Monday, July 22, 2013
Taste this Ringtone
Why do I love wasabi? Why does my wife hate water chestnuts? Why does the sound of chewing bother me when nails on a chalk board doesn't? As I regularly do, this morning I opened up the new xkcd and found this (when you read it, mouse over the panel and read the annotation, too). This reminded me of an article I read this weekend. Please read and reflect on both these texts, relate them to some other moment in your world, and connect them via a KQ, specifying a way of knowing along the way. Please post by lunch time on Saturday. Then find something tasty for lunch.
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Tina writes: Before I read the annotation, I was not quite sure what was going on in the cartoon. After I read the annotation, the first question that came up in my mind was: Why does the person in the cartoon want to take the sound of a mosquito as a ringtone and have this competition? What makes him want to do that? Is it because of the awful sound or the annoying reaction from the person? After that, I started to understand why it is the most awful ringtone. From my own experience, whenever I hear the sound of a mosquito, I automatically want to stay away from it. The purpose of a ringtone is to make people answer the phone. If a person wants to stay away from the phone when it rings, then the ringtone is pretty “awful”. In this case, I use sense perception to predict a kind of reaction.
ReplyDeleteThe second website talked about the changing taste of people. When I read the article, I was thinking about my own taste. When I was little, I had certain kinds of food which I hated to eat, but now I am totally okay with them. I asked myself why, and my answer can be divided into two categories. For some food, I did not want to eat them because of their look. For example, I thought that mushrooms look very ugly, so I did not want to touch them. Another reason why my taste changed is nutrition. As I am growing, I know more about the nutrition of food and why I need to eat certain vegetables. I started to try them, and later I found out that they were actually okay. (It did not take me nine times.) This article also mentioned that in many cases people tend to like the food with more flavors and spices. At home, my mother is always trying to put less flavors into the food because less flavors is generally good for people’s health, but the evidence is still unclear. Then, I had a question in my mind: How do we balance between our health and the taste of food? Do people believe in the danger of some kinds of flavors?
After I read both websites, I found some crossing-overs in my mind. In the article, it said that people’s taste changes; the next time they try the same thing, they may like it less than the first time they did. My reaction towards the sound of the mosquito changed as well. The first few times I heard it, I was scared (I was afraid of mosquitos), and trying to avoid it. As time passes, I began to get used to it in the summer. Now whenever I hear its sound, I want to find this mosquito and let it cannot make that sound again although I am sacred at first. My feeling has changed along the way because I got over my fear, and that reminded me of the changing taste of people. People think the food is not as tasty as before because it has created a high expectation in people’s mind already, and it is harder to get to that expectation once it was created. This expectation is changed by people’s experience although the taste of the food does not change. For example, I used to have most meals at home, and I did not think they were very tasty. However, after I stayed in the US for a few months and went back to my home, I thought that the food was far more delicious than before. Since taste is a very subjective feeling, it does not have a strict standard. Thus, my reaction towards the sound of mosquito and the food at home both changed due to my experiences. Another crossing-over I extracted from both websites was the use of sensory. In the first website, there was an “unanimous decision”, which meant that all the people agree on this opinion. However, the second website talked about the different taste by different people by using sensory. A question rose up in my mind: Does unanimous decision exist in sense perception? Thus, I came up with a knowledge question: To what extent do experiences influence people’s sense perception?
Looking at the first website of the cartoon, I read the caption and immediately thought of perception and how every human being in different. Everything depends on who a person is; what they like/don't like, how they react to things and many more things. This has me think of "You say tomato, I say tomato" where the vowel sounds are stressed differently. It is all what someone likes or is used to - this can relate to how someone was brought up. Something I have always thought about is does everyone see things the say way because we all have eyes, but maybe everything is in different variation. This relates to the post because what's great to someone may be a complete nuisance to another. Another saying I thought of after seeing the cartoon was "Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder." We are all individuals and all have individuality.
ReplyDeleteThe second website, I really liked. It talked about the food industry and how there are several marketing techniques and how this affects and influences buyers. They play to the customers liking. Something similiar but not food is the clothing industry. Almost every "teen" store sell t-shirts the store's very large logo on it (either writing or no writing). One of my friends in middle school, would buy these shirts because she thought they were cool because everyone would know where she shops. Today I find this ridiculous because I think it is unnecessary and a waste of money. It's a psychological thing that draws young girls to it, meanwhile they can go buy shirts very similar without a logo for much cheaper. There are many times when I'll be at a food buffet and I will choose what I'm going to eat based on what it looks like similiar to “What I’m choosing, is that liking? It’s not liking the taste,” Zellner says, “because I don’t have it in my mouth.” This reminds me of "Don't judge a book by its cover." There are some people who don't like things even thought they have never tried it either because they don't like what it looks like or even just because their parents don't like it. People are going to like what they want to like. When they were talking about during white wine red, I thought of medical placebos where a doctor will give a patient something and say it is something else. There is a psychological factor involved because a patient for the most part, trusts a doctor. Here, the hope is that the patient will think they are being medically treated and their body will "fix" itself.
