OT: Crazy Programming

[Bengt Richter]

On Fri, 17 May 2002 11:56:43 +1200, Greg Ewing <greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:

>Laura Creighton wrote:
>> 
>> The ability to rank something and whether it is objective or not are
>> independent concepts.
>
>But for the ranking to be objective, it has to be
>independent of the person doing the ranking.
>
>> I could find the 3 best, and the 2 worst with no trouble, and there
>> was broad consensus in the room about this.  There was disagreement
>> as to the precise ranking, however.
>
>Which says to me that the ranking process is *not*
>completely objective. Not because the process involves
>people using their senses, but because the result
>depends on who is doing it.
>
I agree. Chacun a son gout. The way your brain modulates whatever is
the basis of your conscious experience of enjoyment is peculiar to you,
though we can usefully assume there are similarities.

I've heard of a wine taster who has synaesthesia that gives him
texture sensations that normally come from touching various spiky
or velvety or glassy etc. surfaces. This gives him the ability to
recognize a wine that he has tasted before based on sensations that
'normal' people don't experience.

I am sure that helps him classify wines in a much richer feature space,
but does that mean I will enjoy his recommended wines? Not necessarily.
It might be a good bet, that's all. IMO ranking wine generates possibly
useful statistics about wine/winetaster relationships, but nothing purely
about the wine.

Learning to recognize what someone else enjoys is no substitute for
learning to recognize what you yourself enjoy, though it will help
you be nice to your significant someone else, if you pay attention
to the right authority ;-)

Regards,
Bengt Richter