I don’t drink (or do drugs or smoke). I’ve never tried drugs or cigarettes, and I’ve only tasted alcohol, never had a full drink.
I don’t enjoy the taste of alcohol at all. The “alcohol aftertaste” is pretty unpleasant to me. And the one time I had a moderate amount of some type of harder alcohol (I lost a bet) I did not enjoy that warm/burning feeling in my stomach at all.
As for my palate, I’d rate my tolerance for spice at about a 3⁄10 and my tolerance for sour/bitter at about a 6⁄10. The sour/bitter is harder to judge—I love lemon and lime, but I don’t like coffee at all. Well, I actually sort of like the taste of coffee, but only when it’s part of one of those milk shake things. Any type of regular coffee with cream and sugar had been too strong for me.
As for the drinking/drugs thing though, another big reason why I don’t do it is social/personal.
Social
The “alcohol environments” I’ve been exposed to have largely been American high school and college. People in this environment tend to be stupid and wild when they drink, and I don’t find that fun.
Furthermore, they also seem to start acting immorally. For example, my freshman year of college, all the guys on my dorm floor were pretty close and really friendly with one another. They were a fun and relatively interesting group of people, and I enjoyed their company. When they drank, I actually still often had fun around them, but not always. One time some guys came back from some party with a huge wooden table, and were laughing and bragging that they stole it. Everyone around me was drunk and found it hilarious, seemingly because it was so random and weird. I was appalled. I don’t find theft to be funny.
Also, a lot of drinking seems to happen in party/dancing environments, which I find myself moderately uncomfortable in. I also don’t find those environments fun because of the noise and crowdedness (I’m a bit claustrophobic). Tim Urban does a good job explaining why these environments are so unpleasant, and I share his feelings.
Personal
There do exist more relaxed and sensible environments where people drink, so my complaints above don’t explain why I don’t drink in these environments (other than the fact that I don’t like the taste, but let’s put that aside for now).
The reason why people drink in these environments seems to be because it’s a “social lubricant”. Ie. it makes them uninhibited, and they could have more fun when they’re uninhibited. But what does this actually mean?
Well, it means that a) there are thoughts they enjoy expressing that they’re too afraid to express when they’re sober. And/or b) there are behaviors they enjoy performing that they’re too afraid to perform when they’re sober. In other words, if you diff “things I say when I’m sober” with “things I say when I’m drunk”, it returns something. And if you diff “things I do when I’m sober” with “things I do when I’m drunk”, it also returns something.
Some of the things that turn up in the diffs are desirable. For example, it’s probably a good thing that being drunk makes you silly, because being silly is fun (for some people; not me). But you don’t want to be silly at work or when you go to the super market.
However, I think that a lot of the things that turn up in the diff are a result of you not being comfortable with yourself, and I think that this is undesirable. For example, people generally are uncomfortable talking to new people, especially when you have to do the initiating. Alcohol, being a social lubricant, can facilitate this and lead to a good time.
But to me, this feels very much like admitting defeat. The way I see it, if I’m afraid or ashamed to do something, there are two possible reasons why:
1) I’m ashamed about something that I should be ashamed about.
2) I’m irrationally afraid/ashamed to do something.
In case 1, I think I should fix it. I don’t think it makes sense to be ashamed about anything you can’t fix. From that it follows that the things I’d be ashamed about are fixable, and it’s my feeling that “thus I should fix them”.
In case 2, I think I should overcome these irrational feelings.
I don’t think this philosophy of how to handle cases 1 and 2 is perfect though. I used to take it pretty literally, but I’ve since realized that it’s unreasonable to think you could fix all the irrational feelings your brain produces. So as far as drinking goes, I’ll give it a fair shot some time, but so far I haven’t been motivated enough to do so.
Also, this approach to handling cases 1 and 2 is something I apply to life in general, not just to drinking. I try to never hide anything (that’s why I use my real name everywhere on the internet) and I’m comfortable answering pretty much any sort of personal question (so AMA!). And even when I’m not comfortable, I try to do it anyway. It’s my way of facing the truth. After all:
What is true is already so.
Owning up to it doesn’t make it worse.
Not being open about it doesn’t make it go away.
And because it’s true, it is what is there to be interacted with.
Anything untrue isn’t there to be lived.
People can stand what is true,
for they are already enduring it.
Update: After reading Eliezer’s Facebook post on doing things to make sure you’re not falling victim to the bias towards self-consistency, I decided to go out and drink a beer. I thought it tasted awful and I had to force myself through it. I think I experienced some sort of buzz though. But definitely not nearly enough to outweigh the bad taste.