After looking at both of these websites I saw a clear connecting between the two and it relates to perception. I read Tina's post and the question she asked at the end "Does unanimous decision exist in sense perception?" made me think of a jury. In some cases (or maybe all?) there needs to be a unanimous decision on a verdict. This can be very difficult sometimes bases on who the jury consists of. Each individual sees the trial differently which affects the ultimate decision. I came up with this knowledge question: To what extent does unanimity have unreal qualities?/To what extent can unanimity have no opposition? Also, to what extent does one's past affect their future?
For me, both the cartoon and the article hinted at psychological conditioning. Would the sound of a mosquito be annoying if we didn't know that it signaled the arrival of bloodthirsty insects that latch onto our skin and suck our blood? The reason it was a unanimous decision is because almost everyone dislikes mosquitoes and often associates them with a negative experience (extreme itchiness). Whereas with the other suggested options, such as the "clock radio alarm", such negative experiences may not necessarily be tied to the noise. The article also makes a point about how our taste could be affected by previous experiences (elaborated on below).
ReplyDeleteOne part about coffee in the article stood out to me. "Coffee, for example, is just as bitter the 1,000th time we drink it as the first." I remember being young and clamoring for a taste of coffee that my dad would drink everyday when he came back from work. I hated the taste. It was bitter and made me cough. However, my dad used to drink it so I thought that it couldn't be all that bad. Everyday for two weeks, the same thought would pass through my head and everyday, I would keep trying a little bit of coffee as if expecting that the flavor would magically morph into something delicious. That was until I forced myself to swallow a large sip and choked on it. I stopped trying to drink coffee after that. When I asked my father how he could drink something that tasted so bitter, he laughed and said he drank it because it was bitter; that I might like it eventually when I grew older. However, here I am, older, and I still strongly dislike coffee. I don't know if it's because my taste buds haven't "matured" or if it's my previous experience which causes my dislike, but it's an issue that's touched upon in the article. In a way, I found the article to be very similar to the one we read about free will; about how our minds are affected by experience and other factors which we would not otherwise expect to play a role in our decisions. This article serves to show just how unreliable sense perception is. It is not only subjective in the sense that it differs from person to person, but it is subjectivity within subjectivity in that personal taste also depends on factors such as how long it has been since someone had the meal, what she had eaten before it, where she is, what she knows about it, what she thinks she knows about it, etc. This is also related to the xkcd cartoon because just as a mosquito is unpleasant because we associate it with itchiness, coffee is unpleasant for me because I associate it with choking and bitterness. In both cases, my preferences are shaped by my repeated previous experiences.
Which actually reminds me of a story my dad used to tell me about a friend of his who only drank the most expensive best quality "Batta" arak (alcoholic drink). One time, to play a trick on him, he (my dad) and his friends asked the waiter to switch the labels on the drink and bring him the cheapest arak they had. When his friend drank the cheap arak, he proclaimed it to be delicious and said "This is why I only drink Batta arak." Needless to say, everybody had quite a laugh afterwards. However, this is exactly what the article was talking about. My dad's friend was not tasting with his tongue, but rather with his wallet.
I came up with two knowledge questions which are:
Do people prefer different flavors more because of physical biological differences, or past experiences?
Since experience affects and shapes all of our ways of knowing, to what extent can it be considered a way of knowing in itself?
As I read the article, many different possible explanations came to mind trying to figure out why the different likings and dislikings occurred. I looked at the cartoon first. Clearly, all of the noises were something that most people associated with unpleasant things which caught their attention. A clock alarm radio usually signals awaking from sleep and beginning the working day, something most humans don't enjoy. The sound of a mosquito signals the arrival of a blood-sucking insect who sends you into physical discomfort for several days. Both of these sounds merit attention because of what most humans associate with them, making them excellent choices in ringtone because you already answer to them in nature and already dislike them. This was brought back to my attention when I was reading the bit in the article about how humans will grow tired of a certain food after having it many times. I recently asked someone I know who uses a song on their iPhone as an alarm clock whether they didn't grow tired of the song. They answered that after a while, they began to hate the song they had once loved enough to set as their alarm. This made it clear to me that whether or not we grow tired of something depends upon the circumstances in which we are repeatedly introduced to it. Certainly if the song had played in the background every time the girl got a good grade on an assignment, her liking for the song would only have grown.
