I don’t think liking is inherently tied to differentiation.
I didn’t say it was.
True, what you said was
Once you’re accustomed to bat urine, you’ll be able to tell all the different kinds apart, you’ll have a newfound appreciation for its “taste”, etc., all because of your neural plasticity.
which I read as implying that differentiation causes “liking” (“inherently tied” was imprecise terminology on my part). What did you actually mean?
Sounds like a despised “just-so” story to me.
Uh, taste as an evolutionarily-shaped nutrition-detector isn’t exactly a novel just-so hypothesis. If your real objection is with the assertion of complex flavor preferences or the link between such flavors and biotic diversity, I don’t know what calling it a “just-so story” even means. You were probably looking for a slightly less general retaliate button.
You can just as well find markers of biotic diversity in bat urine (at the very least, diabetic bat urine) that derives from the variety in their diet, and the different kinds of bats, etc.
Valuable biotic diversity. The kind of stuff that garners positive feedback from the tract.
I know. I was referring to your newfound “ability to distinguish differences to a higher degree of precision” and didn’t know a shorter term. Please don’t criticize someone’s terminology unless you offer an alternate, superior term that you would not object to.
I wasn’t “criticizing your terminology”, I was attempting to correct a perceived misunderstanding in progress. You used the word “nuance” and then went on to talk about double-blind taste tests, which taken together led me to believe that I hadn’t effectively communicated the scale of distinction I had in mind. Hence the comparison to ale and lager. I’m well-aware of wine snobs and their embarrassing track records.
Assuming that my terminological correction is some ineffectual, off-topic criticism of your choice of words is assuming I’m basically acting in bad faith. Not very productive.
So would you agree that my thesis is at least accurate for a portion of the population?
True, what you said was … which I read as implying that differentiation causes “liking” (“inherently tied” was imprecise terminology on my part). What did you actually mean?
I was listing the differentiation, and the liking of taste, as two separate phenomena, with any possible causal relationship, not necessarily the differentiation causing the enjoyment.
Uh, taste as an evolutionarily-shaped nutrition-detector isn’t exactly a novel just-so hypothesis.
Yes, we do have (what can be called) nutrition detectors, but none of them work anything like what would have to be present for the one you posited: 1) in the EEA, we didn’t normally taste the ingredients of beer, 2) 25% of the population is distracted by the taste of alcohol and unable to use the information, 3) the nutrition detectors we do have evoke pleasant responses in almost everyone, from a very young age (i.e. aren’t acquired tastes).
I call it a “just so story” because it doesn’t pass many obvious sanity checks.
Valuable biotic diversity. The kind of stuff that garners positive feedback from the tract.
None of the things in beer “garner positive feedback from the tract”. And knowledge of what fruits and meats the bats in the area are able to eat would definitely signal the diversity in the area. If you meant GI tract micoorganisms, beer came around way too late, and is way too dissimilar to other things we consume to have been adapted for as a gauge of useful diversity.
I wasn’t “criticizing your terminology”, I was attempting to correct a perceived misunderstanding in progress.
What is the brief appellation you believe I should have used to describe what I was referring to? If you don’t have one, you should have accepted the specificity/brevity tradeoff I made in trying to summarize what you just said, and responded to the substance of the point, saying what I got wrong there.
If you do have one, you just passed up your second opportunity to be helpful by telling it to me. What’s your goal here?
Assuming that my terminological correction is some ineffectual, off-topic criticism of your choice of words is assuming I’m basically acting in bad faith.
No, telling me what I did wrong without telling me what would have been right, is bad faith, because it leaves me in the position of having to get permission from you every time I want to briefly refer back to something you said.
So would you agree that my thesis is at least accurate for a portion of the population?
Yes.
Okay, thank you. I just wish I didn’t have to pull teeth to talk about these things.
“None of the things in beer “garner positive feedback from the tract”″.
Not true. One of the things I like about beer is that when I’m hungry, it tastes REALLY good. It tastes like I’m eating a meal. This doesn’t happen with wine, which is just a drink.
LOL! What’s funny is, this isn’t the first time I’ve heard this line of “reasoning”.
“Okay okay, high-carb substance X might not taste good, but it tastes REALLY good when you’re energy starved (in contrast to all those high-carb food/drinks that don’t taste really good in such a circumstance).”
I mention it because it tastes better than other high carb food and drinks in those circumstances. That’s a fact, at least regarding my taste.
