating the term. Right off the bat I thought "heck I can define quality, what's the big deal?" So before I get too far into Persig's drawn-out and inconclusive ramblings, I'm going to take a stab at defining quality for myself.

Quality: A descriptive term that indicates that something excels at it's function.

That wasn't so hard was it? What worries me is that while I read through chapter 20 and was able to follow what Persig meant by quality being undefinable, I never quite believed him. Am I incapable of thinking rhetorically about the meaning of quality? Curious to see how else quality has been defined, I plugged it into google and the first definition I found was "the standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind; the degree of excellence of something" and I don't see fault in that definition. Am I missing something? I encourage anyone to try and tear apart mine or google's definition, because I do want to know what all of the fuss is about.

When Persig defines quality as "just what you like" however, I was truly dissatisfied. I thought he was building up to some grand insight that I couldn't see myself, and was instead left with a definition that I don't agree with. My argument against that definition, is that I like a lot of unquality things, and I also dislike some quality things. For example, at the restaurant I work at we were sampling truffle infused foods like salt and honey etc. (By truffle I'm talking about the fungus and not the chocolate). I found them disgusting, but I could still appreciate their quality. There were other indicators that led me to appreciate their quality even if I didn't like this particular food. A: They are expensive, and I was previously lectured on how rare and sought after truffles are before sampling. B: All of my other coworkers absolutely loved it. So while I was gagging on the horrendous flavor, I couldn't come to another conclusion other than that truffles must be a quality ingredient. Although I suppose someone could argue that if I was left to my own devices and didn't have that context of the product's worth I would have made an opposing conclusion. That may be true, but really that's not the world we live in. My rhetorical lense is relative to my environment, which to me means that in this environment I can safely label truffle a quality ingredient.

I think the second question is really an instance of sociology. As I demonstrated in the truffle argument, I came to the same conclusion as my peers even though it was not something my taste buds appreciated. I also think my definition of quality is suited to this question. If we can recognize that something is excelling at its function than we can agree on the quality of that product. Commonly we can easily agree on what is quality and what is not because either A is obviously better than B or because of the influence of our peers. If Persig were to look at two motorcycles and one was newer, with less miles, and from a more reputable company than the other, I think he would quickly conclude that motorcycle has the higher quality. If say, at first glance both machines have a similar quality Persig might (if he were shopping in this day and age) look online at product reviews to see how others rate the quality of the machine. It's really a matter of trusting other people. If I'm unsure of something's quality, but someone I trust vouches for it, I'm much more likely to purchase that product than if I was looking at the item on my own. While this can be a scary thought process, if it were applied in a "if your friends jumped off a bridge would you?" sort of way, but I think everyone does this. We can't experience everything or have a knowledge of everything in our lifetime, and so we often look to other's experience to make our judgements. I think that's human nature.