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Chemists Build App That Could Identify Cheap Replacements For Luxury Wines
schliz writes "Australian startup Wine Cue is combining the chemical composition of wines with customer ratings for what it hopes to be a more objective wine recommendation engine than existing systems that are based on historical transactions. The technology is likely to reach the market as a smartphone app, and could be used to identify cheap alternatives to expensive bottles."
If there is one thing that needs more objectivity its wine tasting.
Too often the results are the opinion of the person who bought the bottle, and too seldom is there truly blind taste testing by people not already familiar with the vintage.
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Black Stump Bourdeaux is rightly praised as a peppermint flavored burgundy, whilst a good Sydney Syrup can rank with any of the world's best sugary wines.
Yes, exactly.
And this had better be an Android-only app.
The absolute last thing an IDevice owner wants to know is that his/her expensive purchase is objectively inferior to a cheaper alternative.
The horror! The horror!
If I were to do this stuff myself, I would probably use Partial Least Squares and build a regression model using the chemical composition as X, and the customer ratings as Y. Or depending on the number of variables in the chemical composition compared to the number of samples (wines), one of the Sparse Partial Least Squares variants might prove to give better predictions (and it would also be interesting to see which variables in X it discards as less important).
So, any word on what they do?
Dvorak on Doomtech
BumWine.com lists the only wines you'll ever need.
I'll be honest, we're throwing science against the wall to see what sticks. -Cave Johnson
>I'm not a wine snob, but I know there are certain things that sometimes you *can't* replicate.
You're clearly also not a chemist either.
>After decades of analysis, we still can't build a violin as good as a Stradivarius.
No, what we can't do is build a violin that self-proclaimed audiophiles say is as good as a Stradivarius during NON-BLIND TESTS in UNCONTROLLED ENVIRONMENTS. If you administer proper double-blind tests then you'll find that there's no difference.
>We still can't fully replicate Damascus Steel
Talk to a metallurgist. Modern steel actually performs better. I'm not sure how much effort has been given to duplication, but why try to duplicate something when you already have a better replacement?
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
That is not to say that expensive wine does not provide value. You are paying for vintage grapes and expert winemakers, which all cost money.OTOH there is no reason to go into debt for a bottle of expensive wine anymore that one should go into debt for a Prada bag.
So what services like this provide is protection for those who want to be a part of a peer group but can't afford it. They can say how silly those rich people are for paying for expensive wine that is the same as the cheap wine. It really isn't the same, but it really doesn't matter. If there is someone who has the ability to authoritively say they are the same, then those who need to feel included can.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Welcome to Wine Cue!
INPUT: Chateau Petrus, 1998 vintage, Pomerol primarily of Merlot grapes, estimated retail 3500USD
RECOMMENDATION: Charles Shaw, 2010 vintage, Merlot, estimated retail 2USD
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
Strad's aren't any better sounding than brand new violins.
Target house brand box red wine. That's right, you buy it at Target (at locations where they're allowed to sell wine).
The three varieties, Merlot, Shiraz, and blend are all good. It's like the best $12 bottle you've ever had -- not a typical $12 bottle, the best. The box is $16 and contains the equivalent of four bottles, of course with the self-sealing spigot and collapsing plastic bladder to prevent oxidation. Stays fresh for weeks or even months after opening -- provides a glass a day for three weeks.
I'm not a wine snob, but I know there are certain things that sometimes you *can't* replicate. [...] I'd argue that fine liquors -- wines, whiskeys, etc... fall into that category. I'd say it's almost an art form.
Detailed studies of professional wine judges in blind tastings have shown that prizes from contest to contest are so random that they might as well be picked from a hat. And the average professional judge, tasting the same wine on consecutive days, would on average only be able to narrow the rating to within 8 points on a 20-point scale.
Other studies have even shown that professional tasters often fare pretty poorly even in tests like, "Taste 3 wines, tell me which 2 are identical," or that when given white wines dyed with red food coloring, they start spouting out the nonsense about "flavor notes" and "nose" that would be appropriate for red wines rather than whites.
Given this information, it's pretty clear that even the so-called "expert palettes" don't know what the hell they're talking about.
So, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it's pretty likely chemists could master the subtle art of getting a wine result that could satisfy even most professional judges in a blind test.
Some are, some aren't. Obviously any time you have a high-priced quality product, someone else will try to enter the market at that level as well. Price isn't a guarantee of quality but neither is it a guarantee of a ripoff.
