Peter Levin’s Rethinking Markets

January 25, 2008

How do you know what you like?

Filed under: Art, Culture — Peter @ 8:20 pm

While partaking in a stupendous lunch, the conversation turns to the question of how do people know what they like?

Drinking deeply from his Effervecense de Pomme, PL chimes: There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.

Tipping her fork into her delectably deconstructed Nicoise Salad, JL rejoins: Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. It is not without pre-established harmony, this sculpture in the memory. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. Bravely let him speak the utmost syllable of his confession. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. It needs a divine man to exhibit anything divine. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.

PL digs into his Fuji Apple Tart: Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

Well, perhaps not quite so Emersonian, but our conversation did turn once again to experts, tastes, and professional critics - not just where preferences come from, but how do you know what you like? The example I favored (and favor) is cooking, which makes my point but does so at the expense of losing the social. Ignore that for now.

Cooks, it seems to me, resolve along a curvilinear continuum. At one are novice cooks. They rely on recipes, following them closely to make dinner. The novice cook relies on the tastes of the cookbook author, assumes (not unreasonably) that because this person is an expert, their combination of ingredients and techniques is a good approximation for what is going to be tasty.

At the other end of the spectrum are professional chefs. Professional chefs don’t rely on recipes as such - but neither do they rely on their own personal tastes. Or rather, their personal tastes at the point when they are professional chefs approximate the tastes of the field. Classical French, Northern Italian, Japanese. Their tastes conform to the field’s tastes, with variations due to creativity, syntheses of cuisines, and the like. But when a chef adds more star anise to a dish, it’s not so much that they personally like star anise, it’s that they believe that star anise makes the dish better. There’s a distinction there.

In the middle are those whose personal tastes figure more prominently than either the novice or professional. I call these the Grandma cooks - their recipes may have once begun their lives as recipes, but are now tailored to the tastes of themselves and their families. Grandma Sylvia puts in parnips rather than carrots because Jon won’t eat orange foods; her own tastes and the tastes of those people she cooks for matter more.

So this is the point: someplace between those who know nothing and therefore rely completely on experts; and those who are the experts, and whose tastes are oriented to a broader field; in between are those for whom personal tastes figure more heavily. I’d like to hypothesize that this characterizes a number of cultural arenas, including art (both buyers and maybe painters), music, and of course cooking.

Do you believe me?

10 Responses to “How do you know what you like?”

1. jlena Says:
   January 26th, 2008 at 6:33 pm

   Your grandma might have taken out the carrots, but my grandma didn’t particularly care what we liked, or didn’t like. And today our friend John claimed that there are two kinds of professional chefs: those that cook to please the masses, and those that cook for themselves (and damn the masses).

   So it can’t be the case that reliance on broad/specific expertise is a function of one’s own position within an expertise hierarchy (cause that’s tautological, too, kids!). It must be that there is some other reason for the sorting of cooks into groups, and that there are more groups than appear so far in the neato grapho.

   I’m not particularly a fan of sorting based on “motivation” which lies thinly under the surface of Peter’s “expertise.” I would rather see the sorting as a function of the reception of diners who motivate a schema sorting cooks into these groups. So, confident, practiced diners, maybe especially those professionally engaged with the evaluation of cooking might distinguish between “classical presentations” and “nouveau” takes on the same dish, while semi-experts compare all French dishes (for example) to the results when cooking with Child’s Mastering the Art…etc.

   Then the curve of variation that Peter notices in his hypothetical, and has empirical evidence of in other settings, is actually a function of the clarity or consensus on standards. Consensus is high at the low end because there’s a single standard of taste established by convention and a million small variations on…pasta primavera, for e.g. Consensus is high at the high end because it is established by a charismatic individual (e.g., Jean-George) whose livelihood rests on their ability to enforce a standard and link it to their personna. And there’s very little consensus in the middle because there are lots of cookbooks and lots of regional chefs. Lots of idiosyncratic takes on standard dishes, and lots of people who stand by their own tastes, and can enforce that standard on a moderately sized group.

   No?