And there’s really something wrong with your manner of argument, since you could say something similar about any reason why anyone would say anything ever tastes good. You might as well say you dislike the taste of milkshake, but just like the effects of fat and sugar on your body, or something like that.
[replying separately to this tortured meta sub-thread]
What is the brief appellation you believe I should have used to describe what I was referring to? If you don’t have one, you should have accepted the specificity/brevity tradeoff I made in trying to summarize what you just said, and responded to the substance of the point, saying what I got wrong there.
Look, it wasn’t clear to me at all that you were making such a trade-off. I wouldn’t have mentioned the word “nuance” at all if I thought you were you just abbreviating my intent. Misinterpretations are a dime a dozen in these sorts of conversations, no need to take a retransmit so personally.
What’s your goal here?
To have a clear exchange of ideas. Do you suspect another?
No, telling me what I did wrong without telling me what would have been right, is bad faith, because it leaves me in the position of having to get permission from you every time I want to briefly refer back to something you said.
Emphasis mine. You’re taking it personally. It could just as easily have been poor phrasing on my part. I’m more interested in ensuring that the thing you read is the thing I’m trying to write than I am in figuring who’s to “blame” for some terminological “error”.
1) in the EEA, we didn’t normally taste the ingredients of beer
Not sure what you mean here. In the EEA we could still probably taste the rough signature of a fermentation process.
2) 25% of the population is distracted by the taste of alcohol and unable to use the information
Again you imply that supertasters are unable to get past their initial reaction to the taste of alcohol, despite the utter plausibility of psychoactive reinforcement leading to a modified sense of taste.
3) the nutrition detectors we do have evoke pleasant responses in almost everyone, from a very young age (i.e. aren’t acquired tastes).
Source? My tastes changed slowly but continually as I aged. Is your assertion that none of the common shifts from childhood to adult food preferences are linked to nutritional content?
I call it a “just so story” because it doesn’t pass many obvious sanity checks.
If the above ordered list constitutes your “obvious sanity checks”, then I question their adequacy. If you’re referring to some other sanity checks, I’d be interested in hearing them.
To clarify, I’m not actually advocating Roberts’ theory. I brought it up because I think it’s plausible, which is all that’s required to doubt the counterintuitive assertion that developing a taste for bat urine is akin to developing a taste for beer.
If you meant GI tract micoorganisms, beer came around way too late, and is way too dissimilar to other things we consume to have been adapted for as a gauge of useful diversity.
Came around way too late? Dietary adaptations can be pretty rapid (e.g., adult lactose tolerance). But I doubt your assertion that beer is too dissimilar to other things we consume—getting a message like “this is fermented, caloric, and not obviously toxic” from your tongue is probably good enough.
Not sure what you mean here. In the EEA we could still probably taste the rough signature of a fermentation process.
Then you’d have to show how it has selective power. What information is gained from the fermentation stage, and why would it shift our makeup so quickly?
Again you imply that supertasters are unable to get past their initial reaction to the taste of alcohol, despite the utter plausibility of psychoactive reinforcement leading to a modified sense of taste.
Not one that just happens to line up with a convoluted mechanism that just happens to justify liking beer.
Source? My tastes changed slowly but continually as I aged. Is your assertion that none of the common shifts from childhood to adult food preferences are linked to nutritional content?
We change what we like, but we keep the category of sweet (detection of sugars). There is no scientific substantiation for a “fermentedness” category detector: just sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and the recent meaty one. That gives a serious presumption against this kind of mechanism.
To clarify, I’m not actually advocating Roberts’ theory. I brought it up because I think it’s plausible, which is all that’s required to doubt the counterintuitive assertion that developing a taste for bat urine is akin to developing a taste for beer.
Then I just have to show equal plausibility of the usefulness of bat urine, which I’ve done. Diabetic bat urine contains sugar, which in turn contains sweetness, which in turn contains information information about the plants in the area. This result can be extended to normal bat urine, in which the fruit content of the area will determine bat urine bitterness, which we would then “enjoy” drinking, just as people learn to “enjoy” beer’s bitterness.
And, as a bonus, urine was consumed for a sliver of our evolutionary history.
Sure, it’s convoluted and implausible, but good enough to keep consumption of bat urine nice and legal, which is really all it has to do.
Then you’d have to show how it has selective power. What information is gained from the fermentation stage, and why would it shift our makeup so quickly?
Why would it need to be a quick shift?
Not one that just happens to line up with a convoluted mechanism that just happens to justify liking beer.