I've had some spectacular wines. No, no, not the wines that cost hundreds of euros per bottle. but wines that could be described as "WOW. I didn't know wine could do that". It would be nice to have an app that would suggest similar wines, based on a chemical spectrum instead of "that estate had a truly extraordinary summer, and more recent vintages have not faired as well."
If a particular chemical is playing around with my brain,I want to know about it and be able to invite it around again sometime.
It's not just the basic chemicals but the molecules and how they are 'folded' which makes a MASSIVE difference to what happens.
,it was totally useless."
I predict this will be technically correct but completely useless, as seen in that classic joke about mathematicians:
Two Physicists were riding in a hot air balloon and were blown off course sailing over a mountain trail, and were completely lost.
They spotted a jogger running on the trail and they shouted "Can you tell us where we are?" After a few minutes, the jogger yelled back "You're up in a balloon."
One physicists said to the other, "Just our luck to run into a mathematician". "How do you know he was a mathematician?" asked the other.
"Well, in the first place he took a long time to answer; second, his answer was 100% correct and third,
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Um
Modern monosteel performs just as well as folded or damascus steel. Japanese sword makers are still in business (and a lot of Japanese kitchen knife makers who come from the same families/cities) and I'd pit that against Damascus steel as well.
I'd say a lot of those examples are a romanticized, overhyped image, something like Bruce Lee.
By the way, I say all of this as someone who actually appreciates liquor of various sorts. I'm not at all trying to claim that all wines (or all whiskies or whatever) taste the same -- obviously they don't. And there are plenty of cases where I've paid a premium price for a liquor whose taste I like because of previous experiences.
But in the realm of wine, I don't think there's good evidence that expensive wines are actually "better" on an objective scale; in fact, many studies suggest the contrary. Perhaps there is a somewhat smaller probability of terrible wine when buying something expensive, but that's hardly enough to say you can't find some cheaper wines that are just as "good."
Of course you cannot tell how good a wine tastes by some chemical analysis.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
It always amuses the hell out of me when people think there were these amazing ancient technologies so much better than anything modern. It is like they think various videogames and novels are real and that we study the knowledge of the ancients to advance what we have, despite all evidence to the contrary.
As you say, all this stuff is bullshit. In terms of violins we can, if anything, build even better violins today because of better material selection and manufacturing techniques. The thing that makes Stradivarius sought after is its rarity. It is a special thing to own one, as there aren't many. That then of course leads to a mystique and to people making bullshit claims.
Same kind of thing with Damascus Steel. It has been claimed to be able to do things like cut through a gun barrel, which of course it can't do (gun barrels are amazingly tough objects). We can do better with modern metallurgy and processes (like an industrial hammer forge). The reason there's research to replicating Damascus Steel is because it is neat, it was very advanced for the time and it would be of historical interest to understand how it was done. We can do better, and indeed do all the time.
The way in which the microwave heats from the inside out...
What???? Granted:
* it's radiative heating, not contact heating
* the penetration depth of microwave in water is between 25-38 mm, I assume larger than the IR penetration depth.
but for the rest of the "inside", the heat transfer from those 25-38mm of "out" is not in any way different from cooking inside a gas oven. In other words, the stuffing inside your turkey will cook pretty much the same way in a microwave or classical oven, irrespective of spherical turkeys or placement in vacuum.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
I'm not a wine snob, but I know there are certain things that sometimes you *can't* replicate.
After decades of analysis, we still can't build a violin as good as a Stradivarius. We still can't fully replicate Damascus Steel (OK, maybe the lack of a living slave in which to quench the blade is part of that :-P). I'd argue that fine liquors -- wines, whiskeys, etc... fall into that category. I'd say it's almost an art form.
I'll admit it, I have no evidence for that last assertion/argument. But I'm a romantic at heart,
As a fellow romantic, I must tell you, that's your problem. I thought the same thing until I read The Wine Trials, in which the authors ran blind taste tests, with cheaper wines often winning. For example, Domaine Ste. Michelle ($12) consistently outranked Dom Perignon ($150). In the 2007-08 experiment, the 507 tasters "represented many different segments of the wine-buying world. . . . Some were wine experts, others everyday wine drinkers. They included New York City sommeliers (wine stewards) and Harvard professors, winemakers from France, neuroscientists and artists, top chefs and college students, doctors and lawyers, wine importers and wine store owners, novelists and economists, TV comedy writers and oenologists (wine scientists), bartenders and grad students, 21-year-olds and 88-year-olds, socialists and conservatives, heavy drinkers and lightweights."