2. Peter Says:
   January 27th, 2008 at 12:31 pm

   Points taken, especially about Grandma taking into account others’ tastes. The other problem is that Grandma also occasionally followed recipes slavishly. And I appreciate your thinking on consensus and groups - back inserting the social, I’d suggest that these groups are probably linked to gender, race, region, etc., especially related to who cooks at home on a regular basis, for kids or for guests, etc.

   he curve…is actually a function of the clarity or consensus on standards

   Ok, I like this direction quite a bit. But then you lose me when you say that consensus is high when established by charismatic individuals.

   The puzzle for me is that the relationship between expertise and variability due to taste doesn’t increase monotonically. As more chefs (and we should leave chefs sometime soon, because of the idiosyncrasies of the restaurant business) become experts, shouldn’t we see more variation in dishes depending on the individual tastes of these confident experts? As confidence and expertise increases, we might see a 1000 flowers bloom, an explosion of variety of dishes that are all fantastic. Instead, my guess is that even if we took chefs out of restaurants (i.e., catering to tastes of patrons and thus to a generalized and black-boxed ‘public’) and put them into their own kitchens to cook for their own selves, we would still see a convergence to a single standard.

   In other words, if we asked 20 top Italian chefs to produce their own favorite pasta carbonara, don’t you think these would be more alike than different? Do you think we’d get significantly more variation than if we asked 20 novices to produce the same? Or is this loading the question by setting the parameters too narrowly?

3. Andrew Says:
   January 27th, 2008 at 2:04 pm

   Sorry to barge in with my take…but it would seem to me that chefs - unlike Grandma (unless she’s in a pie contest) - have their reputations to worry about; they’re acutely aware of not only how well they cook but how much better or worse other chefs are able to do the same thing. Confident experts are usually not so confident to release themselves from the game altogether; rather, gains to reputation (and perhaps even confidence) in cookery at least seems to arise out of what are actually small and highly technical variations on standard recipes or technique that are then picked up by discriminating palates (critics, rival chefs) as ‘fresh’ or ‘inspired’ - or as ‘misguided’ and ‘disastrous’ if the experiments don’t work out. This doesn’t answer why we don’t allow a hundred flowers bloom with respect to tastes, though I guess bolder culinary steps would risk the probability of being labeled reckless rather than inspired.

   I’d agree that there are standards involved but perhaps these are less a consensus than a kind of temporary point of convergence amongst competitors always watching and observing one another in a game of one-upsmanship.

4. Peter Says:
   January 27th, 2008 at 2:50 pm

   Andrew, there are no doors, and thus impossible to barge. I think reputation is an excellent and missed (from me, at least) point, and the idea that gains to rep. come from embracing rather than setting aside the standards is really important.

   On the other hand, I recall Anthony Bourdain (in Cook’s Tour, after the hoopla of Kitchen Conf, but before the hoopla over his TV personality life) said about Thomas Keller that he isn’t even playing the same game as everyone else - it’s like he is operating with a whole different set of standards. I don’t really get this myself, since it’s not really my own field/life, but there is something there that seems to get at your point. Something like, when do the sets of existing standards demand greater or lesser compliance.

   McCracken’s Flock and Flow makes the argument that there is a ratification process that’s going on - so that a small number of adventurers ratify the nouveau on the margins, which selects some of that new stuff to a larger group, which ratifies it to a larger group etc. So foodies ratify duck foams, which filter to New York restaurants, which filter to PF Changs, which filters to Applebee’s. Like the scene in Devil Wears Prada and the blue sweater.

   And what about the central point, that there is a limited space for understanding and embracing ‘what we like’ apart from outsourcing it to experts (at the low end), or having it imposed by an institutionalized set of peers (at the high end)?

   [as an aside, in the original conversation, I was trying to convey frustration that in absence of the skill of being able to know what one likes, it will likely be imposed from an external source. And I was wondering how and where we learn to trust ourselves in that respect.]

5. jlena Says:
   January 27th, 2008 at 5:57 pm

   PL: Glad you like my direction.

