I think most of the discussion of “bending preferences” and “acquired taste” underestimate the variance of tastes across the population. I’ve seen someone on LW saying that they didn’t enjoy wine, and therefore suspecting that whoever claims to enjoy wine must be doing it for signalling. The idea that maybe some people actually enjoy wine and some don’t doesn’t seem to have occurred to them (where by some I mean ‘a sizeable fraction of the population’). Likewise, I’d be shocked to find that the fraction of people who actually like foie grass the first time they try it is 90%.
I think most of the discussion of “bending preferences” and “acquired taste” underestimate the variance of tastes across the population. I’ve seen someone on LW saying that they didn’t enjoy wine, and therefore suspecting that whoever claims to enjoy wine must be doing it for signalling. The idea that maybe some people actually enjoy wine and some don’t doesn’t seem to have occurred to them (where by some I mean ‘a sizeable fraction of the population’). Likewise, I’d be shocked to find that the fraction of people who actually like foie grass the first time they try it is 90%.