As for Stradivarius, "the many blind tests from 1817 to the present have never found any difference in sound between Stradivari's violins and high-quality violins in comparable style of other makers and periods, nor has acoustic analysis," so sayeth Wikipedia, but you can consult its citations at the bottom.
On the other hand, I recently read that there ain't nothing like Roman concrete.
It always amuses the hell out of me when people think there were these amazing ancient technologies so much better than anything modern. It is like they think various videogames and novels are real and that we study the knowledge of the ancients to advance what we have, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Truer words are seldom heard. The people claiming advanced knowledge of the ancients usually follow that claim up with "There is much that modern science doesn't know". Which, while true, does not mean that ancient science knew it either. So much embellished lore is taken as absolute truth, even by people who know they are passing down BS as a twisted form of self aggrandizement by proxy.
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I used to live about 15 minutes drive from the Barossa Valley. You can definately taste the difference between a $50 bottle and a $10 bottle, but having said that I don't believe the $600-2000 bottles are justified at all. I highly recommend the Yalumba Signature and Octavius wines. Bought at the cellar door they're ~$50/bottle tastes amazing. Much better value than the Grange Hermitage people love to harp on about from Penfolds. That starts at $600/bottle and goes up from there. I've tasted both of those wines within a day of each other and the Yalumba smashed the Grange out of the park.
Vodka stills have horizontal plates perforated with many tiny holes in them. Each one amounts to an additional distillation. Been a long time sense p-chem.
You can drink reasonably cheap vodka. Vodka making is a science, it just doesn't get better after about $12/750ml. You just spend more and impress people with your chumpiness.
Bourbon making on the other hand is an art. Cheap bourbon isn't great, but then again, it's Bourbon, best water to make whiskey with. 'Old Grand Dad' isn't terrible. The worst Bourbon is still better then Jack Danial's.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I've never believed that expensive liquors are worth that much in the first place, its a false luxury that people spend a lot of money on to prove that they can, and those that make it are happy to carry on the tradition.
And your point is? If someone feels more pleasure by drinking what he believes is superior, surely you won't begrudge him that added feeling of pleasure?
"Worth" is something no outsider can determine; it is always subjective. If I think a bottle of whisky is worth $70, that's its worth to me. And if I am willing to pay $200 for a concert ticket when I could go to a different concert for $50, that's because the worth to me is higher, and that's all that matters when I'm paying.
Very interesting.
In a blind test, professional musicians:
In fact, the only statistically obvious trend in the choices was that one of the Stradivarius violins was the least favorite, and one of the modern instruments was slightly favored.
the 17 players who were asked to choose which were old Italians, "Seven said they couldn't, seven got it wrong, and only three got it right.
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As for Stradivarius, "the many blind tests from 1817 to the present have never found any difference in sound between Stradivari's violins and high-quality violins in comparable style of other makers and periods, nor has acoustic analysis," so sayeth Wikipedia, but you can consult its citations at the bottom.
This is true, but at the same time, many people can identify a particular violinist playing a particular violin by hearing records or radio. It doesn't imply it's better, and the reason for the recognition might be mostly wetware, i.e. the player, but it still means there can be differences. Much like there are often differences in singers' voices which we recognize, even if spectral analysis has difficulties telling two singers apart.
True, but knowing the price of a wine affects the rating rather dramatically. Simply knowing the relative price while tasting makes professional tasters as well as novices assign higher quality to more expensive wines.
http://www.wine-economics.org/workingpapers/AAWE_WP35.pdf
http://thinktraffic.net/cheap-vs-expensive-wine-can-you-taste-the-difference
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But there is a difference between potato vodka and wheat vodka if you are allergic to wheat.
Friend of mine would turn red and shed skin if she got wheat vodka plus get intestinal distress.
I've found it makes a difference in rums. (did a blind taste test and Bacardi did not do well). For dark rums- big variations in taste and ability to drink them neat.
But agree on vodka otherwise. All taste the same to me.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
It matters for whiskey...
