There's plenty of hard evidence that people are vulnerable to priming effects and other biases when tasting wine.
There's also plenty of hard evidence that people can tell the difference between wine A and wine B, under controlled (blinded) conditions. Note that "tell the difference" isn't the same as "identify which would be preferred by experts".
So, while the link is factually interesting, and evidence that some large-scale deception is going on, aided by such priming effects as label, marketing campaigns and popular movies can have, it seems a stretch to call it "proof" that people in general can't tell wine A from wine B.
Rather, this strikes me as a combination of trolling and boo lights: cheaply testing who appears to be "on your side" in a pet controversy. How well do you expect that to work out for you, in the sense of "reliably entangling your beliefs with reality"?
I think I'm entangling my beliefs with reality very well, by virtue of extracting all available information from phenomena rather than retreat to evidence that agrees with me. (Let's not forget, I didn't start out thinking that it was all BS.)
For example, did you stop to notice the implications of this:
There's plenty of hard evidence that people are vulnerable to priming effects and other biases when tasting wine.
How does that compare to the priming effects for other drinks? Does it matter?
...So, while the link is factually interesting, and evidence t
The Open Thread posted at the beginning of the month has gotten really, really big, so I've gone ahead and made another one. Post your new discussions here!
This thread is for the discussion of Less Wrong topics that have not appeared in recent posts. If a discussion gets unwieldy, celebrate by turning it into a top-level post.