ReplyDeleteThe article also brought up an interesting experiment in which a group of researchers presented test subjects with a smoked salmon, calling it “frozen savory mousse,” and then with smoked salmon “ice cream." the test subjects claimed to like the "frozen savory mousse" better than the "ice cream" even though the dish was the same. This reminded me of something of the same nature which happened in the Stoneleigh dining hall. Instead of a traditional soup one day, the kitchen had put out a vat of pink creamy liquid with the name "strawberry soup". That first time, I remember many people being unwilling to even try it because the thought of turning something sweet, such as strawberry, into a soup, a conventionally savory item, was beyond most people's comfort zones. The few who did try it realized that it was nothing more than a fruit smoothie in disguise. The second time, the kitchen labelled it "strawberry smoothie" and the line grew extensively. There was a shortage of bowls and people resorted to cups to get their fill of their favorite, well-known drink. Why people are so unwilling to try new things that even their mind will trick them into believing that two identical recipes taste different when they are the same thing is beyond me, but again it seems a matter of association. Soups are savory. Salmon shouldn't be made a sweet ice cream. Or maybe it is, as the article suggests, simply a matter of categorization. The strawberry soup wasn't good compared to other soups, but as a smoothie, it excelled. The salmon mousse was the mousse of all mousses, but we've had better ice creams. To me, it is not sense perception which becomes the way of knowing in this situation, but rather language. Language is established before we are born and has strict interpretations. Language is what dictates the color of a red wine and the sweetness of an ice cream.
My KQ, therefore, is this: Is language helpful in expressing human reactions or does it confine the human ability to process new pieces of knowledge?
As I was reading the original post I was thinking about my strong dislike towards pickles. I dislike them because my sister and dad when they eat them they take them out of the jar and shake the juices off of them and it gets all over the table. Granted they only continue to do this now because they know it bothers me. So once I opened the article I found it extremely ironic that the first part of it is about pickles and how they liked by most people.
ReplyDeleteThe cartoon reminded me of class when everyone screams when the chalkboard screeches. This does not bother me, the part that bothers me is when everybody screams at the scratched chalkboard. Everyone has a different perspective on what they like and dislike. This may having something to do with what we relate the thing to. The chalkboard screeching could be related to TV episodes when the evil substitute teacher comes in and tries to take over the class and scratches the bord to get the attention of everyone.
The article made some really greata points about how we learn to like something. For me, food wise, I am not a very venturous eater. I eat the same thing all the time just in a different form, and sauces may vary. I found it interesting in the ways that we begin and force ourselves to like certain things. An example of his is black raspberry ice cream. This is my dad’s favorite kind of ice cream and everytime we would go out for ice cream this is what he would get and everytime I would ask if I could try some and eerytime I did not like it. It wasn’t until just recently that I began to like black raspberry ice cream when my friend got it as a milkshake at Friendly’s. I acquired this taste by repetitively rying it for 17 years, until it finally tasted good to me. The same thing with sunflower seeds. In China we were given sunflower seeds during dinner and they were gone in just a few minutes. My dislike of sunflower seeds started at camp the summer before 4th grade when this boy would bring a huge bag to camp with him everyday and he and his friends would have a race with these seeds. They would put them in their nose and see how far they could throw them from inside their nose. Needless to say after that experience sunflower seeds where not on the top of my new foods list. However I tried some in China and they were alright. But when I went to Cornell this summer my friend had sunflower seeds regular and other dipped in chocolate. We stayed up and watched TV while eating both sunflower seeds and they were fabulous! I am now a fan of sunflower seeds! Both of these experiences grew from repeated previous experiences.
I also found it interesting when the article said how most people block out a whole food group because they do not like one food in that group. This is totally something that I do. I say that I am not a huge fan of vegetables. However what I really mean is that I only like certain vegetable cooked a certain way. Mushy carrots feel strange and so does most cooked and mushy broccoli. However raw carrots and raw broccoli with ranch dressing is fantastic!
This goes back to perception, is it possible that we don’t eat certain food because of what society decides is cultural food? Why is it that most people in America have a lower tolerance for spicy food than people in Chengdu, China or India? What if everybody ate the same food and then something mildly spicy was introduced to us all would all of us be shocked by the new flavor because it isn’t part of the everyday meals?
The knowledge question that came out of reading this article and cartoon is…
To what extent do our cultures determine what we eat?