Yes, but it’s like a band aid. What I meant (but didn’t communicated) is that I want to yank out those irrational feelings from their root, so they’re not a part of me anymore. The way I see it, the fact that they’re a part of you is a bad thing that should be fixed. For the most part. “I’ve since realized that it’s unreasonable to think you could fix all the irrational feelings your brain produces.”
As for my palate, I’d rate my tolerance for spice at about a 3⁄10 and my tolerance for sour/bitter at about a 6⁄10. The sour/bitter is harder to judge—I love lemon and lime, but I don’t like coffee at all.
Why are you lumping them together in the first place? Couldn’t you rate your tolerance for sour at about a 8⁄10 and your tolerance for bitter at about a 4/10?
In theory, yes. But I don’t really understand the difference between sour and bitter. Ie. when I’m tasting stuff, I don’t really know if what I’m tasting is called sour or whether it’s called bitter.
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).
It’s almost crazy to me that you wouldn’t call strawberries sour. Strawberries taste quite sour to me, and quite sweet as well. I’ve always thought of sourness as relating to acidity (strawberries and grapefruits actually have pretty similar pH’s). I perceive bitterness to be entirely different (strawberries are not bitter, grapefruits are slightly to moderately bitter, depending on the grapefruit, kale is very bitter to me but not at all sour).
There are varieties of strawberries that are not sour at all, so I suppose it’s possible that you simply have limited experience with strawberries. (Well, you probably must, since you don’t like them, but maybe that’s the reason you don’t think they’re sour, as opposed to some fundamental difference in how you taste things.)
I actually don’t like the taste of purely-sweet strawberries; the slightly-sour ones are better. A very unripe strawberry would taste very sour, but not at all sweet, and its flesh would also be very hard.
Hm, that is interesting. I’ve always thought that berries were known to be a bit sour, but I also suspect that you’re right in saying that they’re mostly sweet. To me it seems like a more even balance. It wasn’t unripe as far as I could tell, and I got it at the supermarket 3 days ago.
I don’t drink (or do drugs or smoke). I’ve never tried drugs or cigarettes, and I’ve only tasted alcohol, never had a full drink.
I don’t enjoy the taste of alcohol at all. The “alcohol aftertaste” is pretty unpleasant to me. And the one time I had a moderate amount of some type of harder alcohol (I lost a bet) I did not enjoy that warm/burning feeling in my stomach at all.
As for my palate, I’d rate my tolerance for spice at about a 3⁄10 and my tolerance for sour/bitter at about a 6⁄10. The sour/bitter is harder to judge—I love lemon and lime, but I don’t like coffee at all. Well, I actually sort of like the taste of coffee, but only when it’s part of one of those milk shake things. Any type of regular coffee with cream and sugar had been too strong for me.
As for the drinking/drugs thing though, another big reason why I don’t do it is social/personal.
Social
The “alcohol environments” I’ve been exposed to have largely been American high school and college. People in this environment tend to be stupid and wild when they drink, and I don’t find that fun.
Furthermore, they also seem to start acting immorally. For example, my freshman year of college, all the guys on my dorm floor were pretty close and really friendly with one another. They were a fun and relatively interesting group of people, and I enjoyed their company. When they drank, I actually still often had fun around them, but not always. One time some guys came back from some party with a huge wooden table, and were laughing and bragging that they stole it. Everyone around me was drunk and found it hilarious, seemingly because it was so random and weird. I was appalled. I don’t find theft to be funny.
Also, a lot of drinking seems to happen in party/dancing environments, which I find myself moderately uncomfortable in. I also don’t find those environments fun because of the noise and crowdedness (I’m a bit claustrophobic). Tim Urban does a good job explaining why these environments are so unpleasant, and I share his feelings.
Personal
There do exist more relaxed and sensible environments where people drink, so my complaints above don’t explain why I don’t drink in these environments (other than the fact that I don’t like the taste, but let’s put that aside for now).
The reason why people drink in these environments seems to be because it’s a “social lubricant”. Ie. it makes them uninhibited, and they could have more fun when they’re uninhibited. But what does this actually mean?
Well, it means that a) there are thoughts they enjoy expressing that they’re too afraid to express when they’re sober. And/or b) there are behaviors they enjoy performing that they’re too afraid to perform when they’re sober. In other words, if you diff “things I say when I’m sober” with “things I say when I’m drunk”, it returns something. And if you diff “things I do when I’m sober” with “things I do when I’m drunk”, it also returns something.
