following on from this thread:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/m14/id_like_advice_from_lw_regarding_migraines/c9kr?context=3
User Algon asked:
I don't drink alcohol, but is it really all that? I just assumed that most people have alcoholic beverages for the 'buzz'/intoxication.
I related my experience:
I have come to the conclusion that I taste things differently to a large subset of the population. I have a very sweet tooth and am very sensitive to bitter flavours.
I don't eat olives, most alcohol only tastes like the alcoholic aftertaste (which apparently some people don't taste) - imagine the strongest burning taste of the purest alcohol you have tasted, some people never taste that, I taste it with nearly every alcoholic beverage. Beer is usually awfully bitter too.
The only wine I could ever bother to drink is desert wine (its very sweet) and only slowly. (or also a half shot of rum and maple syrup)
Having said all this - yes; some people love their alcoholic beverages for their flavours.
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I am wondering what the sensory experience of other LW users is of alcohol. Do you drink (if not why not?)? Do you have specific preferences? Do you have a particular pallet for foods (probably relevant)?
I hypothesise a lower proportion of drinkers than the rest of the population. (subject of course to cultural norms where you come from)
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Edit: I will make another post in a week about taste preferences because (as we probably already know) human tastes vary. I did want to mention that I avoid spicy things except for sweet chilli which is not spicy at all. And I don't drink coffee (because it tastes bad and I am always very awake and never need caffeine to wake me up). I am also quite sure I am a super-taster but wanted to not use that word for concern that the jargon might confuse people who don't yet know about it.
Thanks for all the responses! This has been really interesting and exactly what I expected (number of posts)!
In regards to experiences, I would mention that heavy drinking is linked with nearly every health problem you could think of and I am surprised we had a selection of several heavy drinkers (to those who are heavy drinkers I would suggest reading about the health implications and reconsidering the lifestyle, it sounds like most of you are not addicted). about the heavy drinkers - I suspect that is not representative of average, but rather the people who feel they are outliers decided to mention their cases (of people who did not reply; there are probably none or very few heavy drinkers, whereas there are probably some who did not reply and are light drinkers or did not reply and don't drink).
I hope to reply to a bunch of the comments and should get to it in the next few days.
Thank you again! Maybe this should be included on the next survey...
Edit 2: follow up post -http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/m3j/tally_of_lesswrong_experience_on_alcohol/
I was actually just thinking about it some more. About 20 minutes ago I was eating a strawberry thinking, "is this called bitter or sour?"
The hypothesis I arrived at is that I hardly eat many bitter foods and so I don't have a great label for what bitter is and so I wonder whether the sour things I eat are actually bitter.
But I think I understated my ability to distinguish them. I had some omelet for lunch today with kale and collards, neither of which I think I've had before. I didn't enjoy it. I think it's because those things are bitter. Is that true? Is kale and/or collards considered to be bitter?
Another interesting thing I was thinking about... so I've been trying to learn a bit about cooking and blending different flavors together. I was thinking about the fact that there really only exist a handful of fundamental flavors. And so since a few weeks ago, every so often I try to think about what I'm eating as a blend of those fundamental flavors. And when I do that... I stop being to recognize the "higher level flavor". Like when I was doing it with my strawberries, it tasted like a blend of sour and sugar, and then I tried to think about where the "strawberriness" fits in to that, and I couldn't fit it in - it just tasted like sour and sugar!
This is interesting, because it's almost crazy to me that you'd call a strawberry sour - almost as crazy as calling it bitter! Strawberries are really really sweet in my experience. (Unless it was a very unripe one, I suppose?) Although, I'm not hugely keen on them because of texture issues, so possibly I just haven't picked up on sourness...? Sometimes I think I don't taste foods as well when I'm nervous about potential texture variations (for some reason I can get a strong "yuck" reaction from this).