As soon as I read this post, I remembered a moment from TOK where Mr. Bogel was annoyed by something one of us did and when that one apologized, he said it’s as much my fault as it is yours—if not more. The first link made me think of this moment. What makes a noise annoying to us? Should we be annoyed at ourselves instead? Why is it that we want what is annoying to change, but not our problem with what is annoying? Mosquitos can’t help the noise they make just as we cannot change our voices. So, aren’t we who find the fault at fault as well? Are we going to try to change everyone and everything that annoys us or should we change? Wouldn’t that be more convenient? That would also be more thoughtful than asking someone to change themselves to our liking. As I am sitting in Starbucks, there is a woman sitting beside me talking on her phone. I am one to step out and take my call, but apparently not all of us are. However, even with this habit that is not innate, I won’t ask her to step outside. The phone call will eventually end and who knows why she’s inside. Maybe she cannot stand the heat anymore. Who knows? Not me because I’m not going to ask. My point being, sometimes the best thing to do is to evade being confrontational and suck it up so the other person will feel more comfortable.
ReplyDeleteWhile I was reading the article, I was surprised by the fact that “there’s no accounting for taste” when developing a product. I was not as shocked when I read the result of the experiment conducted to see whether people liked smoked salmon “savory crème mousse” or smoked salmon ice cream better. I then thought about annoyances. As I type another woman just began a phone call two seats away. I will conduct my own experiment. I will tell myself it isn’t annoying and…okay it’s still annoying. I continued reading and maybe if I try to tell myself more that it’s not annoying it will actually become less annoying? Hmm… The reason for why people preferred the smoked salmon with the “savory crème mousse” over the smoked salmon with ice cream more was later explained. People generally want novelties. We categorize food and drinks into “good” and “bad”. And generally, novelties are good. Thus, the fancier the food is, the better.
As we venture out into the mysterious world, we begin to discover our full selves. We find out what we like and don’t. We might begin approaching the darkness differently. We get used to things and what we like and don’t like change. So:
How does the knowledge of what one like affect the decision-making process of trying the unknown?
Jane writes: The xkcd comic had it right when they named “the sound a mosquito makes as it buzzes past your ear” as the most annoying ringtone. For me, and many others, the sound is associated with red itchy bumps, so I can see how the ringtone would be bothersome. Although it may be an annoying noise it is probably the most effective noise to be used as a ringtone to notify someone they have a message. Similar to the effective yet annoying qualities of the mosquito sound is the clock radio alarm. The noise itself and the idea of being woken up may not be pleasant, but the alarm definitely does its job. So, even though these ringtones may be annoying and unpleasant they effectively serve their purpose.
ReplyDeleteEven though the Smithsonian article focused on food I immediately related it to something I think about a lot lately: college. The Vlasic test reminded me of an admissions office and how their job is to try and make the college as good as possible. The mention of how easily manipulated our likes and dislikes are also relates to college or my college search. As a kid I wanted to go to Yale because I had heard from adults and other people how amazing it is and how great it would be to go there. So, I liked it because adults told me too and I didn't know about any other colleges or universities. The same idea can be applied to my situation now. Last year if you asked me if I wanted to go to an all women's college or a huge university I would have said no way because I was sure I would not like it. Now that I have been on some visits and been exposed to what college will actually be like I can say that I am not someone that this saying applies to, "we don’t always know what we like, but we’re pretty sure we don’t like what we don’t know".
Our liking of certain tastes is related to our memory of our how we have previously perceived it, and this idea brought me back to one of our discussions last year about how difficult it is to describe a certain taste without comparing it to other tastes. Instead we hear and use "words such as “warm” and “soft” and “heritage”", to trigger a memory, hopefully positive, associates with these adjectives.
The idea that our liking is also related to how we groups things also relates to my college search. When I visited my first college I started comparing all the others to it and thinking that if a college wasn't like that first college I wouldn't like it. After talking with a lot of people I have learned to try and separate each college from the others and figure out what I actually like about each of them and what I dislike.
Throughout the entire article each experiment or survey asked which taste we liked better. My question is how do we KNOW we like something? To answer this we obviously use our senses, particularly taste and possibly sight. These experiences are then categorized as likes and dislikes , or become memories. So, is memory in this case a way of knowing? Another question is whether our sense of taste actually decides whether we like a taste or not, or do our emotions while experiencing these tastes decide whether or not we like them?
KQ- Since we all experience the same things in different ways, which way of knowing would be most important in determining our likes and dislike? Can we rely on our sense of taste since it is obviously malleable?