But -- for my group Johnny Walker Blue was very smooth but not preferred over several whiskeys $210 per bottle cheaper. For some JWB was just too smokey.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Pusser's rum is rather good, that is if you can get a hold of it in Texas(?).
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
I like Cane 21 and Diplomatico reserve.
For mixed drinks I use the cheapest white rum. They seem to all be the same and folks can't tell the difference.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I am asking because beer companies discovered that their most avid customers couldn't taste the difference between their products and their competitors products.
Friends don't let friends drink Bacardi.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
Really? Have you ever been to the Luxor?
Develop your own sense for a good wine. Drink whatever you find, don't judge, don't look at the price. Also, serve wine in a group of people - the ones that are drunk rapidly are the good ones, the French say :)
Then you've built a palate and can try to find the wine for you. Always try local (~200km) suppliers, buy directly from the wineyard, because the quality is much better (no transports in heat, etc).
A perfect bottle for me is about 4EUR from a vineyard, so excellent wine needn't be expensive.
Also disregard ALL wine facists. They don't even have a clue.
Fuck me. Truly a first world problem.
Turning white wine into red wine:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11044090
This guy says the four main variables in wine pairings are :
And I think it's refreshing, and also very sensible to think about wine in such "basic" terms. Even if you can detect all kinds of interesting flavours in wine, like world-class sommeliers do, I think those four variables are definitely going to influence your experience a lot more than anything else about the wine. Who cares if it has a hint of blueberry muffin or ripe apricot ? If it's too sweet or too acidic for your dish, you won't appreciate it as much.
Wouldn't it be nice if, in addition to alcoholic content, the labels on wine bottles clearly displayed the amount of sweetness, acidity, and astringency ? I'm talking about real numbers with some kind of scale. For instance, we already label bottles of vinegar with their acidity level, why not do the same for wine ? On bottles of Aszú Tokaji wine from Hungary, there's a number of puttonyos that range from 3 to 6, which give you a good idea of how sweet the wine is. I don't know of any other wine that gives you that kind of information on its label.
For me, the usual experience of buying a wine is looking at the prices, and reading the vague descriptions and suggested pairings on the labels.
What would be great would be a wine De-Spotify Not only will it tell you what wine it is, but how to best remove it's stains! :)
No it wouldn't, it would just be politically untenable because having thousands of slaves is looked down upon nowadays, even if you do give them JCBs to make it easier.
This just goes to show that you simply can't make good bourbon, no matter how much money you throw at it.
bickerdyke
difficult, yes. But it was so thousand years ago. but it's not impossible, just really really expensive. and nowadays pretty useless.
bickerdyke
And yet you felt the need to - in fact, "had to" - participate on a discussion about a subject that presumably doesn't interest you at all, to throw in a comment with no substance beyond self-congratulation aimed at complete strangers. That's a peculiar definition of "working great".
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Other studies have even shown that professional tasters often fare pretty poorly even in tests like, "Taste 3 wines, tell me which 2 are identical," or that when given white wines dyed with red food coloring, they start spouting out the nonsense about "flavor notes" and "nose" that would be appropriate for red wines rather than whites.
I doubt that one. (at least within a neutral setting and no tampering with the subjects expectations like telling him about 2 identical wines when in fact all are the same or using food coloring.) Humans rely on ALL senses and ALL KIND of prior knowledge when they have to do a certain task. So the result of the experiment is NOT that professional tasters are quacks (at least most of them) but rather that the visual sense and the power of suggestion trumps the rather weak senses of taste and smell.
Do that test again and TELL them that the wines are manipulated to an identical color. That'll give you an example of how humans are able to ignore a specific sense.
here is some little experiment we did ourselfs. (Feel free to repeat it. It'll at least make for a nice evening)
3 people, each one buys and brings a different bottle of wine (Spain, France, Italy to increase the difference between them) Open one bottle, have a glass of it each and talk about it. Repeat with all three bottles. Now take rounds with everyone being served three unmarked glasses with each of the evenings wines. And now, from memory, match those glasses to the countries. It's not impossible, but hard, because you'll notice that you don't have a conscious memory for tastes!
Repeat that every month and you'll see that you get better at it, because during the "learning phase", you start to assign verbal "tags" to the taste. and in the second phase you can compare the taste of the unknown wine with the stored "tags".