Huh? In earlier comments you seemed to have no problem with the idea that people developed a taste for things that got them high, but now the idea is suspect because it supports an explanation for liking beer?
We change what we like, but we keep the category of sweet (detection of sugars). There is no scientific substantiation for a “fermentedness” category detector: just sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and the recent meaty one. That gives a serious presumption against this kind of mechanism.
And there’s no need for a “fermentedness” category detector, any more than there’s a need for cones that selectively perceive yellow.
Sure, it’s convoluted and implausible, but good enough to keep consumption of bat urine nice and legal, which is really all it has to do.
Ah yes, the “grand social conspiracy to ward off prohibition” hypothesis emerges again. I’d be interested in hearing more about how you think this is supposed to work.
Ah yes, the “grand social conspiracy to ward off prohibition” hypothesis emerges again. I’d be interested in hearing more about how you think this is supposed to work.
A large fraction of the population is hugely enthusiastic about something, and acts to preserve it? It worked for chocolate—what makes you think alcohol inspires less enthusiasm?
Then I just have to show equal plausibility of the usefulness of bat urine, which I’ve done.
You haven’t shown equal plausibility for your “bat urine” hypothesis as Roberts has for his “fermented food” hypothesis. Go ahead and scan his blog under the categories fermented food and umami hypothesis. (I don’t agree with everything Roberts has written on the subject.)
That said, I think it was an error for loqi to bring up Roberts’s ideas at all—when he talks about fermented food, he means things like yogourt, soy sauce, natto, miso, fish paste, and kombucha, not the products of alcoholic fermentation. (ETA: No, apparently he includes alcoholic fermentation.)
True, what you said was
which I read as implying that differentiation causes “liking” (“inherently tied” was imprecise terminology on my part). What did you actually mean?
Uh, taste as an evolutionarily-shaped nutrition-detector isn’t exactly a novel just-so hypothesis. If your real objection is with the assertion of complex flavor preferences or the link between such flavors and biotic diversity, I don’t know what calling it a “just-so story” even means. You were probably looking for a slightly less general retaliate button.
Valuable biotic diversity. The kind of stuff that garners positive feedback from the tract.
I wasn’t “criticizing your terminology”, I was attempting to correct a perceived misunderstanding in progress. You used the word “nuance” and then went on to talk about double-blind taste tests, which taken together led me to believe that I hadn’t effectively communicated the scale of distinction I had in mind. Hence the comparison to ale and lager. I’m well-aware of wine snobs and their embarrassing track records.
Assuming that my terminological correction is some ineffectual, off-topic criticism of your choice of words is assuming I’m basically acting in bad faith. Not very productive.
Yes.
I was listing the differentiation, and the liking of taste, as two separate phenomena, with any possible causal relationship, not necessarily the differentiation causing the enjoyment.
Yes, we do have (what can be called) nutrition detectors, but none of them work anything like what would have to be present for the one you posited: 1) in the EEA, we didn’t normally taste the ingredients of beer, 2) 25% of the population is distracted by the taste of alcohol and unable to use the information, 3) the nutrition detectors we do have evoke pleasant responses in almost everyone, from a very young age (i.e. aren’t acquired tastes).
I call it a “just so story” because it doesn’t pass many obvious sanity checks.
None of the things in beer “garner positive feedback from the tract”. And knowledge of what fruits and meats the bats in the area are able to eat would definitely signal the diversity in the area. If you meant GI tract micoorganisms, beer came around way too late, and is way too dissimilar to other things we consume to have been adapted for as a gauge of useful diversity.
What is the brief appellation you believe I should have used to describe what I was referring to? If you don’t have one, you should have accepted the specificity/brevity tradeoff I made in trying to summarize what you just said, and responded to the substance of the point, saying what I got wrong there.
If you do have one, you just passed up your second opportunity to be helpful by telling it to me. What’s your goal here?
No, telling me what I did wrong without telling me what would have been right, is bad faith, because it leaves me in the position of having to get permission from you every time I want to briefly refer back to something you said.
Okay, thank you. I just wish I didn’t have to pull teeth to talk about these things.
“None of the things in beer “garner positive feedback from the tract”″.
Not true. One of the things I like about beer is that when I’m hungry, it tastes REALLY good. It tastes like I’m eating a meal. This doesn’t happen with wine, which is just a drink.
LOL! What’s funny is, this isn’t the first time I’ve heard this line of “reasoning”.
