My favorite example of this kind of phenomenon is water quality. Everyone and their mother claims they can taste the difference between tap water, tap water filtered through a Brita, and bottled water (and some people are even dumb enough to say that they prefer one brand of bottled water over another). But give them a blind taste test (very easy to perform at home – I encourage you all to do it), and nobody even tries to discern the difference – they usually admit immediately that they taste no difference between the waters.
I just performed this experiment assuming I wouldn’t be able to discern tap water from water cooler water, but I was able to—my tap water is slightly more metallic tasting.
My favorite example of this kind of phenomenon is water quality. Everyone and their mother claims they can taste the difference between tap water, tap water filtered through a Brita, and bottled water (and some people are even dumb enough to say that they prefer one brand of bottled water over another). But give them a blind taste test (very easy to perform at home – I encourage you all to do it), and nobody even tries to discern the difference – they usually admit immediately that they taste no difference between the waters.
I just performed this experiment, agreeing with the general point but still moderatly confident I’d be able to tell the difference.
I couldn’t.
I just performed this experiment assuming I wouldn’t be able to discern tap water from water cooler water, but I was able to—my tap water is slightly more metallic tasting.