So when someone says a certain wine tastes like cherry bubblegum, It doesn't. But the taste reminds that one someone of cherry bubblegum. That's a slight, but important diffrence.
bickerdyke
Fudge doesn't have much water in it, just a cup of creme. Butter, sugar, and cocoa aren't polar I don't think, so I would guess they let it pass. Making bread in the microwave doesn't work so well because the middle of the loaf turns to charcoal before the outside gets cooked.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
It always amuses the hell out of me when people think there were these amazing ancient technologies so much better than anything modern.
There are. Concrete is one example.
The ancients also did incredibly complex things with ceramics and glazes that we haven't been able to recreate yet.
The reason for their "amazing ancient technologies" is that was all they had.
Improvements in materials science were mostly the result of accidents or brute force experimentation.
Now imagine if the combined intellectual power of the modern world was focused on perfecting only one or two technologies over the course of centuries.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
...simplicity in wine labelling:
"A fine-bodied Cabernet Sauvignon, with rich chocolate and blackberry notes. Will get you shitfaced."
I drink maybe a bottle of wine per year (a glass here, a glass there) plus maybe the equivalent of 2-3 bottles of sparkling wine (champagne, prosecco, or asti). Wine gives me awful hangovers, worse than overdrinking whisky or beer, and generally it doesn't appeal to me -- kind of bitter and unsatisfying.
Until about 2 years ago if you had asked me about wine, my instincts would have been that it's 95% bullshit and 5% reality (the difference between jug table wine and a $20 bottle of wine).
And then I got dragged to a fairly serious wine tasting (the wines being sold were $75-100 bottle) and I had to change my opinion. All of these wines were really good -- I really enjoyed drinking them and it took self control to not pick up a case of one of the reds.
I still don't drink wine, but I have changed my opinion. I think there is a qualitative difference between wines, but I don't know how you navigate this. I don't think price is a reliable indicator (snob appeal) nor do I think that recommendations are necessarily good either (herd appeal, snob appeal). Brand identity might help, but listening to the wine guy at the tasting it was clear that many of these bottles are vinted with grape blends from several orchards, diluting the value of brand unless the brand is really just the vintner.
There's a researcher (who is also a trained sommelier) who is using chemistry to produce unconventional wine/food pairings based on underlying shared aromatic compounds. Seems to be working well for him.
I'd buy one of these if it could tell me if what I'm buying is what I think I'm buying and not some counterfeit...
Would be nice if it worked for liquor as well given how much poison is out there on the market at this point.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
than any other commodity, except maybe audio equipment. Anything that cuts through some of the bullshit is welcome.
Of course, those of you with sophisticated palates who enjoy fine wines will have no use for such a mechanistic means of judgment and will disregard it. However, this development should please you as it provides yet another reason to turn your noses up at the unwashed masses who would be so ignorant as to select a wine based on chemical composition.
So the result of the experiment is NOT that professional tasters are quacks (at least most of them) but rather that the visual sense and the power of suggestion trumps the rather weak senses of taste and smell.
I don't think that professional tasters are "quacks" necessarily, but I do think that numerous experiments seem to indicate that their palettes are nowhere near as discriminating as they claim.
I completely agree that various other things can trump your sense of taste -- change the coloring, put a cheap wine in an expensive bottle, tell people a wine is made from grape X when it's actually grape Y, etc. Experiments have shown that these things seem to make it difficult for tasters to come up with rational or consistent results.
Do that test again and TELL them that the wines are manipulated to an identical color. That'll give you an example of how humans are able to ignore a specific sense.
Yeah, one of the studies actually took two IDENTICAL glasses of wine and just tinted one. The red one was given remarkably different taste descriptors (like red wines)... even though it was identical to the white one. Not one taster identified it as a white wine.
Now, you're right, maybe if we did some sort of other experiment where we told people about manipulation, maybe the results would be slightly different. Given all I've read about this issue, I still doubt that wine experts would be able to do as well as they think they can.
But even if under some ideal conditions tasters might be able to make consistent judgments, the study I cited before shows that tasters still only tend to narrow down quality to within an 8-point range out of the 20-point rating system on average.
That might be better than chance, but it's not very detailed. And given that a lot of this can be influenced significantly by saying the wine is "expensive" or changing the color or circumstances of drinking, etc., it's not a lot of information at all.
I'm not saying that tasters can't taste something. The question is: can they taste well enough to justify a difference in wine price between $2 for a bottle vs. $200 for a bottle? Given the evidence, I don't think their opinions are worth anywhere near that much.
