Mario comments on Absolute denial for atheists - Less Wrong

39 Post author: taw 16 July 2009 03:41PM

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Comment author: SilasBarta 16 July 2009 07:48:39PM *  32 points [-]

Okay, now for my attempt to actually answer the prompt:

Your supposed "taste" for alcoholic beverages is a lie.

Summary: I've never enjoyed the actual process of drinking alcohol in the way that I e.g. enjoy ice cream. (The effects on my mind are a different story, of course.)

So for a long time I thought that, hey, I just have weird taste buds. Other people really like beer/wine/etc., I don't. No biggie.

But then as time went by I saw all the data about how wine-tasting "experts" can't even agree on which is the best, the moment you start using scientific controls. And then I started asking people about the particulars of why they like alcohol. It turns out that when it comes any implications of "I like alcohol", I have the exact same characterstics as those who claim to like alcohol.

For example, there are people who insist that, yes, I must like alcohol, because, well, what about Drink X which has low alcohol content and is heavily loaded with flavoring I'd like anyway? And wine experts would tell me that, on taste alone, ice cream wins. And defenses of drinking one's favorite beverage always morph into "well, it helps to relax..."

So, I came to the conclusion that people have the very same taste for alcohol that I do, it's just that they need to cook up a rationlizations for getting high. Still trying to find counterevidence...

Your turn: convince me that you really, really like the taste of [alcoholic beverage that happens to also signal your social status].

Comment author: Mario 17 July 2009 03:38:55AM 0 points [-]

I have a theory about alcohol consumption; I call people who like (or don't mind) the taste "tongue blind." My theory is that these people have such poor taste receptors that they need an overly strong stimulus to register anything other than bland. Under this theory, I would expect people that like alcohol to also like very spicy food, to put extra salt most things they eat, and to think that vanilla is a synonym for plain.

Comment author: dclayh 17 July 2009 04:10:01AM *  1 point [-]
  1. Vanilla is a synonym for "plain" when it's artificial (i.e. the vanillin molecule and nothing else). Actual vanilla is obviously a whole different beast.
  2. If people who liked wine had such dead tastes buds or (more realistically) noses, why would they bother to make up such elaborate flavors? (In particular, if it were only about status-signaling, the move from old-style wine description ("insouciant but never trite") to the new style ("cassis, clove and cinnamon with a whiff of tobacco and old leather") seems very strange.)
  3. My personal experience in general doesn't jive with your theory, except for one point: people who like alcohol tend to have a high tolerance for bitter things, and therefore also like very dark chocolate (I personally am an exception to this, however).
  4. ETA: the software converted my 0-indexed list to a 1-indexing. How sad.
Comment author: eirenicon 17 July 2009 03:16:07PM *  0 points [-]

You seem to have stumbled onto the existence of supertasters. As a supertaster myself, I find tonic water extremely bitter, must overly sweeten my coffee and can't stand grapefruit juice or spinach. I delight in the sharp sting of a good beer, though. Conversely, there are "nontasters" who have a greater tolerance for strong tastes.

Comment author: thomblake 17 July 2009 02:39:23PM 0 points [-]

I'm afraid that doesn't mesh well with my experiences. I would actually suspect the opposite; it seems like people who "don't like wine" are missing the nuances between different wine flavors and so I would have guessed they have a worse sense of taste.

For reference, I like some alcohol, do not like lots of salt, and sometimes take violent offense to calling vanilla 'plain'.

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