   Why don’t we see 1000 flowers bloom? I think it is because of how expertise is generated. In chefery, I argue it is generated through small permutations on existing recipes, but exercised over a very small number of recipes. I suppose we’ll chance an operationalization debate here…but if we’re all imagining the same chefs in this middle group, then we agree they’re working to perfect like 50 famous recipes, not 5000, and they’re adding/subtracting like 100 ingredients, not 10,000. (Or 1,000.)

   Among elite chefs, of which there are a discrete number, and for whom a vacancy chain orders entry and exit, and so consensus emerges (around recipes–the “best coq au vin” and styles of recipes–the “best avant garde, deconstructed coq au vin”). This consensus around charismatic chefs is produced via the effective celebration and dislike of food by the “right” critics.

   And I think Andrew’s point about small, technical variations by confident experts is an interesting one. It is somewhat inconsistent with the Soc of Science and bibliometrician’s work on regimes in science (you can say Kuhn if you want to, but I’m thinking more de Sola Price). That work, if memory serves, suggests that high status members are the most creative, in part because all the innovative stuff passes across their desk in the form of articles to review and graduate students to supervise, and…jerkily…they steal/adapt some of it. Hey! That reminds me of Dalton Conley’s secrets of success…at least, as related by Becoming Dr. Warner.

6. jlena Says:
   January 27th, 2008 at 6:07 pm

   btw, I hadn’t read Peter’s post of 2:50 when I wrote mine, or I would have considered those arguments. Now I’ll just sit back for the next round.

   Oh, except to make a mental note that we consider “guilty pleasures” and the differences for this model between consuming in order to feed (ha ha) that experience into the status, reputation, expertise hierarchy v.s. consuming for some other pleasure (including, ashamedly, frugality).

7. Peter Says:
   January 27th, 2008 at 9:14 pm

   JL: But maybe critics are the social part of my suggested hypothesis - at minimum, they are the enforcers at the high end of the spectrum. I dug up the Bourdain section on Keller, do we just treat him as an outlier?

   …Upon the mention of the chef’s name, other chefs - no matter how great - become strangely silent, uncomfortable-looking, even frightened. In a subculture where most of us are all too happy to slag anybody at any time, you never hear anyone - even the French - talk trash about keller. (One Frenchman, I believe, even called him the ‘greatest French chef in the world.’)

   What’s missing from all the wild praise of Keller, his cooks, his restaurant, and his cookbook is how different he is. You can’t honestly use terms like the best or better or even perfect when you’re talking about Thomas Keller, because he’s not really competing with anybody. He’s playing a game whose rues are known only to him. He’s doing things most chefs would never attempt - in ways unthinkable to most. Everything about him and the French Laundry experience is different from most fine dining experiences; and Keller himself is a thing apart, a man hunting much bigger game, with very different ambitions than most of his peers.

   Alternatively (and here I confess I’m re-reading Gladwell’s brilliant piece on spaghetti sauce, mustard, and ketchup - here and the completely engrossing TED talk here), why shouldn’t there be dramatic self-expression of individual preference via segmentation instead of striving for the perfect 50 in the main category.

   Oh, and I’m too obtuse to understand JL’s last comment vis-a-vis guilty pleasures/feeding/frugality. More explicitness, please?

8. jlena Says:
   January 27th, 2008 at 10:59 pm

   I find Gladwell’s argument confusing. Why is Heinz successful where other ketchups are not? The recipe “runs the sensory spectrum” of sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami, in addition to having amplitude. Also, kids eat it early and so are imprinted with the taste (um, unless they eat the other brand?), plus the fact that some ketchups run that ol’ spectrum means children are evolutionarily drawn to them. Oh, and the EZ Squirt bottle hits that evolutionary? biological? um….social? need for kids to control the world around them.

   But the question we started with was mustard, and why Grey Poupon mustard succeeded where World’s Best ketchup failed. Unfortunately, Gladwell doesn’t use his food science trick to unpack mustard, so I never really get an answer. Instead, we get an answer to why Grey Poupon edged into French’s territory, and that answer is: good advertising and aspirational tastes.

   There’s a third answer still when we get to pasta sauce. In that case, it turns out that a foodie version of Factor Analysis yields three general types of sauce preferences, one of which was desired but as yet unavailable on the market. Campbell’s/Prego made that extra chunky sauce and the kids went wild.