For the opinion of experts with such inexact skills, I'll usually pay $1 or $2 more. If I see a bottle that has been highly rated by someone or some organization I like, I may pay a dollar or two more over just taking a chance on another wine without that endorsement. In certain circumstances, I've paid maybe $5 more. I've rarely ended up with something terrible when I've taken such advice, and that's about the only reason I do it... to avoid horribly bad wine, not to actually find "good" wine.
The only times I've paid more than that for an expert opinion on wine is when I was seeking to get a bottle to give as a gift or to take to dinner, and I was asking an opinion from an expert so that my gift would appear to be something accepted "by the experts." At no point have I actually thought that I was guaranteed to get significantly better quality by doing so.
So -- I agree with most things you've said. And I agree that experts taste something. I just don't think their opinions are anywhere near exact enough to justify the kind of price increases that accompany high ratings.
Absolutely. I'm aware of all of this. I still don't think that makes any of what I said false or wrong. Just because tasters think a $5 wine tastes better when it's described as a $100 bottle doesn't affect the proportion of bad cheap wines vs. bad expensive wines. I can only remember one or two occasions where I've been served a moderate or expensive wine without knowing the price ahead of time and thought, "This is TERRIBLE!" I can remember dozens of occasions where I've been served a cheap wine without knowing the price and thought, "This is TERRIBLE!"
I'm not going to claim that my experience is solid evidence of anything. But I do think there is a higher proportion of terrible wines at lower price-points.
I'm assuming that part of your post was reacting to my claim that I sometimes will pay a premium price because of my previous good experiences with something. This has nothing to do with claiming that these expensive liquors are always better than cheaper ones or even that their tastes are unique.
But let's say that I like the taste of a particular kind of single-malt scotch or bourbon or whatever, and I find out after I've tasted it that it costs $60 or $70 for a bottle. (This has happened to me a lot -- I've gone to tasting parties, had people buy me drinks at bars, etc., having no idea about the cost of the item in question.)
For a few of these liquors, where a bottle probably lasts me over a year, spending the $60 is worth it, because I already know the taste is what I like. I could spend a few hundred dollars sampling other cheap whiskies looking for something I like as much for $20 or $30 per bottle, but why should I? It's not cost effective if I've found what I like.
My reason for buying a few premium priced liquors is almost always because I discovered something I liked, usually without knowing the price ahead of time, and I want that consistency of taste. I'll also do the same in repeatedly buying a $5 bottle of wine that I know I like... it has nothing to do with expensive vs. cheap.
We have already been down this road. Claiming two things taste the same because they are molecularly similar is pure fallacy. This has been proven time and time again. This app will be just shy of worthless.
There's really not much difference between a 30 dollar bottle of vodka and a 300 dollar bottle (I've had both), but there's definitely a big difference between the 10 and the 30. On the other hand, there is *totally* a difference between 40 dollar single malts and 100 dollar single malts (though Costco has a Costco-rebranded 20 year single malt for 50 dollars that would generally be 100... it's pretty fantastic.)
Actually Damascus steel is superior to most modern steel for a subset of specific applications. It takes one hell of an edge. Excessively hard steels tend to chip, and soft steels don't hold the edge; Damascus is some kind of black magic that easily takes a sharp edge and holds it for unusually long. Now, as structural steel? Hell no.
There's also an iron-making process that causes the iron to not rust, despite not being a rust-resistant iron. It's unknown currently, but the mechanism of action from study of samples is theorized to be an outer coating of impurities.
As for violins, there's a lot to consider there. Playability--how well it feels, how easy it is to work with, how well it keeps tune, intonation, etc--as well as sound quality--which is completely subjective. Sound quality changes with age, to the point that a lute that's been played even sounds different than one that hasn't been played due to the way the wood settles over time. Generally the changes to a played instrument are considered pleasant.
It's a lot more than "X is better than Y". The concept is kind of silly.
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What's hilarious is that modern technology is worse than ... modern technology. Medicine from 2000 years ago? Yeah, no thanks. Medicine from 20 years ago? It's well known that classical anti-depressants are much, much better than modern medication. So much so that doctors are starting to prescribe the old drugs because, shit, Zoloft and Xanax don't work nearly as well and have horrible side effects.