“Okay okay, high-carb substance X might not taste good, but it tastes REALLY good when you’re energy starved (in contrast to all those high-carb food/drinks that don’t taste really good in such a circumstance).”
I mention it because it tastes better than other high carb food and drinks in those circumstances. That’s a fact, at least regarding my taste.
And there’s really something wrong with your manner of argument, since you could say something similar about any reason why anyone would say anything ever tastes good. You might as well say you dislike the taste of milkshake, but just like the effects of fat and sugar on your body, or something like that.
[replying separately to this tortured meta sub-thread]
Look, it wasn’t clear to me at all that you were making such a trade-off. I wouldn’t have mentioned the word “nuance” at all if I thought you were you just abbreviating my intent. Misinterpretations are a dime a dozen in these sorts of conversations, no need to take a retransmit so personally.
To have a clear exchange of ideas. Do you suspect another?
Emphasis mine. You’re taking it personally. It could just as easily have been poor phrasing on my part. I’m more interested in ensuring that the thing you read is the thing I’m trying to write than I am in figuring who’s to “blame” for some terminological “error”.
Not sure what you mean here. In the EEA we could still probably taste the rough signature of a fermentation process.
Again you imply that supertasters are unable to get past their initial reaction to the taste of alcohol, despite the utter plausibility of psychoactive reinforcement leading to a modified sense of taste.
Source? My tastes changed slowly but continually as I aged. Is your assertion that none of the common shifts from childhood to adult food preferences are linked to nutritional content?
If the above ordered list constitutes your “obvious sanity checks”, then I question their adequacy. If you’re referring to some other sanity checks, I’d be interested in hearing them.
To clarify, I’m not actually advocating Roberts’ theory. I brought it up because I think it’s plausible, which is all that’s required to doubt the counterintuitive assertion that developing a taste for bat urine is akin to developing a taste for beer.
Came around way too late? Dietary adaptations can be pretty rapid (e.g., adult lactose tolerance). But I doubt your assertion that beer is too dissimilar to other things we consume—getting a message like “this is fermented, caloric, and not obviously toxic” from your tongue is probably good enough.
Then you’d have to show how it has selective power. What information is gained from the fermentation stage, and why would it shift our makeup so quickly?
Not one that just happens to line up with a convoluted mechanism that just happens to justify liking beer.
We change what we like, but we keep the category of sweet (detection of sugars). There is no scientific substantiation for a “fermentedness” category detector: just sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and the recent meaty one. That gives a serious presumption against this kind of mechanism.
Then I just have to show equal plausibility of the usefulness of bat urine, which I’ve done. Diabetic bat urine contains sugar, which in turn contains sweetness, which in turn contains information information about the plants in the area. This result can be extended to normal bat urine, in which the fruit content of the area will determine bat urine bitterness, which we would then “enjoy” drinking, just as people learn to “enjoy” beer’s bitterness.
And, as a bonus, urine was consumed for a sliver of our evolutionary history.
Sure, it’s convoluted and implausible, but good enough to keep consumption of bat urine nice and legal, which is really all it has to do.
Why would it need to be a quick shift?
Huh? In earlier comments you seemed to have no problem with the idea that people developed a taste for things that got them high, but now the idea is suspect because it supports an explanation for liking beer?
And there’s no need for a “fermentedness” category detector, any more than there’s a need for cones that selectively perceive yellow.
Ah yes, the “grand social conspiracy to ward off prohibition” hypothesis emerges again. I’d be interested in hearing more about how you think this is supposed to work.
A large fraction of the population is hugely enthusiastic about something, and acts to preserve it? It worked for chocolate—what makes you think alcohol inspires less enthusiasm?
Enthusiasm alone doesn’t solve coordination problems, especially when there’s no problem to be solved in the first place.
On retrospect, I would argue less “keep alcohol legal” than “keep alcohol available”.
It’s called umami.
You haven’t shown equal plausibility for your “bat urine” hypothesis as Roberts has for his “fermented food” hypothesis. Go ahead and scan his blog under the categories fermented food and umami hypothesis. (I don’t agree with everything Roberts has written on the subject.)
That said, I think it was an error for loqi to bring up Roberts’s ideas at all—when he talks about fermented food, he means things like yogourt, soy sauce, natto, miso, fish paste, and kombucha, not the products of alcoholic fermentation. (ETA: No, apparently he includes alcoholic fermentation.)
http://www.blog.sethroberts.net/2010/01/17/lindemans-lambic-framboise/
My mistake.