Some of the things that turn up in the diffs are desirable. For example, it’s probably a good thing that being drunk makes you silly, because being silly is fun (for some people; not me). But you don’t want to be silly at work or when you go to the super market.
However, I think that a lot of the things that turn up in the diff are a result of you not being comfortable with yourself, and I think that this is undesirable. For example, people generally are uncomfortable talking to new people, especially when you have to do the initiating. Alcohol, being a social lubricant, can facilitate this and lead to a good time.
But to me, this feels very much like admitting defeat. The way I see it, if I’m afraid or ashamed to do something, there are two possible reasons why:
1) I’m ashamed about something that I should be ashamed about.
2) I’m irrationally afraid/ashamed to do something.
In case 1, I think I should fix it. I don’t think it makes sense to be ashamed about anything you can’t fix. From that it follows that the things I’d be ashamed about are fixable, and it’s my feeling that “thus I should fix them”.
In case 2, I think I should overcome these irrational feelings.
I don’t think this philosophy of how to handle cases 1 and 2 is perfect though. I used to take it pretty literally, but I’ve since realized that it’s unreasonable to think you could fix all the irrational feelings your brain produces. So as far as drinking goes, I’ll give it a fair shot some time, but so far I haven’t been motivated enough to do so.
Also, this approach to handling cases 1 and 2 is something I apply to life in general, not just to drinking. I try to never hide anything (that’s why I use my real name everywhere on the internet) and I’m comfortable answering pretty much any sort of personal question (so AMA!). And even when I’m not comfortable, I try to do it anyway. It’s my way of facing the truth. After all:
Update: After reading Eliezer’s Facebook post on doing things to make sure you’re not falling victim to the bias towards self-consistency, I decided to go out and drink a beer. I thought it tasted awful and I had to force myself through it. I think I experienced some sort of buzz though. But definitely not nearly enough to outweigh the bad taste.
Well, alcohol is one possible way of achieving that.
Yes, but it’s like a band aid. What I meant (but didn’t communicated) is that I want to yank out those irrational feelings from their root, so they’re not a part of me anymore. The way I see it, the fact that they’re a part of you is a bad thing that should be fixed. For the most part. “I’ve since realized that it’s unreasonable to think you could fix all the irrational feelings your brain produces.”
Not saying you should start drinking but almost no one likes the taste of alcohol the first time they try it.
[pollid:863]
No option for “I can’t remember”?
Thanks for making that point. I didn’t really know that. I’ll take it into consideration.
Why are you lumping them together in the first place? Couldn’t you rate your tolerance for sour at about a 8⁄10 and your tolerance for bitter at about a 4/10?
In theory, yes. But I don’t really understand the difference between sour and bitter. Ie. when I’m tasting stuff, I don’t really know if what I’m tasting is called sour or whether it’s called bitter.
that is fascinating! To me they are very different flavours.
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).
It’s almost crazy to me that you wouldn’t call strawberries sour. Strawberries taste quite sour to me, and quite sweet as well. I’ve always thought of sourness as relating to acidity (strawberries and grapefruits actually have pretty similar pH’s). I perceive bitterness to be entirely different (strawberries are not bitter, grapefruits are slightly to moderately bitter, depending on the grapefruit, kale is very bitter to me but not at all sour).
Interesting. I get grapefruit (which I like better than strawberries) to be quite sour, but not bitter at all.
There are varieties of strawberries that are not sour at all, so I suppose it’s possible that you simply have limited experience with strawberries. (Well, you probably must, since you don’t like them, but maybe that’s the reason you don’t think they’re sour, as opposed to some fundamental difference in how you taste things.)
I actually don’t like the taste of purely-sweet strawberries; the slightly-sour ones are better. A very unripe strawberry would taste very sour, but not at all sweet, and its flesh would also be very hard.
Hm, that is interesting. I’ve always thought that berries were known to be a bit sour, but I also suspect that you’re right in saying that they’re mostly sweet. To me it seems like a more even balance. It wasn’t unripe as far as I could tell, and I got it at the supermarket 3 days ago.
I suspect kale and collards can be bitter. Although they can be prepared to be less bitter.
I feel like there are many many fundamental flavours. I can regularly figure out the ingredients of a dish based on what it tastes like.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taste#Basic_tastes
It seems to be a bit more ambiguous than calling it “fundamental” though.
I don’t feel like those are the best group to divide foods into. Although I don’t have better groups to suggest.