Similarly, we've been hit-and-miss with "natural" or "naturopathic" or "whateverthefuckingrootiscalled" remedies. Tea? Tea was considered a medicine. That's funny. Then you realize that they inject EGCG directly into cancer as a form of chemotherapy--EGCG extracted from green tea. L-Theanine is fucking amazing--it's novel to green tea. At the same time, stuff like Lipitor (Lovastatin--extract of red yeast rice) ... have proven dangerous and horrible and overall bad. 50% chance of killing your liver without being the damnedest bit effective. But eating plenty of red yeast rice somehow has the desired effect without toxicity? Okay, so some tradition works.
We need balance. Modern science, scientific advancement, understanding of our world, that's all well and good; but the haughtiness of proclaiming anything old and "voodo-y" as being unscientific and thus complete bullshit is a symptom of severe imbalance. We know meditation works for reducing stress and providing cognitive benefits--yet many people will claim no benefits exist because meditation is thought of as some kind of spiritual mind magic thing and thus is hilarious bullshit. We think of new drugs as improvements over old drugs and immediately believe the old drugs were ineffective--yet they were fantastically effective in their time, and new drugs are huge money-making machines for drug companies, so why would we believe such a thing? The science behind the studies is even controlled by those who have interest in convincing you that a new drug is better and safer, regardless of its effectiveness or safety. Can't we at least question it, rather than blindly marching on?
Funny enough, scientific studies have shown that vitamin C and orange juice and such don't prevent colds or any other disease except scurvy. People still believe that?
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Alcohol is very beneficial to your health. In the same way as cholesterol, in fact--you sure don't want a LOT of it, but you're going to be better off having a moderate amount than none.
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I'm not saying that tasters can't taste something. The question is: can they taste well enough to justify a difference in wine price between $2 for a bottle vs. $200 for a bottle? Given the evidence, I don't think their opinions are worth anywhere near that much.
I fully agree with you until here. But as you mention the $200 price range: Things become even worse here: Those rediciulous prices are usually paid for those veeeery old bottles. But talk to a wine producer: wine doesn't get better with long storage times. Even the wines that need time to fully develop their taste are done after a few years. Only a few types of wine aren't guaranteed to to be undrinkable after 20 years. You pay for the privilege to gulp something down that is very old and can't be reproduced. And you basically have to pay for all the bottles that turned to vinegar during those 20+ years. Or got that cork taste. Or saw a bright flash of light. Or whatever may happen to wine.
So -- I agree with most things you've said. And I agree that experts taste something. I just don't think their opinions are anywhere near exact enough to justify the kind of price increases that accompany high ratings.
Exactly. Espescially when the most important factor is still personal taste.
bickerdyke
When I drink rum, I drink 151 and Pepsi Max. That drink should have name. I'm thinking 'Blackout Felony' or 'Restraint Chair'?
I don't drink rum much.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
" It's well known that classical anti-depressants are much, much better than modern medication."
Wrong. go talk to a doctor that knows their shit. While many of them have greater effect, they do so at a cost of greater side effects. One of the benefits of many of the newer ones is lower side effects. For example Sertraline (Zoloft) has no serious side effects, all the ones it has are annoying at most, they are not harmful. Also it is non-addictive, non-habit forming, so it is something that can be taken your whole life, no problem.
Now it doesn't work on all people's conditions. It isn't a heavy hitter (most SSRIs aren't), but if it does work, it can do so with minimal adverse effects.
Also, something to note here, is that those older anti-depressants haven't gone away. It isn't as though somehow 20 years later they all vanished. Rather we have more options now. So the older ones can be, and are, prescribed when appropriate.
Same shit you see in many areas, like pain killers. Morphine Sulphate is pretty much the ultimate pain killer, and we've had it since the early 1800s. It can deal with even extremely severe cases of pain. So we use it in hospitals, trauma centers, the military and so on. However it carries a high price for what it does: It is highly, highly addictive, and kills your lungs. So it is not suited for general use. Hence there is a reason to keep looking for other pain killers, it isn't as though we were done then. On the other end you have something like Tylenol, which is only effective against fairly mild pain, but not addictive and well tolerated... Except if you take too much you'll kill your liver.
It also turns out this isn't magic. It isn't as though if we just wished hard enough we could have the perfect medicine. So, we keep working at it, keep trying to find new ways to treat things.
