{"id":16402,"date":"2010-07-05T23:26:32","date_gmt":"2010-07-06T07:26:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/gnxp\/?p=4746"},"modified":"2010-07-05T23:26:32","modified_gmt":"2010-07-06T07:26:32","slug":"sometimes-it-just-tastes-good-felix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/2010\/07\/05\/sometimes-it-just-tastes-good-felix\/","title":{"rendered":"Sometimes it just tastes good Felix"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.reuters.com\/felix-salmon\/2010\/07\/06\/the-more-you-know-the-better-it-tastes\/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed:+felix-all+(Felix+Salmon+-+All)&amp;utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher\">The more you know, the better it tastes<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>People like LaForge don\u2019t want altitude information on their coffee because they prefer 1700m coffee to 1400m coffee. Instead,<strong> Intelligentsia is supplying something much more important and valuable:<\/strong> a unique narrative. It\u2019s the same thing that\u2019s going on in the wine world&#8230;.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I agree that the &#8220;story&#8221; or our understanding of something (e.g., whether it&#8217;s $100 or $10) can affect our perception of the hedonic experience. But sometimes <strong>coffee just tastes better.<\/strong> So the first time I had a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stumptowncoffee.com\/\">Stumptown roast<\/a> I was blown away, without knowing anything of the roaster&#8217;s history or reputation (it has a good reputation). I wasn&#8217;t even much of a coffee snob then (and really, I&#8217;m not much now). Though I think that <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kopi_Luwak\">the narrative of civet coffee<\/a> might make me avoid it, even I if accept that objectively it has a better taste. <\/p>\n<p><b>Note:<\/b> Naturally Felix takes wine as an analog. But I think the &#8216;narrative&#8217; is a much bigger deal in that case because people have far less objective discernment when it comes to wine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The more you know, the better it tastes:<br \/>\nPeople like LaForge don\u2019t want altitude information on their coffee because they prefer 1700m coffee to 1400m coffee. Instead, Intelligentsia is supplying something much more important and valuable: a unique narrative. It\u2019s the same thing that\u2019s going on in the wine world&#8230;.<br \/>\nI agree that the &#8220;story&#8221; or our [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,398,442],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-hedonism","category-taste"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16402"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16480,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16402\/revisions\/16480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}