   In this case, the question of ad campaigns is not relevant, because tasters liked the Extra Chunky sauce in the experimental, testing phase of product development. Was it a hit because it fired up our little tasty buds? Who knows….

   So this seems to be your still unanswered question, Peter: where does the taste for extra chunky sauce come from? Gladwell clearly states that it wasn’t available in the supermarket aisles. But were we getting it from somewhere else, like restaurants or homemade cooks? Or was it a taste developed from some proximal experience, like salsa (which I know didn’t really exist in mainstream U.S. cuisine at the time, but is being used for illustrative purposes)? Or did God reach down and say “Lo, unto three I bequeath the gift of good taste. Go forth and have thee Chunky Style sauce, and prosper.”

   Anyways, I don’t believe in pre-social taste, but I’ll give on innovation as a form of recombinations of existing sensory or experiential perceptions. And I’ll also admit that it seems like the ketchup dude and this Keller guy and probably the folks who make strange foods at home are all the same “type.” They all seem to give themselves permission to be avant garde, and because of that self-perception, their behavior, and their food, reflects degrees of difference from others. Then some of these renegades have the right combination of flavors and the right mentors and sponsors (GLADWELL WAKE UP ON THIS, DUDE) and they get sucked up into the mainstream.

   Thus, my answer (for now) is that tastes come from self-perception, and so innovations come from people styling themselves as “avant-garde”. But that’s not very satisfying.

   You’ll have to wait on the other question–the guilty pleasure question. On the morrow.

9. Peter Says:
   January 28th, 2008 at 10:23 am

   Oh, you wanted Gladwell to be consistent rather than entertaining? How quaint.

   You’re spot-on (natch) that his suggestion - at least for ketchup - is exactly what you disagree with: something primordial about the 5 tastes combined with high gestalt taste = greatness. But I guess I was focused on the mustard/pasta sauce guy part: that if time and money allowed, we would likely find not three main categories of tastes, but an infinite number. Nearer and dearer to JL’s field, isn’t this what we see with the Grammy’s?

   So to say that some people are renegades and opt out of the system is to say that the system as it stands is a bit of an oddity. Or better, let me suggest that the system as it is - smaller categories, competition within them, critics as arbiters, risks to reputation for going outside, gains to reputation for competing within - benefits some groups while excluding others.

   This doesn’t address avant-garde, which is the established category for operating in the continually-moving bleeding edge. I need more thinking about this…maybe over lunch…

10. Andrew Says:
    January 28th, 2008 at 3:23 pm

    I kind of wish Gladwell had talked more about the politics of supermarket shelf space, which I’m guessing has its own bizarre logic.

    But, otherwise, as a complete aside to these last few great exchanges between Peter and JL…

    Re the lower end of the continuum there’s an issue about not knowing one’s tastes and not having skill, it would seem? ‘I don’t know what I like’ and ‘I don’t know how to achieve what I like’ are two distinct reasons to outsource to expertise, so that moving out of novice to expert status is some vector between deepening sophistication and confidence in one’s tastes and deepening sophistication and confidence in one’s skill.

    Perhaps I’m wrong, but it seems to me that even novice cooks know what they want (or want to try) but just don’t know how to bring even a competent version of that about, so it’s usually a skill and not taste issue. But novice art buyers, on the other hand, seem to always get the advice: don’t buy just what the experts tell you, buy what you *like* - in order to make decisions that you won’t regret. That may be difficult to follow if you don’t know what you like. So it’s a careful balancing act for the novice buyer and the expert, between offering advice that has to be presented as a kind of ‘clarification’ of what the buyer likes and the buyer’s willingness to accept it as such. Otherwise, if the advice isn’t incorporated and accepted as a reflection of one’s preferences - even if those preferences really weren’t there to begin with - then the outside advice is ‘imposed,’ and very often then the learning process for the individual becomes whether or not to continue to rely on an expert or develop her own tastes independently, or (if the purchase ends up being disappointing) whether or not the regret should be attributed more to her own lack of discernment or the poor advice she got.

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