Wrong. go talk to a doctor that knows their shit. While many of them have greater effect, they do so at a cost of greater side effects. One of the benefits of many of the newer ones is lower side effects. For example Sertraline (Zoloft) has no serious side effects, all the ones it has are annoying at most, they are not harmful. Also it is non-addictive, non-habit forming, so it is something that can be taken your whole life, no problem.
Ask a scientist about research.
In the early years, drugs easily beat the placebo: They were, on average, 4.5 times as effective, where effectiveness means how well they lowered blood pressure, vanquished tumors, lifted depression or did whatever else they were intended to.
But the trend line was inexorably downhill, found Dr Mark Olfson of Columbia University and statistician Steven Marcus of the University of Pennsylvania. By the 1980s drugs were less than four times better; by the 1990s, twice as good, and by the 2000s just 36 percent better than a placebo. Since older drugs were much superior to placebo and newer ones only slightly so, that means older drugs were generally more effective than newer ones.
Do you know who works on medicine? Companies that make money from you getting sick. Now, medicine is patented, and the price is kept high because a $1500/year medicine costs the consumer $10/mo directly (and $1500/year through insurance... well, okay, not really; it's an averaging game). Generics cost less, and 14 years down the line Pfeizer needs to make a new drug to patent. The patent expiring is good for the consumer, but not so good for Pfeizer who would rather keep price gouging unethically.
Whatever the reason for many new drugs packing less punch than old ones, that will not keep them from reaching patients.
"The way the drug regulatory system is set up, even if you have just a small advance, if you market it right it can be very profitable," said Kesselheim.
Back in the 90s, psychiatrists prescribed very low doses of MDMA to treat PTSD. It worked for about 3-4 months--one tiny dose, 1/10 of what it takes to actually get you high, and you're good for months--then you take another one. No side effects (MDMA is ridiculously benign, it's unheard of--even Piracetam has worse side effects accounting for effect, scale, and frequency) and almost 100% population effectiveness. MDMA is impossible to patent and is cheap. Now we use terribly damaging drugs that aren't nearly as effective... is this a casualty of the War on Drugs making MDMA hard to get even legitimately, or a casualty of Pfeizer not being able to make money on MDMA?
Concession: The study was done by the Government, which under Obamacare (what a stupid buzzname, isn't it like Healthcare Reform Act of Somestupidshityear?) has the interest of reducing costs. A number of alternate explanations were given, such as that people are harder to treat today, or that we're scrutinizing clinical trials more now than before. However, this is interesting:
While experts agree that tougher trials and similar factors explain some of the decline in drugs' reported effectiveness, "something real is going on here," said Olfson. "Physicians keep saying that many of the new things just aren't working as well," and therefore prescribe antidepressant drugs called tricyclics (developed in the 1950s) instead of SSRIs (from the 1980s), or diuretics (invented in the 1920s) for high blood pressure instead of newer anti-hypertensives.
Doctors don't sit around weighing clinical trials; they read a pamphlet and prescribe new drugs. When they stop prescribing new drugs, it's because they've had 2000 patients and found that more than 1000 of them did very poorly on the new shit that they were told was better but did very well on old shit that was i
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>Actually Damascus steel is superior to most modern steel for a subset of specific applications. It takes one hell of an edge. Excessively hard steels tend to chip, and soft steels don't hold the edge; Damascus is some kind of black magic that easily takes a sharp edge and holds it for unusually long. Now, as structural steel? Hell no.
No, you are simply wrong. We can make many kinds of steel. We can make hard steel, soft steel, or steels that are anywhere in-between. Heat treating techniques and chemical manipulation are the key to sword making and we understand them quite well now. Can you go down to your local store and pick up some steel that's suitable to make a sword? Probably not. However, if you wanted to make one, you could find a supplier who will sell you steel better than Damascus. It'd be expensive, because there's not a lot of demand for such steels, but you could obtain it nonetheless.
There are also people who can fashion the sword far better than any ancient blacksmith. Even the best ancient blacksmith couldn't hope to compete with a mediocre one today simply because of all the modern technology that exists today. Ancient blacksmiths didn't have access to precisely-maintained oil quench baths, induction heaters, modern furnaces, or power tools. Modern blacksmiths understand the science behind what they're doing and, if they didn't, they could consult with a metallurgist who knows even more.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Well, okay; but most modern blacksmiths are going to have trouble producing nanosteel in their home forge from raw metal taken straight from the ground. Just saying.
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