And yet people here, apparently with a straight face, have made analogous arguments about alcoholic beverages. If I claim I like Amaro Montenegro then I must have been brainwashed and/or be (consciously or subconsciously) lying for signalling reasons or something. How could I demonstrate that I actually enjoy its taste?
If I claim I like Amaro Montenegro then I must have been brainwashed and/or be (consciously or subconsciously) lying for signalling reasons or something. How could I demonstrate that I actually enjoy its taste?
Blind taste test. Preferably several, where you don’t know if Amaro Montenegro is among the drinks you’re tasting in any particular test.
If you can’t single out for a high rating the one that you profess to like the taste of, then you’ve falsified the hypothesis that you like it for the taste.
If you can single it out for a high rating in blind taste tests, and want to further test whether you actually enjoy it, or merely recognize it and assign a high rating for signalling purposes, get an MRI during the blind taste test.
MRI wouldn’t help. If you can recognize amaro, you’ll go “Oh, that’s amaro, I’m supposed to like this” and produce a pleasure response, the same way wines believed to be expensive do to identical wines believed to be cheap.
I think you could get somewhere by doing a taste test of several different amaros (which are not actually wine,) where rather than a blind test, the subject is incorrectly told that they’re all, say, privately brewed and distributed at a liqueur festival, or something along those lines, but one of them is really Amaro Montenegro.
That one doesn’t sound quite so bad; get MRId while drinking, and you can prove you really feel pleasure. That doesn’t disprove the brainwashing assertion (wines genuinely taste better with a price hike) but you can still answer “So what if I like it because of that? I like it. And it doesn’t even support a culture where 12% of the population has had amaro slipped into their drink.”
Well, I don’t want to want to spend more money on wine if I couldn’t tell it from cheaper wine in a blind tasting… (EDIT: But I don’t know what aspect of heterosexual intercourse that maps to, if any.)
Wine can taste Good or Bad, have a real cost that’s Cheap or Expensive, and be LabeledExpensive or LabeledCheap. Good Expensive wine is better value for money than Bad Cheap wine.
If Expensive wine is Good and Cheap wine is Bad and label is irrelevant, Good Expensive LabeledCheap wine ~ Good Expensive LabeledExpensive wine > Bad Cheap LabeledCheap wine ~ Bad Cheap LabeledExpensive wine.
If LabeledExpensive wine is Good and LabeledCheap wine is Bad and real price is irrelevant, Good Cheap LabeledExpensive wine > Good Expensive LabeledExpensive wine > Bad Cheap LabeledCheap wine > Bad Expensive LabeledCheap wine.
Learning that the latter model is true is only useful if you can pay for cheap wine then be told it’s expensive when you drink it. In most situations, you see what you’re paying for—wine is LabeledCheap iff it’s Cheap. Your only options are Good Expensive LabeledExpensive wine and Bad Cheap LabeledCheap wine, and you always prefer the former to the latter. So learning which model is true shouldn’t change your wine-buying habits.
That’s quite possible in real life, but then you don’t need all that evaluation of preferences in various models—you always buy cheap wine, regardless of label and taste.
And yet people here, apparently with a straight face, have made analogous arguments about alcoholic beverages. If I claim I like Amaro Montenegro then I must have been brainwashed and/or be (consciously or subconsciously) lying for signalling reasons or something. How could I demonstrate that I actually enjoy its taste?
Blind taste test. Preferably several, where you don’t know if Amaro Montenegro is among the drinks you’re tasting in any particular test.
If you can’t single out for a high rating the one that you profess to like the taste of, then you’ve falsified the hypothesis that you like it for the taste.
If you can single it out for a high rating in blind taste tests, and want to further test whether you actually enjoy it, or merely recognize it and assign a high rating for signalling purposes, get an MRI during the blind taste test.
MRI wouldn’t help. If you can recognize amaro, you’ll go “Oh, that’s amaro, I’m supposed to like this” and produce a pleasure response, the same way wines believed to be expensive do to identical wines believed to be cheap.
Good point.
I think you could get somewhere by doing a taste test of several different amaros (which are not actually wine,) where rather than a blind test, the subject is incorrectly told that they’re all, say, privately brewed and distributed at a liqueur festival, or something along those lines, but one of them is really Amaro Montenegro.
That one doesn’t sound quite so bad; get MRId while drinking, and you can prove you really feel pleasure. That doesn’t disprove the brainwashing assertion (wines genuinely taste better with a price hike) but you can still answer “So what if I like it because of that? I like it. And it doesn’t even support a culture where 12% of the population has had amaro slipped into their drink.”
Well, I don’t want to want to spend more money on wine if I couldn’t tell it from cheaper wine in a blind tasting… (EDIT: But I don’t know what aspect of heterosexual intercourse that maps to, if any.)
Wine can taste Good or Bad, have a real cost that’s Cheap or Expensive, and be LabeledExpensive or LabeledCheap. Good Expensive wine is better value for money than Bad Cheap wine.
If Expensive wine is Good and Cheap wine is Bad and label is irrelevant, Good Expensive LabeledCheap wine ~ Good Expensive LabeledExpensive wine > Bad Cheap LabeledCheap wine ~ Bad Cheap LabeledExpensive wine.
If LabeledExpensive wine is Good and LabeledCheap wine is Bad and real price is irrelevant, Good Cheap LabeledExpensive wine > Good Expensive LabeledExpensive wine > Bad Cheap LabeledCheap wine > Bad Expensive LabeledCheap wine.
Learning that the latter model is true is only useful if you can pay for cheap wine then be told it’s expensive when you drink it. In most situations, you see what you’re paying for—wine is LabeledCheap iff it’s Cheap. Your only options are Good Expensive LabeledExpensive wine and Bad Cheap LabeledCheap wine, and you always prefer the former to the latter. So learning which model is true shouldn’t change your wine-buying habits.
Better value for money? If you check the coefficients on the perceived quality increase, they pretty strongly recommend saving your money.
That’s quite possible in real life, but then you don’t need all that evaluation of preferences in various models—you always buy cheap wine, regardless of label and taste.
Yes, that was my initial criticism of that argument. There are other flaws as well.