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I was hand-waving there. From the study I had in mind: > A white wine artificially colored red with an odorless dye was olfactory described as a red wine by a

I was hand-waving there. From the study I had in mind: > A white wine artificially colored red with an odorless dye was olfactory described as a red wine by a panel of 54 tasters. Hence, because of the visual information, the tasters discounted the olfactory information.. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0093934X01924939 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0093934X0... To be clear I didn't mean to expressly claim that "experts cannot tell a red from a white", for any particular interpretation of those words. I mean generally that every time I've ever heard of a study examining whether wine-tasters consistently discern what they think they're discerning, the result is always that they don't.

acqq 9y ago
So your claim “experienced respected testers” was false. That deserves that the upper post of yours should turn gray, imho. Moreover, I don’t understand why you can’t accept that not everybody has the same sense of smell just like not everybody sees the same: notice people wear glases? Or people color blind? Can’t you accept to be “smell blind” if you are untrained or physically less capable? The staring point must be that not every person is identical to you in any way.
logfromblammo 9y ago
That matches the gummy experiment. Buy a bag of cheap gummy candies, with multiple colors of candy. Separate the colors. Taste each color in turn, and write a description of the flavor that matches that color. Now put on a blindfold, and have a confederate hand you randomly selected candies. For each sample, describe the flavor. For certain brands (or lack thereof), it is readily apparent that all colors are actually the same flavor, and any distinctions that may occur in the initial descriptions are all illusionary. Some brands actually do have distinct flavors. At some point, someone figured out "hey, we could save money by not using 5 different flavoring blends, and most people wouldn't even notice." And it's not the smelling or tasting part that changes. It happens when you try to describe it. That's why "blue raspberry" is so wrong on your shaved ice. Raspberry is not a "blue" flavor. It's "red". But on the shelf, the red spectrum is already cluttered with cherry, strawberry, and watermelon. Apple has to be green, and raspberry has to be blue, so the ice jerk doesn't have to read labels. And you then have to close your eyes to make it taste more correct--or at least as correct as the artificial flavorings can get.

acqq 9y ago

So your claim “experienced respected testers” was false. That deserves that the upper post of yours should turn gray, imho. Moreover, I don’t understand why you can’t accept that not everybody has the same sense of smell just like not everybody sees the same: notice people wear glases? Or people color blind? Can’t you accept to be “smell blind” if you are untrained or physically less capable? The staring point must be that not every person is identical to you in any way.

logfromblammo 9y ago

That matches the gummy experiment. Buy a bag of cheap gummy candies, with multiple colors of candy. Separate the colors. Taste each color in turn, and write a description of the flavor that matches that color. Now put on a blindfold, and have a confederate hand you randomly selected candies. For each sample, describe the flavor. For certain brands (or lack thereof), it is readily apparent that all colors are actually the same flavor, and any distinctions that may occur in the initial descriptions are all illusionary. Some brands actually do have distinct flavors. At some point, someone figured out "hey, we could save money by not using 5 different flavoring blends, and most people wouldn't even notice." And it's not the smelling or tasting part that changes. It happens when you try to describe it. That's why "blue raspberry" is so wrong on your shaved ice. Raspberry is not a "blue" flavor. It's "red". But on the shelf, the red spectrum is already cluttered with cherry, strawberry, and watermelon. Apple has to be green, and raspberry has to be blue, so the ice jerk doesn't have to read labels. And you then have to close your eyes to make it taste more correct--or at least as correct as the artificial flavorings can get.